Looks a lot like Europe in the 2006 World Cup, actually.
Qualifiers this time: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland. That’s almost the same list as last time. Oh, we won’t have Poland, or Croatia, and the Danes, Slovaks and Slovenes got [...]
This is not an idle question. Despite all those bullish headlines in the press, most informed observers - including Bundesbank head Axel Weber - are only to well aware of just how fragile the German recovery actually is. Indeed only last week the OECD warned that Germany’s economy, may only [...]
A couple of years back, I wrote an article about Kosovo’s coal industry. Short version: Kosovo has lots of coal, and most of it is middle-quality lignite. But the mines suffer from a horrible lack of investment; many of them are still using thirty to forty year old equipment. [...]
Back in the heady days of 2006 some 30,000 cranes, roughly a quarter of total global capacity, were busy whirring away in Dubai. Today most of these devices have either left to find service in other parts of the globe, or lie silent, unused and unloved. In what is only [...]
An op-ed guest writer for the New York Times opines:
SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front [...]
“Cutting rates by 50 basis points here and there is not going really diminish the appeal of the ruble,” said Manik Narain, an emerging markets strategist at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in London. “In terms of nominal interest rates Russia (at 9% as of 24 November) is still offering the [...]
There is something very traditional about the Irish economic crisis. If you consider the staples of 1980s economics, they were the ideas that nominal wages adjust very slowly downwards and that labour markets segment strongly into insiders who are able to hold onto jobs in recessions and outsiders who bear [...]
It’s now clear that the Thierry Henry assist on the William Gallas goal last night is going to generate more commentary and interest than tonight’s filling of the new EU jobs (Council President, High Rep. for Foreign Policy, and Secretary General of the Council), but nonetheless, we could be [...]
It’s taken me a few days to get around to it, but here’s my take on David Cameron’s equality speech (The Big Society: Hugo Young Lecture, 10 Nov 2009).
Cameron name checks Wilkinson and Pickett and says that they “have shown that among the richest countries, it’s the more unequal [...]
Sorry, and I apologise in advance: in this post I’m going to be a nit-picker. The question in hand is the Eurozone third quarter growth one, and the story is all about differences (between countries) and these differences in the key cases (France and Germany) are in many ways [...]
In a fit of timeliness, I have read the first volume of the report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (IIFFMCG), colloquially known as the Tagliavini report. The report drew attention when it was published at the end of September for its headline [...]
I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m quite shocked by the fact David Cameron is proposing a piece of legislation that will, on its own terms, have no effect whatsoever. I mean, of course, his “UK Sovereignty Bill”; this horror would “reiterate” that the British parliament remains ultimate master of its [...]
It’s the 9th of November…so, in total observance of my usual standard operating procedures, let’s think about the European presidency, or as my wonderful, wonderful Soizick puts it, who’s going to get the job of being Tony Blair.
It looks a lot like the lucky girl won’t be Blair; the [...]
From the assembled press, someone shouts a question, “Effective immediately?”
“I have been informed that such an announcement was prepared today, you should already have a copy. According to my understanding, that is immediately. Without delay.”
Twenty years ago this evening, Günter Schabowski gave an unrehearsed answer at a [...]
Seeing that the Italian Mafia has been generating headlines again, this may be a good opportunity to let our readers know about a new book by Columbia University Press: History of the Mafia by Salvatore Lupo. The book was first published in Italian in 1996 and has [...]
Nouriel Robini is not a man who is known for mincing his words. “We have the mother of all carry trades,” he tells us, “Everybody’s playing the same game and this game is becoming dangerous.” There is a “wall of liquidity” sweeping the planet, pushing asset prices ever higher in [...]
A sad story from the edge of Europe last week: fifteen Kosovar Albanians died trying to cross the border between Serbia and Hungary. The border there is a a river, the Tisza, which is a large and swift-flowing tributary of the Danube. The Albanians were illegal immigrants trying to move [...]
