Here for all Balkanphiliacs is an interview with me in the Belgrade publication Svedok. In the unlikely event you don’t speak Serbian and/or Google translator blows up under the pressure, here is the English text I sent them which as far as I can see has been reproduced in Serbian […]
Try this: Via Samizdata. Read the comments too: My favourite question to people who say that this stuff is complicated is to ask them at what point the rules of money change. Money is like physics – the rules that apply to an atom also apply to planet. In the […]
Here is a gushing and perceptive article from Spiegel Online on the wonders of Poland since the end of communism and the serene beauty of today’s Germany/Poland relationship. Nice ending: If old clichés have any traction at all anymore, it is in the vast Polish countryside, which lags behind urban […]
Derek Tonkin makes plenty more smart points in emails to me which he is pleased to see made available to a wider audience (edited and reorganised slightly by me for this format). See especially his wise concluding sentence. Thus: Sanctions In 1999 the UK Government completed a general study of […]
Greg Pytel (GP) returns, asking me to post a comment to my post below, which of course I have done. His further observations are interesting. I do not think it was fair to put up a running commentary (Especially as you well know that all I really wanted was to put […]
Have you heard of anyone called Greg Pytel? The name rang no bell with me either until this morning, when this annoying peevish message arrived: Dear Mr Crawford, Over a year ago I wrote an article "Regulating financial risks" (it was also reprinted by a couple of financial websites like […]
My mind turns to Myanmar/Burma (Burma hereinafter, as it’s shorter). A faraway country of which I know nothing. Burma is larger than Ukraine in geographical terms and (with some 50 million people) than Spain in population terms. So comfortably towards the top of global country rankings on both counts. But […]
Over at the FT it is revealed that the EU has plans for tackling the bank/Eurozone crisis: Under the plans, when a bank is judged to be failing and at the point of collapse, regulators will assume emergency powers to sack the management, restructure the bank’s assets and write down […]
Fame, at last. My already legendary Barnacles piece makes it to the Browser. Hurrah. This is how they list it: Scenes from the diplomatic life, worthy of Lawrence Durrell. Embassies, like ships, have their barnacles: The local bores, gatecrashers, frauds and eccentrics "who attach themselves to the Corps and intend to […]
These caught my eye. First, the Indy’s Ben Chu on the tasty fare on offer to EU leaders at their latest Summit: What would that transformative menu look like? Well the first course would be an acknowledgement by the self-righteous leaders of northern Europe that, with the sole exception of Greece, […]
