The German newspaper whose web site really could be better organized had a fistful of bloggable things on Tuesday. Just pretend I’m discussing them a little more punctually than two days later.
? Stoiber says collecting signatures to oppose Turkey’s admission to the EU is prudent. I suppose. It’s a good way to find conservative voters, [...]

Alright gentle readers, the last Kerry-Bush exchange of talking points has begun. And at this point I would like to mention that I, too, have a plan - and I will even talk about its specificties: I will try to occasionally update this post with my impressions - as this is what really matters ;). [...]

This is the interesting question that Morgan Stanley’s Vicenzo Guzzo asked a couple of weeks back. The key background details in question are what are known as the cross-country risk spreads. Now this may seem like a piece of technical obfuscation, so what exactly does he mean?
Well, one of the main consequences of the introduction [...]

Some time ago I wrote about Metin Kaplan, the ‘Caliph of Cologne’, and the attempts of the Keystone Kommisare to pack him off to his Turkish homeland. As I learned from Abiola Lapite this morning, they have finally succeeded. Kaplan has been flown to Istanbul and today stands before a Turkish court. (See here and [...]

Germany is reconsidering the deployment of troops in Iraq, should conditions ‘change’. According to the FT, Peter Struck, the German defence minister, departing from previous declared government policy stated in an interview that while ?At present I rule out the deployment of German troops in Iraq. In general, however, there is no one who [...]

The forty-day period of mourning traditionally observed there is coming to an end for the families of people killed in Beslan. When I was in Russia (far, far from the scene of the crime, I hasten to add), I heard numerous predictions that revenge would be taken shortly after the mourning period ended. That’d be [...]

Here’s an audio link for a change. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports on changing family patterns in Italy. The report I would suggest is pretty ‘fair and balanced’. As a side issue I think she nicely draws attention to the way ‘gender equality issues’ and unequal family caring responsibilities may impact the ability of [...]

Morgan Stanley (among many others) have been busy cutting their 2004 and 2005 growth outooks. With Oil prices continuosly hitting new highs this all has some sort of inevitability about it. Whilst it is probable that the slowdown in growth will bring oil back from its current peaks, MS estimate that “the new equilibrium for [...]

One of the problems of being a ‘dissenting voice’ is that it is hard for others to get a grip on a yardstick for evaluating what you are saying. Normally I am considered ‘gloomy’. But if what I am arguing against is a concoction of all the ‘best case’ scenarios rolled meticulously into one, it [...]

That the US jobs report last Friday showed continuing weakness in the labour market is certainly by now far from breaking news. I wouldn’t however want to let it pass by without comment. I think it is now abundantly clear that there is a pattern in all this somewhere (what that pattern is precisely, and [...]