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, after much hemming and hawing, signed the Treaty of Lisbon this afternoon. It is expected to enter into force on 1 December 2009. This success is undoubtedly the highlight of the Swedish Presidency, which made concluding ratification a top priority.
Prominent changes include [...]
Well, if John Lennon had still been around today he would undoubtedly have entitled his song Norwegian oil, but whatever way you want to put it Norway is back in the news, and this time not because of adolescents who find themselves with no alternative to sleeping overnight in the [...]
Well, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today’s Financial Times is just too good to resist.
French manufacturing output rose at its fastest rate for nine years, according [...]
A Vietnamese immigrant, brought from that war-torn country as a tiny child.
A baron, the grandson of a princess, who lives in his family’s five-hundred year old castle.
A widow who once worked for the patent office.
A paraplegic.
A huffy gay man.
A former captain of paratroopers.
A mother of seven.
…Germany’s new conservative [...]
A spectre is haunting Europe, but this time it is not the spectre of revolt by the popular masses, or even one of yet another wave of bank bailouts. No, the spectre which is currently stalking the corridors of Europe’s most prestigous institutions is one of a Spanish economy which [...]
Finland, we have recently been told, is the world’s most prosperous nation, and it is deemed to be prosperous not only in monetary and financial terms, but also in terms of the implicit wealth of its democracy and governance. This striking assessment is to be found in the latest edition [...]
Can’t you just see it?
According to Eurostat in both the euro area (EA16) and the EU27, the seasonally adjusted household saving rate continued to increase and the household investment rate to decrease n the second quarter of 2009. In both regions the fall in business investment rates and profit shares [...]
So some British think tank called the “Legatum Institute” has published an index of the best countries in which to live. Apparently they’ve been doing this every year for a while now, but it just now caught my eye.
Let me start by saying that I find this index pretty [...]
Despite the fact the Ukraine administration is resplendent with confidence that the International Monetary Fund is going to release the next $3.4 billion payment under the country’s $16.4 billion lending program with the Fund, things are not so clear. In fact the International Monetary Fund only this week warned Ukraine [...]
Well, I never thought I would have to wait very long to get some confirmation of my last post on things that could go bump in the night in France, but even I wasn’t expecting confirmation of what I was trying to get at so quickly. Now, according to [...]
Whoever would have thought that some people once called economics the most dismal of sciences? Certainly, as the current crisis goes on and on, those of us who consider ourselves to be economists scarcely are able to find the time to squeeze in a dull moment, even here and there. [...]
File under “Who knew?” The Guardian reports that Rory Stewart has been selected as a candidate for the UK’s parliament from a safe (10,000 majority) Conservative seat. In one of those moves that makes me think that parliamentary systems are odd sometimes, one of his first actions will be [...]
Four years ago, I was boggled to realize that astronomers had been finding planets around other stars at an average rate of one per month since the first exoplanet around a main-sequence star was discovered in 1995.
On Monday, scientists from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that [...]
Royal Mail management is hiring 30,000 temporary workers, not to replace Royal Mail’s own workers who are going on strike - which would be illegal - but ‘to clear any backlog that might develop’.
Peter Mandelson is beyond sour: he’s curdled. He says “gale-force change” is needed for Royal Mail [...]
Parties of the left are out of power in three of the Big Four now, and everyone expects Labour to lose the next General Election in Britain. Going down the list to the Next-Biggest Four, we have Spain (Zapatero’s center-left government hanging in there), Poland (center-right), Romania (grand coalition of [...]
Together with my answers. These are the sorts of things you get asked when it becomes known that you’re a bit left-leaning and have been putting up posts about The Spirit Level. They’re also the sorts of things you might hear coming from your parents or other family members. [...]
We had a presentation today from some impressively smart and determined people at Orangebox, a Welsh company that makes office furniture. Their ambition is to do ‘cradle-to-cradle’ (C2C) manufacturing; that is, manufacturing where a lot of the material you use to make your new products comes from your own [...]
