…this time? The signs do appear to being pointing to a possible employment of European forces in Lebanon, not least with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and others expressing a preference for “EU countries” or NATO - which is mostly the same thing, especially militarily - to supply troops to any peacekeeping/peace enforcement mission there.
The reason [...]

Well today is obviously immigration day, as thousands of Latinos take to the streets in the United States to demand some kind of ‘regularisation’. I have been posting on Demography Matters about the changing pattern of Latino migration in the US, and on the not entirely unrelated topic of whether it is the arrival of [...]

Yes we are really, aren’t we. Especially if we are called Arcelor, or Danone, or Endesa, or Eni, or Enel, or Banca Antonveneta or Pekao. And what these champions have in common, and it is this which sets them so much apart from their footballing equivalents, is not the ability to win anything, but [...]

First of all many thanks to the kind folk of Afoe offering me the possibility of expressing my views on some European reactions to the Mittal Steel bid for the European steel giant Arcelor. By now most of you must have heard about this sitation. Mittal Steel is the world’s largest steelmaker and was founded [...]

The idea that there was a global savings glut now having gone out of fashion, some are presently arguing that what we have is an investment dearth (my own view is that these two effectively mean the same thing, since the issue is a relational one). More evidence for this investment dearth hypothesis comes today [...]

The FT reports this morning that France may be about to ease restrictions on certain highly regulated service industries and on business start-ups as part of a package to create jobs in poor suburbs. It is possible that these initiatives might be a test bed for broader economic reform throughout France. French finance minister, [...]

So, President Basescu is unhappy.
This is not unusual. President Basescu is often unhappy. You’d think that, having won the election last December against Prime Minister Nastase, he’d be at least content. But Basescu is a scrapper, and he’s always looking for a fight, and in recent weeks he’s found one. It’s [...]

Is the new double-decker Airbus vulnerable to sudden drops in cabin pressure? That’s the kind of problem suspected in this summer’s crash of a Helios Airways plane that killed all 121 people on board.
The former chief engineer for the company that designed the microchips controlling the motors that runs the pressure valves thinks so. The [...]

Now just remember, you read about it first on Afoe. Bertrand Benoit and David Pilling have an excellent article in the FT today:
Question: Which of the world’s biggest economies is holding an early election this month dominated by debate over radical economic reforms?
Two clues: The economy, long in the doldrums, is showing signs of [...]

In a recent post I noted that, despite some improvements, good corporate governance isn’t something Germans have an easy time getting their heads round. The Financial Times Deutschland reports that there might be a good reason for this: in Germany, it doesn’t seem to matter much how well a corporation is governed.
As the FTD reports, [...]