A fascinating sub-plot (or maybe it IS the plot) in the Greece/Eurozone debacle is the role played by über-bankers Goldman Sachs, as bailed out by the US government. Whose people and former people pop up everywhere. Baseline Scenario is hot on the case. It looks as if Mario Draghi’s hopes of […]
What’s the difference between the way top leaders deal with other and the beery ruminations of blokes in pubs, banging on about the about the mischief and duplicity of foreigners? Less than you might think!
Families are tricky. They stretch to outer limits our private sense of responsibility. You are Diligent. You work hard and honestly, you treat everyone fairly, you are generous towards friends and family, but you dislike being exploited or ‘expected’ to help others who don’t do all they can to help themselves. […]
I have had an enquiry from someone who follows closely UK immigration issues asking about the policy issues surrounding the opening of the UK labour market to Poles in 2004 when Poland joined the EU: Did the UK government encourage mass Polish immigration into the UK? No. Well, not really. […]
The Greek masses are revolting: Public sector workers in Greece have launched a nationwide strike in protest at government measures to tackle the country’s huge budget deficit. Flights have been grounded, many schools closed, and hospitals are operating an emergency-only service. The government wants to cut pay, reduce pensions and […]
As you try to grasp what is happening in Ukraine, you may well be asking yourself: what does Ukraine mean anyway? And, needless to say, views differ. There is a root word kraj in Slav languages which has all sorts of nuanced meanings in different Slavonic languages, linked to the […]
Perusing the website of the British High Commission in Malta (as of course one does) I found this link to a letter written by PM Gordon Brown to Dr Alan Williams MP of the Liaison Committee on the way forward after the Copenhagen Climate Change summit. It also is on the […]
As regular readers will recall, I have written at some length about the bewildering complexity – and stunning simplicity – of the EU Budget process. When all the feuding and whining subsides, it comes down to the banal fact that a few countries Give, and most countries Get. Those who Get […]
Following Swedish developments closely as one must, I found this story linking my team Tottenham to an individual example of Swedish bandy extremism. And is some furtive ethnic cleansing busily under way in Malmo? It is always difficult to work out when something is just an idiotic if unpleasant episode of local and no wider […]
Robert Lucas. Some readers will have heard of him. He won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Economics, in part for pioneering work in the field of ‘rational expectations’: One important implication of Lucas’s work, which was confirmed by Thomas Sargent is that a government that is credible—that is, a government that […]
