Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, a personal account of the challenges and benefits of globalisation, has just won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
But Stephen Roach, writing in yesterday’s Morgan Stanley GEF, doesn’t agree. For him the world is ‘hardly a flat one‘.
With all due respect [...]

No more free money from Germany.

Even though its focus may be far removed from the geopolitics of Europe, Hollywood has reason to be concerned with the recent results of the German elections. The newly designated Minister of Finance Peer Steinbrück announced on Nov. 12 that he was retroactively eliminating the part of the tax [...]

I’m not alone in thinking that our last debate about multiculturalism was marred by the fact that nobody seemed to agree on what the word actually meant. The following bit from a Christian Science Monitor opinion piece caught be eye:
Supposedly [European authorities] were enlightened “multiculturalists” who respected differences; for many, the real reason was a [...]

The title is really an ironic (if somewhat affectionate) reference to this post from Brad DeLong. Reading the news this morning, it seems that Tamiflu may not be such an unambiguously good thing as it was being made out to be:
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical group, on Thursday moved to reassure investors after US regulators [...]

The Turner Report is about to appear. The Turner in question is the UK peer Lord Adair Turner, and the subject of the report the future of the UK pensions system. Although the final report is not due till the end of the month, the FT has been ‘ leaking’ some of the possible contents.
The [...]

Does this add a new dimension to the term “laying down a smokescreen“?
The British military uses white phosphorous in Iraq but only to lay smoke screens, the government said Wednesday, after allegations that U.S. troops used the incendiary weapon against civilians during the battle of Fallujah last year…
“In the British army, we only use white [...]

Well, for once some news is good news. Also, it seems to confirm what I always suspected: people and cultures do change, they do ‘move on’, even if sometimes it seems they do so impossibly slowly.
Change in Northern Ireland may be so slow it appears imperceptible, but the writing is on the wall for one [...]

Or should that be children of the world connect (to each other) using your new - Nicholas Negroponte facilitated - 125 dollar laptop. This initiative to bring cheap and abundant computing and connectivity to the world’s children seems absolutely terrific. Obviously, and at one foul swoop, the global playing field is going to become a [...]

One of the many reasons I continue to support the Turkish EU accession process is because I think it will be good for human rights and democracy in Turkey, and good for the Kurds. This latest spat between Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Danish hosts, is simply another good example of this at [...]

The UK economy is still very much hanging in the balance between going up and going down IMHO. The latest BoE growth estimates, coupled with not especially good employment numbers, and indications that inflation may be coming down (and hence interest rates may follow) has caused a noteable pressure on the pound sterling. BoE governor [...]