Time for a recap.

1) ECB chief Mario Draghi has urged the UK government to provide clarity on its plans to exit the European Union. Draghi believes it’s currently impossible to say what impact Brexit will have on the City, or the rest of Europe, due to the lack of information from London.

He told the European Parliament that:

We are also looking for a concept by the UK government where it would share its views and plans with its own citizens, and see what they say about that, before we can actually express our views on this.

2) Draghi also warned that Britain would suffer most from a hard break from the EU:

If, in the long run, the risk of a less-open U.K. economy in terms of trade, migration and foreign direct investment were to materialize, there would be a negative impact on innovation and competition and, thus, productivity and potential output

“Such developments would first and foremost weigh on the U.K. economy.”

3) The oil price has jumped, on hopes that Opec will hammer out the details of a plan to cut output at their meeting in Vienna this week.

Iraq’s oil minister, Jabar Ali al-Luaibi, dodged a broken vase to tell eager reporters that:

“We are optimistic. We hope we (will) have agreement. We will cooperate with OPEC members to reach agreement acceptable to all.”

But some experts aren’t convinced that the cartel can put its recent tensions behind; will Iraq and Iran really commit to production curbs, or just ‘freeze’ their current levels?

Saudi Arabia has taken a tough line this week, cancelling a meeting with Russia and suggesting that output curbs aren’t essential. Analysts believe it’s all part of a negotiating strategy to get Iran and Iraq, among others, onside.

Brent crude is now up 2.6% at $48.49, ahead of Wednesday’s crunch meeting. But more volatility is expected, as ministers and reporters congregate in a chilly Vienna.

4) The OECD has predicted that the global economy could benefit from Donald Trump.

The Paris-based thinktank raised its growth forecasts, and suggested that Trump’s plans for higher government spending and a huge infrastructure project could help world growth.

But it also warned that protectionism could hold back world trade.

5) European stock markets have closed in the red, with the FTSE 100 dropping by 40 points or 0.6%.

Retail stocks were among the fallers, with Next losing 2.6% and Burberry down 1.9%.

Chris Beauchamp of IG says:

Retailers seem to have a bad case of the ‘Cyber Monday blues’, following from a Black Friday that didn’t even try to live up to the hype. Could it be that, having shopped for Britain in the wake of Brexit, UK consumers are now reining in their spending?

The French and German markets both shed around 1%, while Italy lost 1.8% as fears grow over Sunday’s constitutional referendum.

Thanks for reading and commenting. GW

Newsflash: One of the Bank of England’s policymakers is defending the central bank against criticism of its loose monetary policy.

Gertjan Vlieghe is telling an audience in Sheffield University that UK interest rates are at record lows because the global economy is facing disinflationary forces. Not the other way round.

Vlieghe takes a weather analogy:

“It has been raining, so we have all opened our umbrellas”.

He’s not convinced by critics who argue that low rates are causing economic woes...

“Umbrellas together with rainfall are observed in many countries. Nobody actually believes that umbrellas cause rainfall”.

And he also points out that central banks which raised interest rates since the financial crisis ended up having to cut them again (such as the European Central Bank).

“We have had several low interest rate, low inflation countries that have raised interest rates over the past decade. This was not followed by an escape from the alleged confidence trap”.

“Higher interest rates, far from boosting demand and inflation, have caused growth to slow and inflation to fall”.

“Some of these countries now have even lower short term and long term interest rates than the UK, as inflation expectations have drifted lower”.

Vlieghe also takes a pop at those who say savers are suffering from low interest rates - pointing out that savers often own the kind of assets whose value has been pushed by by loose monetary policy.

Q: Are you worried that Donald Trump might replace Janet Yellen as head of the US Federal Reserve?

Draghi says he’s not privy to Trump’s thinking with respect to the Fed. But he suggests the president-elect should tread carefully:

Undermining independence of central banks is not in anyone’s interests, especially those in the jurisdiction of the central bank.