David Runciman reviews The Spirit Level at the LRB:
There is enough evidence here that equality is a good thing to be able to take it on faith, and to move away from evidence-based politics towards a politics that is, for want of a better word, more ideological.
There are [...]
There’s a “normal” path for a fiscal crisis. Some vulnerabilities build up. An external shock tips things over the edge. The country struggles along for a while but eventually refinancing or rollover risk forces the issue: new debt can’t be sold and the Impossible Missions Force is the only available [...]
Holy smokes. What will the man do for an encore?
From the BBC:
US President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel Committee said he was awarded it for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”.
Reuters quotes from the citation (The Nobel [...]
Not since the glory days of Gustav Adolf the Great has Sweden wielded such power in Central Europe. It’s been a busy day. First, PM and European Council President Fredrik Reinfeldt held a meeting with under pressure Czech PM Jan Fischer to discuss the status of Czech ratification efforts on [...]
This seems to have gotten very little attention, but Greece changed governments last week. The ruling center-right New Democracy (ND) party called elections a couple of months ago, and the result was that — predictably — they got stomped hard.
ND had a wafer-thin majority of 152 seats out of [...]
Today is a key inflection point in determining whether the EU will be looking forwards or backwards over the next few months. Irish voters will have had their second run at approving the Lisbon Treaty by referendum. The count begins at 0800 GMT and it’ll be worth checking the [...]
Spain’s current account deficit fell to 2.064 billion euros in July from 7.752 billion euros a year earlier as imports tumbled, according to the latest Bank of Spain data. This is a very sharp and dramatic fall, and my guess is that at this rate the gap will close in [...]
Re this Yglesias post about Sweden, and comment thread, female participation in the labor force is influenced by government policies as well as culture, such as subsidized daycare and paid parental leave, with a month reserved for daddies, which makes it easier for both parents to never leave the [...]
Well here’s the first BIG news of the day - Spain’s Manufacturing contraction accelerates in September. Of course, how could it be otherwise. But I do wish all those people who are still in denial on what is now an all too evident reality would finally come out of the [...]
German voters gave Chancellor Angela Merkel the green light for a second term on Sunday, along with a clear mandate to form a new government with the liberal Free Democrat Party (FDP). But just what exactly is the new government likely to do? Merlek has been quick to pour cold [...]
The analysis that follows should really be taken along with Edward’s recent thoughts on the Global Imbalances situation as well as his latest economic survey of the current state of play in the German economy.
Essentially, I am going to have a look at what is, arguably, one [...]
Heard repeatedly yesterday: “Steinmeier has been an excellent Foreign Minister, but I just can’t stand the Social Democrats any more.”
I wonder how many portfolios our Yellow friends will get. In theory, a Conservative/Liberal, CDU/FDP government is perfectly normal. But in practice, the usual Black/Yellow government has been something like “300 [...]
With the timing of the latest G20 meeting set to coincide with the run-in to the German elections acrimonious debate has not been absent, but even as the passions generated by the arrival of voting day subside, it is clear that just beneath the surface their lie some simmering [...]
Something else on German elections. You might not expect it, but there will be more first-time voters this year than ever before - about 3.5 million of them.
[...]So, the planned ballistic missile defence installations in Europe have been cancelled, and the US is looking instead at deploying ships with an upgraded version of the Aegis air-defence missile system in European waters, backed up with mobile and airborne radars. (There’s a lot of detail here.) This [...]
Here’s a weird story. OK, so we’re into the last lap of the Irish re-referendum; Jean Quatremer has the latest polls, which put the yes camp well ahead. But what about that weird poll last week that put the noes ahead?
British blogging institution Anthony Wells’ UK Polling [...]
A quick rundown of German election news. Handelsblatt says the result is awaited with great tension, which perhaps tells you more about Handelsblatt than anything else. They also have a discussion of the coalition position.
In fact, in a sense, the coalition talks have already begun; the Ministry [...]
