Tony Blair inched home to a historic Labour third term in the UK last week. But looking at the changing tempo of the British economy over the last couple of months, you could be tempted to ask: was this a case of ‘just in time’ electioneering?
At the present time there seems to be a general [...]

It should be noted that Germany is not the only EU member state where controversy is growing about economic stagnation and what to do about it. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the chairman of Confindustria, Italy’s employers’ group, has made his preferences clear: ?I don’t want an Italy like Disneyworld”.

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Yes, that’s what Bloomberg’s William Pesek suggests we might see evolving. As Pesek notes, the creation of an Asian Monetary Fund would:
“have major consequences for the global elites and the so-called “Washington Consensus” on how developing nations should go about raising living standards for their swelling and often poor populations.”
In particular, if this came off, [...]

Despite a widespread feeling that interest rates in Europe may be about to rise, futures markets seem near to pricing in a rate cut for the second half of the year.
One interesting knock-on consequence of this that no-one seems to be twigging is that any such move might well cramp the style of Alan Greenspan [...]

Vladimir Putin, speaking in Moscow today, paid tribute to the courage of “all Europeans who resisted Nazism.” He also stated something which for my generation seems to be simply a fact: that the war?s most ?ruthless and decisive? events had unfolded within the Soviet Union, whose sacrifice of 27m citizens had underpinned the Allied [...]

It seems we’re not the only ones who are beginning to see governance model incongruencies behind some of the German economic ills (see two of my last posts (1, 2), and, especially the comments to the last one).
Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell (who knows Germany well, having beeen a research fellow at the The [...]

Anybody else been watching the new Doctor Who?
I was always a bit lukewarm towards the show when I was a kid - it seemed slow moving and awfully cheesy by 80’s standards - but I’m really starting to like the new version. So far, it’s lampooned the rush to war in Iraq only a [...]

Views of immigration are changing. Back in the mists of time, when I first came to the conclusion that ongoing demographic changes were going to be important, the voices in favour of a reconsideration of immigration policy were few and far between. Perhaps the first and most notable of these voices was the UN population [...]

As I write, Nick hasn’t updated last night’s post on the UK election, but it’s a good summary. Enjoy.
Some tidbits:
It looks like campaigning vigorously against the war in Iraq is worth about a 4 percent swing in Britain. Who’s Old Europe now?

Read more… [...]

Her Majesties’ subjects have spoken again. It’s just that we don’t know yet what exactly they have said. Well, a majority among them will have probably sighed a little in the booth and then more or less resignedly or enthusiastically ticked off the box next to their local Labour candidate, thus likely ensuring Blairs “historic” [...]