During the election campaign, Trump criticised the Fed for keeping interest rates too low, and suggested he’d replace Yellen when her term expires in 2018.

Mario Draghi has urged Theresa May to give British citizens more information about her plans for Britain’s exit from the EU.

The European Central Bank president told MEPs in Brussels that he’s still in the dark about Britain’s strategy.

Asked if Britain will lose its ‘passporting rights’ in the EU, or if jobs will be shed in the City, Draghi says the lack of clarity means he simply doesn’t know.

He tells the Economic and Monetary Affairs committee (livefeed) that:

We don’t know.

And the reason we don’t know is we have to see exactly how the final shape of the negotiations will be, and how long they will last.

It’s pretty clear that the longer they last, the bigger the uncertainty.

Draghi also tells MEPs that over recent years, the City of London has achieved “the highest economies of scale” for any financial services industry apart from New York.

Brexit puts all this up in the air, Draghi says:

Now, how will this change, We don’t know.

Will this be recreated somewhere else? We don’t know.

Would the considerable benefit that these economies of scale have created to the European Union, to the United Kingdom, be recreated elsewhere?

Or will there be a migration to the United States? We don’t know.

And the ECB chief concludes his answer by putting the ball firmly in the British government’s court:

We are also looking for a concept by the UK government where it would share its views and plans with its own citizens, and see what they say about that, before we can actually express our views on this.

Draghi’s comments come a day after it emerged that Bank of England governor Mark Carney is pushing for “transitional arrangements” to protect the City from a hard Brexit.

And in another twist, lawyers have launched a fresh legal challenge over whether Britain should seek to retain membership of the single market during the Brexit process.

On Brexit, Draghi says that the eurozone has weathered the fallout from the UK referendum outcome with “encouraging resilience”.

But he cautions that the UK economy is expected to slow, as firms cut investment.

Draghi also refuses to allow Brexit to undermine the European single market,

While the UK referendum did create uncertainty as far as the country’s participation in the Single Market is concerned, the Single Market cannot go backwards.

It is imperative that its integrity and the homogeneity of rules and their enforcement will be preserved. This also means we cannot take backward steps concerning the regulatory,supervisory and oversight framework for banks and financial market infrastructures, which has been enhanced considerably since 2008.

Mario Draghi has urged European leaders not to abandon economic and monetary union as they wrestle with Europe’s new security challenges.

The head of the European Central Bank began his session in Brussels by telling MPs that the euro area economy is growing at “a moderate but steady pace” despite economic and political uncertainties.

And he warns that policymakers need to shore up the eurozone’s creaking foundations.

I am aware that the attention of our policymakers has shifted. In the direct aftermath of the financial crisis the need to complete Economic and Monetary Union came to the forefront of the European debate. Since then circumstances have changed. Today Europe’s focus is more on security.

Both projects require Europe to be united – to act together. However, let us not forget that Europe will be better able to protect itself if it has a strong and resilient economy. And for that purpose, Economic and Monetary Union must overcome the vulnerabilities stemming from its incompleteness.

One important lesson from the crisis is that a half-built house is not stable, it is fragile.

Draghi also cites the recent Five Presidents’ report - which recommended closer fiscal union (tighter control of member states’ budgets by Brussels), and a Europe-wide bank deposit guarantee scheme.

Breaking news! A vase has been sent tumbling in Vienna as oil reporters rushed to speak with Iraq’s oil minister as he arrived at the Opec meeting.

Jabar Ali al-Luaibi told the expectant, and clumsy, throng that he’s “optimistic” that a deal will be reached on Wednesday. No details though.

I fear that the vase may not be fixable:

The OECD is also optimistic that America will drive global growth, thanks to Donald Trump’s promise of a “more supportive fiscal stance”.

It says:

In the aftermath of the US elections, there is widespread expectation of a significant change in direction for macroeconomic policy.