Well, I’m going to go way, way, way out on a limb and say that the grand coalition will continue after today’s German election. What do the rest of you think?
[...]In my last post on this topic, I said the following:
My second observation is merely anecdotal, but the Acuña & Asociados report places a lot of emphasis on the coastal situation, which has, to some extent, already been “factored in” by most participants, however quite by chance I have [...]
From the New York Times:
Ertugrul Osman, who might have ruled the Ottoman empire from a palace in Istanbul, but instead spent most of his life in a walk-up apartment in Manhattan, died Wednesday night in Istanbul. He was 97. …
Mr. Osman was a descendant of Osman I, the Anatolian [...]
The last lot of German polls are out, showing a modest recovery for the SPD but nothing strategically epic. However, some polls have shown enough recovery to put some pressure on the FDP’s calculations. We’re in the realm of statistical noise here.
It’s quite surprising just how dull the [...]
Yes, up to three million. That was the conclusion reached in the 2009 annual report on the Spanish property market prepared by Madrid-based real estate analysts R. R. de Acuña & Asociados. The report is described by Sunday Times Spanish Property Doctor columnist Mark Stucklin as one of the [...]
Only a guess of course but it’s a metaphor of the situation that will face the Czech Republic on the night of 2 October when the Irish voters approve the Treaty of Lisbon at the second time of asking in a referendum. And they will approve it. The opinion polls [...]
Hungary’s economic correction still fails to convince. Indeed I am not the only one who remains unconvined by the viability of what is currently taking place it seems, since according to the opposition supporting local daily newspaper Magyar Hírlap, none other than the Hungarian Prime Minister himself may be having [...]
As has been widely reported, the White House has decided to abandon the planned radar/interceptor installations in Poland and the Czech Republic and replace them with mobile land and sea based missile interception systems. The reaction to the decision shows that different people were seeing vastly different things in what [...]
Vengence, they say in Spain, is a dish which is best served cold. Looking at the pace with which things are now moving here, maybe the waiters are getting themselves ready.
According to Bloomberg the Spanish Dept Agency now has a new head - Gonzalo Garcia - who previously lead [...]
Calculated Risk points out an interesting number in a Bloomberg report: A public authority will soon be managing a portfolio of bad non-residential real-estate loans whose nominal value is about half of Ireland’s GDP. Probably all sorts of shoes waiting to drop in commercial real estate markets across [...]
The looming problem of what will happen as and when some of the other Eurozone economies eventually start to recover while the Spanish one languishes in decline is finally starting to make the columns of the global financial press. Yesterday Thomas Catan had an article in the Wall Street Journal [...]
What follows is essentially the fruit of the last week’s labour. It is a detailed look at the ECB’s balance and the related question of whether we can call, what it is that ECB the is doing quantiative easing or not?
Needless to say, I think that this question is [...]
Spanish house sales were down an annual 20.3% in July, with a total of 37,039 homes changing hands. 50.5% of these were new according to data released today from the National Statistics Institute (INE). The interannual rate was thus down over June, when it stood at 25.5%. In fact, month [...]
Russia’s central bank this week lowered its main interest rates for the seventh time since April 24 - lowering the refinancing rate a further quarter percentage point. The decision came hard on the heels of the announcement that the Russian economy suffered a record economic contraction in the second three [...]
Osama bin Laden is still at large.
The best work of art about September 11, 2001 is still John M. Ford’s poem, “110 Stories.”
Edward’s commentary, from 2004.
[...]*So you thought we meant economic crisis? Of course not. Football! The kind of crisis that comes with losing to the Faroe Islands in a World Cup qualifier. Then again there are other matches this evening that people might want to discuss. We’ll try to bring word of the Saudi [...]
Latvia’s economy shrank a revised 18.7 percent in the second quarter of 2009 over a year earlier in what was the second-steepest drop in the entire European Union (worsted only by Lithuania) according to detailed data released by the statistics office yesterday. [...]
