So we’re in the new era of the Swedish presidency of the European council.  Insh’allah this will be the last country presidency under the rotating system once all that Lisbon messiness is sorted out.  The Swedes have the advantage of taking over from the politically hobbled Czech presidency and they begin with a slick website [...]

It’s probably getting lost with so much other news but it’s been an interesting few weeks for Belarus.  For a country that always seemed just a WMD allegation from being another axis of evil country under George Bush, perhaps the experience of more constructive interrnational relations is a bit disorienting.  Yet here we have the IMF [...]

Usually when an IMF mission issues a departing statement, it’s along the lines of thanking everyone for their hospitality and generally sounding positive about the scope for progress even when circumstances aren’t that great  Not so the just issued statement after the latest visit to Moscow.  It quickly gets to blunt criticism of the government [...]

Here are some more of those dizzying negative numbers that Edward mentioned: Japan GDP growth preliminary estimate for 1Q 2009.  -15.2% annualized with a 26% drop in exports quarter-on-quarter.  But it’s worth looking at the underlying numbers in some detail.   Concentrate on the 2nd column for 2009 1Q which shows each expenditure component’s contribution to [...]

To lose one table may be regarded as misfortune.  To lose two looks like?  The Financial Times has the scoop.  The Czech Rep., the Baltics, and Ukraine were the victims.  And there may be more.  Not clear what the French comedians will make of this one.

The latest awkward note in the Czech EU presidency is a statement immediately before Mayday making clear the displeasure of the Czech Republic and the other eastern European entrants from the 2004 accession cohort that Germany and Austria will maintain their transition restrictions on free movement of labor from these countries until 2011.  As the statement [...]

In a long line of EU summits with global counterparts, there is an EU-Japan summit on 4 May.  As is customary, the European Council is represented by the presidency country which of course is the Czech Republic.  And as is customary, the PM would lead the Presidency delegation.  Except of course that the Czech Republic [...]

Paul Krugman turns his attention to Ireland in Monday’s NYT column.  Of course we’re flattered by the attention.  But there’s an important point.  The casual reader of the column could come away with the following narrative about the Irish crisis: lightly regulated banks made bad property loans.  The government was mostly an innocent bystander, except [...]

For years there have been concerns about the voracious appetite for personal data on citizens created by governments and the private sector, and facilitated by technology.  If one thing might be changing, it’s a series of incidents where politicians get to experience for themselves what happens when personal data works its way into the public [...]

You might think that enough has already been written about dealing with deflation and unconventional monetary policy tools.  But apparently not enough to settle the question of whether the European Central Bank should in fact further cut interest rates and shift to quantitative easing i.e. outright purchases of debt.  This Bloomberg story puts names on [...]