And in practice, that means more government spending, and cuts to personal and corporation tax:

• An increase in government consumption and government investment each worth ¼ per cent of (baseline) GDP in 2017 and 2018.
  
• A reform to personal income taxes that reduces tax revenue by around ½ per cent of GDP in 2017 and 2018. In practice this is likely to include some reductions in the number of personal income tax brackets as well as some reduction in marginal rates.
  
• Reforms to corporate taxes that reduce revenues by around ¾ per cent of GDP in 2018. In the simulation this is assumed to arise from a reduction in the baseline effective corporate tax rate of just over 10%, rather than from an expansion in the tax base.
  

But the OECD is also concerned that world trade growth has been weak since the financial crisis:

Trade enhances competitive pressures, enables greater specialisation and improved resource allocation, facilitates knowledge transfer and is essential for the functioning of global value chains.

Newsflash: The OECD has warned that the world economy will struggle to escape its long period of low growth unless governments take advantage of low interest rates to invest more.

In its new global outlook, just released, the OECD also predicts the UK economy will be hit by Brexit uncertainty next year and grow just 1.2%, the slowest rate since 2009’s recession.

My colleague Katie Allen explains:

In its first in-depth forecasts since Donald Trump won the US election on an anti-globalisation platform, the west’s leading economic thinktank warns a new wave of protectionism and trade tensions risks denting global growth, stoking inflation and harming living standards.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it was optimistic that expected spending measures and tax cuts under the new US administration will would boost growth there and in other countries. But it warned that global trade growth was already “exceptionally weak” and that jobs would suffer if politicians rolled back the clock on trade liberalisation.

It forecasts that, after averaging 3.9% growth over the decade to 2013, global growth would be 2.9% for this year then edge up to 3.3% in 2017 and 3.6% in 2018.

“Almost a decade after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the global economy remains in a low-growth trap with weak investment, trade, productivity and wage growth and rising inequality in some countries,” said Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist.

“Monetary policy is overburdened, leading to growing financial risks and distortions. Alongside structural reforms, a stronger fiscal policy response is needed to boost near-term growth and strengthen long-term prospects for inclusive growth.”

The report noted that more than 25% of jobs depend on foreign demand in many of the 35 countries in the OECD group.

“This economic outlook suggests that protectionism and inevitable trade retaliation would offset much of the effects of the fiscal initiatives on domestic and global growth, raise prices, harm living standards, and leave countries in a worsened fiscal position.

“Trade protectionism shelters some jobs, but worsens prospects and lowers wellbeing for many others,” the report said.

The warning comes days after the US president-elect announced his intention to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

At its last forecasts in September, the OECD backtracked on its earlier warning that the UK would suffer instant damage from the Brexit vote. In this new outlook, the thinktank now forecasts UK GDP would have grown 2.0% this year, a touch higher than the 1.8% it predicted in September.

The forecast for next year was lifted to 1.2% from 1.0% in September. But that would still be the weakest growth since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009 and is slower than the 1.4% forecast by the Bank of England and the government’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility.

It noted Philip Hammond’s move in last week’s autumn statement to abandon the strict borrowing rules of his predecessor, George Osborne, but urged the new chancellor to go further. “A more significant increase in public investment would support demand in the near term and boost supply in the longer term.”

For the eurozone, the OECD predicts growth will remain subdued with some impact from the Brexit vote in the UK, a key trade partner for the single currency bloc.

Within the eurozone, Greece is expected to return to modest GDP growth next year, Germany’s growth is forecast to “remain solid” and France’s growth is seen increasing “gradually”. But the outlook - written before François Fillonwon the primary race on Sunday to become the French right’s presidential candidate - said next year’s election created “considerable uncertainty”.

Newsflash: Britain’s accounting watchdog has launched an investigation into Sports Direct’s financial statements.

The probe centres on Barlin Delivery Limited, the company owned by the brother of Sports Direct’s founder Mike Ashley.

