Rage against the political establishment has become a global phenomenon. Chinese bloggers, American Tea Party activists, British Europhobes, Egyptian Islamists, Dutch populists, Greek ultra-rightists, and Thai “red shirts” all have one thing in common: hatred of the status quo and contempt for their countries’ elites. We are living in an age of populism. The authority of conventional […]
The euro crisis has revolutionised politics across Europe. Established political parties are fighting for their lives; countries that thought of themselves as part of the European core are finding themselves on the periphery; and a huge gulf has emerged in the core of Europe. What we are witnessing, as the euro crisis enters its third […]
Maybe, just maybe, the worst of the euro crisis is over. Business and consumer confidence is rising across the Continent, sovereign bond yields are falling, and capital flight from its weakest economies is easing. Talk of an imminent breakup of the currency union has all but disappeared. Even Greece, whose debt hemorrhage plunged the euro zone into […]
Will the eurozone crisis end in 2013, or will it drag on throughout the year, and perhaps even deteriorate anew? This is likely to be not only the crucial question for the European Union’s further development, but also a key issue affecting the performance of the global economy. While the EU clearly needs internal reforms, two […]
Has the eurozone crisis ended? Many politicians in Europe, including France’s president François Hollande, seem to think so. Well, not so fast. Far from ending, the crisis is yet to reach its most difficult phase. It is easy to see why politicians claim the crisis is over. Greece has just been promised another €50bn, provided it accepts […]
Europe’s leaders are starting to talk, cautiously, about economic recovery. “Growth is expected to pick up in the second half of 2012 and gather speed in 2013,” Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, wrote in a Dec. 10 column in the Financial Times. Sounds encouraging—but Europe Inc. isn’t buying it. From steelmakers […]
More than half a decade has passed since the recession that triggered the financial panic and the Great Recession, but the condition of the world continues to be summed up by what I’ve called ‘turboparalysis’ — a prolonged condition of furious motion without movement in any particular direction, a situation in which the engine roars […]
Not again! Just 13 months ago, European heads of state and government joined forces to usher Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi into retirement. Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy marshalled all of their persuasive powers to clear they way for a reform government in Rome under the leadership of Mario Monti. Now, with Prime […]
Greek opinions about Germans are changing. When “austerity measures” were first imposed, Greek newspapers and posters infamously depicted Chancellor Merkel as a Nazi leader. But the reaction has lately become more sophisticated: now we hear that Germans want to pursue a strict interpretation of Protestant ethics (which knows no redemption on earth) and punish the […]
Euro zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund clinched agreement on a new debt target for Greece on Monday in a breakthrough towards releasing an urgently needed tranche of loans to the near-bankrupt economy, officials said. After nearly 10 hours of talks at their third meeting on the issue in as many weeks, Greece’s international lenders […]
looking beyond borders 