I’d been waiting for the first major newspaper columnist to write something about this. Here it is, from Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph: As I long feared, the flood of cheap credit into Southern Europe and the slow death of Club Med industry by currency asphyxiation have together created such a dangerous situation for world finance… Read More »
John Lanchester in LRB: If European monetary policy is run according to German national interests, huge structural imbalances will accumulate. The Germans will then either have to pay to correct those imbalances, or agree that the euro should not be run primarily according to German national interests. If they are unwilling to do either of… Read More »
From a four part article in Der Spiegel: … now those who in the past showed very little interest for the European Commission, the Parliament and the bureaucracy in Brussels — because they assumed that they weren’t expected to be interested in these things — are reading daily about the strange things European statesmen have… Read More »
If you’ve ever crossed borders in most of Europe – at the airport, by ferry or by road – you know that you don’t get ‘controlled’ as you enter the next country. That is about to change. To blame, claim France and Italy, is the Arab Spring. So many people are fleeing North Africa to… Read More »
Cynicism and the Nigerian state – NigeriansTalk The Un-Shock Doctrine: A defense of communism – Slavoj Žižek The Political Relevance of the Internet in Developing Countries – The Monkey Cage Time to avoid the dictatorship v democracy debate in Africa – David Booth Eurozone and the Greek debt – “Overindebted countries with their own currencies inflate. But countries… Read More »
My years as Gaddafi’s nurse – Oksana Balinskaya ‘…what will ultimately replace today’s dollar-centric international monetary and financial system is a tripolar system organized around the dollar, the euro, and the Chinese renminbi’ – Barry Eichengreen ‘The left love being provoked by me … they think I’m a reactionary imperialist scumbag’ Niall Ferguson Why about 75% of… Read More »
The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), originally signed in 1994, gave developing countries until 2005 to bring their IP laws in line with the new legislation. With respect to drugs, Indian, Brazilian, and Thai pharmaceutical firms could no longer copy drugs that American and European firms had created. Before 2005, however,… Read More »
1. Why is Hosni Mubarak clinging to power? Maybe because the life of an exiled dictator isn’t what it used to be – FP 2. Ms Merkel: Eurozone nations would have to agree on retirement age, tax and spending rules – Guardian 3. German companies great and small are making the most of globalisation. Their… Read More »
By keith Hart. The conclusion: The euro is the most tangible symbol of the European Union, but not co-extensive with it. For the last century or more, member states had supplied their citizens with a monopoly currency that served both as the reification of the national economy and as their principle link to the world… Read More »
1. Ignoring Africa’s present or the West’s past? – Wronging Rights 2. London faces battle to stop trading shift to eurozone – Financial Times 3. Europe agrees on Greek safety net with IMF role – Reuters 4. Scouring blogs for useful information – The Economist 5. Winner of the world’s oddest book title award –… Read More »