It emerged in August that Sports Direct was using John Ashley’s firm to deliver goods to overseas companies.

And the FRC is now investigating whether this arrangement should have been disclosed.

Here’s the official statement:

Investigations into the preparation, approval and audit of the financial statements of Sports Direct International plc

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has commenced investigations under the Accountancy Scheme and the Audit Enforcement Procedure in relation to the preparation, approval and audit of the financial statements of Sports Direct International plc (“Sports Direct”) for the 52 week period ended 24 April 2016.

These decisions follow reports of an arrangement between Sports Direct and Barlin Delivery Limited which was not disclosed as a related party in the company’s financial statements.

European stock markets have all fallen in early trading, amid worries over Opec’s ability to agree output cuts this week.

The FTSE 100 index has fallen by 61 points, or 0.9%, to 6779, dragged down by oil producers.

Shares in Royal Dutch Shell have dropped by over 2%, while BP has shed 1.5%. Both companies

Saudi Arabia’s tough talk ahead of Wednesday’s meeting is worrying the City, explains Mike Van Dulken of Accendo Markets:

OPEC officials said Saudi Arabia won’t attend a prep meeting today with Russia and others ahead of the cartel’s official meeting even going as far as to suggest the group doesn’t need necessarily to curb output.

Here we go. Buckle up.

Italy’s stock market is the worst performer this morning, being dragged down by its banks.

That’s due to worries over Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reforms, and anxiety over Monte dei Paschi di Siena -- the troubled Italian lender, which is running a debt-for-equity swap today as part o f its rescue deal.

The oil price is weakening in early trading, as traders fret that Wednesday’s OPEC meeting won’t yield an agreement to cut output.

Brent crude has lost 0.75% to $46.91 per barrel, adding to Friday’s 3% slide.

And US crude has dropped a similar amount, to $45.72 per barrel.

However, some experts believe Opec will hammer out some kind of output cut -- as failure would sent prices down even further.

Oystein Berentsen, managing director for crude at oil trading firm Strong Petroleum in Singapore, told Reuters:

“An agreement is needed to avoid (price) downside. So, the question is what kind of agreement will they do? The market is clearly very nervous... We shall see. I think they will reach some form of agreement.”

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.

Tension is building in the markets today ahead of a crunch meeting of oil producers in two day’s time.

Wednesday’s meeting in Vienna has long been inked in as the moment when OPEC members would finally put their differences aside and agree detailed output cuts.

But late on Friday, Saudi Arabia threw everything up in the air, by pulling out of a scheduled meeting today with non-OPEC oil producing countries including Russia.

And Saudi Arabia has now added to the drama, by hinting that supply curbs may not be needed after all.

Khalid Al-Falih, the Saudi oil minister, declared that:

“We expect demand to recover in 2017, then prices will stabilize, and this will happen without an intervention from OPEC.

“We don’t have a single path which is to cut production at the OPEC meeting, we can also depend on recovery in consumption, especially from the U.S.”

Those comments are being interpreted as a hint that Opec might not, after all, sign off on its first production decrease in eight years this week. Back in September, they agreed the outline of a deal, but no details over who’d actually cut what.

Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN AMRO, suggests Wednesday could become another Opec damp squib.

The oil price fell sharply on Friday after Saudi pulled out of today’s meeting with Russia, and is under further pressure this morning....

Also coming up today....

The OECD is publishing its latest Global Economic Outlook at 10am, which will include forecasts and analysis of 35 of the world’s largest economies.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi will be quizzed by MEPs today, when he testifies to the European Parliament’s committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, from 2pm GMT.

He’ll then swap hats, and take questions from the same committee in his role as the Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).

Draghi can expect some criticism of the ECB’s stimulus programmes, plus questions about Brexit, Greece’s bailout, and the Italian banking sector.

Investors will also be watching Italy, as we enter the final straight before Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reforms. Prime minister Matteo Renzi seems to be heading towards defeat, which could prompt a new bout of eurozone crisis drama.