Edward has already pointed to an interesting post by Henry Farrell regarding European politics in the last post, but I think the argument is important enough for a separate pointer and a little more explanation.

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Oh come on, it’s Friday afternoon, the sun is probably shining all over continental europe, and you’re all probably off away from your desks for a weekend in the country or on the beach. So why spoil the fun. I’ll save my piece on Portugal till Monday. And meantime, you deserve something better than ‘gloomy [...]

The Guardian Newsblog has a nice summary of the reasons Why the French are saying ‘non’. I’m not sure they will in the end, but in case they do, it will be a political earthquake. To help us understand the near B-plan European future, Janis A. Emmanouilidis and Bettina Thalmaier from the Center for Applied [...]

Looking forwards rather than backwards, I can’t help trying to imagine what the world will look like on Monday. (We may all be in for a surprise, but the latest poll seems to put the ‘no’ at 55%, which is quite a large margin of error if it’s wrong, *and* Le Monde today makes the [...]

“Italy will do all it has to in order to respect the Maastricht paramters…….”we’ve never deliberately aimed at exceeding the 3pct ratio. The fact that this may be happening now is merely due to the state of the economy”.
EU Policies minister Giorgio La Malfa

Conventional marxist theory used to argue that capitalism was doomed to regular and deepening crisis due to the impact of a phenomen known as ‘the falling rate of profit’. Basically the idea runs as follows: since on the marxist view labour is the only source of genuine wealth creation, and capital accumulation means that the [...]

Speculation is already rife about what might happen on Monday following Sunday’s vote in France. One small detail that I hadn’t thought about before, Monday is a bank holiday in the UK, so most traders won’t be working, Bloomberg’s Mark Gilbert feels that could even add to euro volatility.
One thing that is clear is [...]

I missed this at the time, but apparently officials responsible for monetary policy in the Czech Republic are begining to have second thoughts about joining the euro.
“Czech central bank policy maker Robert Holman said the government should abandon plans to adopt the euro by 2010 because joining the single currency may stifle growth, the first [...]

It was inevitable I suppose. Comparisons between Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher are starting to roll. Such comparisons seem ludicrous to me, but I’d love to know what our German readers, who are undoubtedly a lot better informed than I am, think of it:
“Think of Angela Merkel as German chancellor and Nicolas Sarkozy [...]

The euro continues its fall against the dollar today after yet another opinion poll showed French opposition to the European Union constitution continues to strengthen before Sunday’s referendum. Against the dollar, the euro fell to $1.2545 at 8:33 a.m. in London, from $1.2601 late yesterday in New York. The euro wasn’t [...]