‘As far as I am concerned, this is … the most complex crisis we’ve ever seen due to the number of factors in play’
Spanish Economy Minister Pedro Solbes speaking to the Spanish radio station Punto Radio September 2008
“‘The global imbalances have to add up to zero and so, if [...]
Well, we are getting a lot of waffle out there (noise), and talk about greens shoots and muted recovery, but all too often what is lacking is anything very substantial in the way of hard data to back up the various arguments. In particular, when it comes to Spain I [...]
Well, Jonathan Tepper’s initial Variant Perception Report on the Spanish Banking system (here, with Catalan translation here) has certainly stirred things up. After a string of articles in the Madrid press (including this one here, which talks of the “Seven Days Which Shook The Spanish Financial System”), [...]
Global factory business activity expanded in August for the first time since May 2008 in a broad-based revival, witnessed especially in the United States and Japan, according to the global PMI index, produced by JP Morgan. The index rose to a 26-month high of 53.1 in August.
Turkey and Armenia are tantalizingly close to opening diplomatic relations, and may re-open their border — which has been closed since 1993 — by the end of 2009.
The BBC says,
They are to hold six weeks of domestic consultations on the move [to have diplomatic relations] after which their parliaments [...]
Sovenian GDP fell by 9.3 percent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the second quarter of 2008. This was the third quarter in a row which has seen a fall in Slovene GDP, and the was the deepest annual drop so far in the current economic [...]
Broadcasting regulators: they’re creationists. They want to control everything. Well, OK then. Let’s try and follow this through. I give you an allotment gardener. As it happens, this gardener only likes to grow potatoes in his patch. In the neighbouring allotment, we find another gardener, and she likes to [...]
With Japan having general elections today and Germany facing them next month, I though now might be as good a time as any to have a look at a topic which could turn out to be very important in the months to come: the real underlying rate of unemployment in [...]
It’s a tall order…but surely writing about German elections with statistics must beat it?
But there’s a German election coming up, although, as Der Spiegel points out, you might not have noticed, as both major parties are secretly quite pleased with the current situation. Polling data is here. Angela [...]
So after a summer of suspense and rumour, Latvia got its 2nd disbursement of $279 million on the IMF loan. As is customary in these situations, one must read between the lines but it appears that the IMF and the European Commission have agreed to let things play out as [...]
Going through the Variant Perception report on the parlous state of Spain’s banking system, I couldn’t help stopping and thinking hard about this point from the Spanish newspaper Expansion.
The valuation of the guarantees of the mortgage book of the cajas and banks and of its real estate [...]
In this post I would just like to ask a very simple question. What is the real rate of growth of unemployment in Spain? Are things improving, getting worse, or simply staying the same? Now, before you jump to too many conclusions on this it is important to remember that [...]
Well, Variant Perception’s Jonathan Tepper certainly doesn’t think so, and since his latest report on the Spanish banking sector cites me extensively and explicitly, I guess I don’t either.
Spain had the mother of all housing bubbles. To put things in perspective, Spain now has as many unsold homes as [...]
Well, euphoria in Germany is certainly on the rebound, with a sudden surge in the ZEW investor confidence index and newspaper articles all over the place predicting the imminent renaissance of European economic growth, despite the fact that in 3 of the 5 big European economies - the UK, Italy [...]
Victor Mallet had a piece on public works minister José Blanco’s Thursday speech in the FT yesterday. My feeling is that the Spain of Zapatero looks more and more like the Hungary of Gyurcsany with every passing day, and I say this more from the point of view of [...]
According to an article which appeared in the Spanish newspaper Expansion this morning, one in five Spanish mortgages is now considered as being high risk and liable to become “non performing”.
The mortgages at greatest risk are naturally those contracted after 2005 where the loan to valuation was over 80% [...]
Ex Caucasus semper aliquid novo:
Rovshan Nasirli, a young Eurovision fan living in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, says he was summoned this week to the country’s National Security Ministry — to explain why he had voted for Armenia during this year’s competition in May.
