I’m not very happy with the ‘US Trade Figures‘ post I put up last Friday. I think it’s a glorious mess. The key to the problem is that I tried to deal with two - interrelated but disinct - topics at once: the euro and China trade. So today lets ignore the [...]

There is no doubt that the EU Budget debate will warm up considerably this week. Unfortunately, as Le Monde suggests it is a case of “Le budget europ?en entre rabais britannique et subventions agricoles” (The EU budget: between the British rebate and the agricultural subsidies). Now it does occur to me that there is [...]

The EU’s trade dispute with China risks spreading from textiles to footwear after the EU released data Wednesday which purported to show that Chinese shoe imports had surged since the end of quotas at the start of the year.
“Responding to concerns of European shoemakers, the European Commission said imports of leather shoes and textile slippers [...]

Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, may be coming out of the dog house - if only conceptually.
After even the left leaning German daily taz recently began publishing political obituaries for the man who more than anyone represents the political maturing (or not) of the generation of ‘68 (following the affair about problematic political [...]

Last Monday I had some ironing to do. Then I remembered that television still has one advantage over surfer-blogging: you can do the ironing at the same time. Of course the upcoming referendum was on several channels. I could not stand more than 20 minutes of it though (neither the ironing nor [...]

The Latvian parliament approved the Constitution Treaty earlier this morning, by a huge majority:
“Latvia’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to support the EU constitution on Thursday, a decision lawmakers and analysts said sent a message from the new Europe to the old that the approval process must continue.
After several European leaders urged other member states to press [...]

Over on Crooked Timber, Maria Farrell is being haunted by the sheer gaul of them, and consequently expressing her irritation with France and the French, not just
[f]or falling asleep at the wheel in 2002 and letting back in to the Elysee a fraud who has no vision for France, no values apart from expediency, [...]

The Washington Times (of all places) carries a UPI text about a Deutsch Bank research note on the economic consequences of the French ‘no’:
“France’s rejection of the European Union constitutional treaty by a majority of 54.9 percent is a severe blow to European integration and threatens to depress European economy back into eurosclerosis as in [...]

If the Netherlands vote ‘no’ tomorrow (and the opinion polls don’t seem to leave much room for doubt), then according to the FT Jack Straw will tell the House of Commons next Monday that the UK government is immediately suspending parliamentary passage of the European treaty bill. This means the ratification process will [...]

What, you may ask, has Italian government debt got to do with the French ‘no’ vote: everything would be my answer. (If you want to know more about this, thumb down my euro posts). The lack of a convincing advance towards political union makes Italian government debt riskier, so they have to pay more interest. [...]