Notwithstanding the Lisbon holdup, the European Union today confirmed the capacity of selected aspects of the project to move forward unhindered as the Commission and Council agreed on a January 2009 entry date of Slovakia to the eurozone.  The crown will convert to euros at 30.126 to 1 — which is the current rate, although [...]

The release of a recent poll showing that most Hungarians preferred life under communism caused a mild shock in the foreign community, but provoked little more than a characteristic shrug from Hungarians. After all, under János Kádár Hungary was one of the least repressive regimes in the Soviet bloc, the “Goulash Communism” of the 1980s [...]

The American continent is about to get its first high-speed train. Where?
Argentina.
Argentina on Tuesday signed a contract with a consortium led by Alstom of France to build the first high-speed train in the Americas, linking Buenos Aires with the cities of Rosario and Córdoba in three hours, nearly a fifth of the current journey time.
Patrick [...]

John Quiggin writes about the banking crisis:
Suppose Bank A owes a trillion dollars to bank B which in turn owes a trillion to C which in turn owes a trillion to D which owes a trillion to A. Now suppose that A gets into liquidity trouble and can’t pay. Then B is similarly in trouble [...]

Parag Khanna has a monster screed - eight pages - in the NYT on the subject of “turning away from hegemony”. The hegemony concerned is that of the United States; the argument is that US power will decline relative to that of China, India, big second-tier powers, and Europe. This is a topic that cannot [...]

Handelsblatt reports that Germany’s preliminary budget numbers look very good indeed; they’re looking at a budget surplus of a couple of billion euros, the first since reunification (not counting the UMTS mobile phone licence auction in 2000). Real GDP growth of 2.5 per cent is forecast; most of the extra cash came from the rise [...]

Ha. You thought this was an exercise in strategic trolling. Think again; the French Navy’s helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc pulled into New York on the 28th for a port call, and to deliver a consignment of books for schools in New Orleans. (French ones, naturally.) Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s primary campaign took a misstep when he [...]

Has the British tabloid press reached peak rant? Like “peak oil”. The Sun this week claimed that “the Prime Minister turned the Lisbon banquet into a sordid Last Supper for Britain as an independent sovereign country”. Whoo! Some supper. More than ever before, the entire tone of the debate about Europe in the UK seems [...]

Eurozone Watch has two articles about Germany and Italy that offer support for an optimistic view of the European economy. For a start, Sebastian Dullein argues that a comparison of Germany today and the US after the early 90s recession shows that Germany might be on the brink of a productivity surge. Dullein argues that [...]

It’s been said in the past - indeed, it used to be conventional wisdom - that unlikely right-wing governments were more likely to make peace, because they enjoyed credibility and a tough reputation. More obviously, conservatives long enjoyed a reputation for “fiscal credibility”, which supposedly helped them to control inflation by giving the impression that [...]