“They wanted an explanation for why I [...]
The non-biblical concept of original sin, as Claus Vistesen notes in this post, when propounded in its standard Obstfeld & Krugman textbook version refers to the situation where many developing economies who are not able to borrow in their own currencies feel forced to denominate large parts of their [...]
The German economy, Europe’s largest, unexpectedly returned to growth in the second quarter, technically bringing an end to its worst recession since World War II. The euro climbed 0.2 percent to $1.4248 on release of the report.
But don’t get carried away just yet, since while gross domestic product rose a [...]
This morning the BBC had news that the MV Arctic Sea may have been hijacked in the Baltic and sailed through the Straits of Dover before vanishing. There is probably less to this than meets the eye - for all the speculation of pirates and illegal arms transfers, this [...]
Just a small post to direct you to an interesting and entertaining lecture by Alain de Botton on career crises and the psychology and sociology behind ’success’ (hat tip BNET):
One quote: “It is not the material goods we want, it is the rewards. (…) The [...]
Via Marko Hoare’s blog, here’s an unhappy story about Greek journalist Takis Michas. A few years back, Michas wrote a book about the links between Greece and the Bosnian war — Greek support for Milosevic and Karadzic, Greek volunteers going to fight for the Serb side in Bosnia, [...]
According to a once-upon-a-time post on the Economist’s Certain Ideas of Europe Blog Edward Hugh “was very cross” about some of the journalism they were serving up over at that prestigious journal. Well, not to worry, since this time he is hopping mad. And the issue which lies behind [...]
… before Mr Bond gets it in the knackers is that Bond villains are fastidious. They can’t stand the sight of blood.
Jack Straw, UK Justice Secretary, signing Ronnie Biggs’s leaving card yesterday:
His condition is not expected to improve. It is for that reason that I am granting Mr Biggs compassionate [...]
A year and a half ago, I wrote a post about the sale of Serbia’s oil and gas company, NIS, to Russia’s Gazprom. Here were the high points:
– Gazprom was able to buy NIS for much, much less than its real value — 400 million euros for a company [...]
Germany is having elections for the Bundestag at the end of September!
But you’d never know it. Walking through the village, driving to the county seat, I haven’t seen a single sign or poster. It barely gets mentioned on TV news. Newspapers, some discussion, but it’s mostly below-the-fold stuff. Nobody’s that [...]
Sitting in the other day on a citizenship ceremony - a few dozen people from all round the world (Sierra Leone, Poland, Turkey, Bangladesh, Somalia, Cambodia, Nepal and the rest) becoming British citizens, with a fairly low level of ceremony. Holst on the dodgy CD player and the deputy mayor [...]
Paul Krugman has a soft spot for Gordon Brown. Basically he thinks that Gordon Brown should get more credit for managing the economic crisis. But the moment that becomes being mystified at Gordon’s lack of electoral bounce, it gets rather puzzling. A couple of months ago –
It’s not far-fetched [...]
Spun off an earlier post.
Remember the first generation of post-Communist leaders? The guys who took power immediately after Communism collapsed? Well, here’s a question: almost 20 years later, how many of them are still running things?
Not so many. A fair number of them are dead: Croatia’s Tudjman, Bosnia’s Izetbegovic, [...]
First, Scraps of Moscow has had some good coverage of the Moldova elections. If you’re interested, check out some of the recent posts over there.
Second, my recent post on Vladimir Voronin neglected to mention one of the most obnoxious aspects of his regime: his useless and [...]
I just noticed that a number of pro-Russian astroturf websites — including some that I used to read regularly — have gone dark.
First off, there are the Transnistria pages. The Tiraspol Times used to provide a weekly dose of happy, upbeat news about the good times in [...]
Doug Merrill, Edward Hugh, Guy La Roche, Douglas Muir, P O Neill, Alex Harrowell, Charlie Whitaker
[...]
