Mr Clash of Civilisations, Samuel Huntington, is not just terrified by the Muslim menace to America, he also feels threatened by what he sees as the enemy within: Hispanic Americans. God help America, he warns, if Spanish-speaking immigrants continue to flock there: out will go the Anglo-Protestant virtues that make it great, in will come [...]
If you believe the hype in today’s Guardian and FT, leading governments achieved "a breakthrough in the governance of the global economy" over the weekend, transforming the International Monetary Fund into a "world economic watchdog". Larry Elliott’s ebullience can be explained by his closeness to the UK Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who happens to chair the [...]
Posted 24 Apr 2006 in Blog, Global Economy, IMF/World Bank
Prospect, May 2006. The outlook for the Doha round may not be as bad as it looks; why a dreary North sea gas pipeline is at the centre of things; and Gordon Brown’s productivity problem
Posted 20 Apr 2006 in Other, Prospect, Published articles, Trade
It’s a good day for Rob Portman and a bad one for the Doha Round. After less than a year in the job and just as the WTO negotiations are reaching a crucial juncture, America’s top trade negotiator has been promoted to run the White House’s budget office. It is understandable that President Bush has [...]
Posted 18 Apr 2006 in Blog, Trade, United States
The French government’s climbdown has been hailed as a “great victory for the people”. It is nothing of the sort.
Geneva, a great place to live? You could have fooled me. When I first arrived, a colleague tried to cheer me up by saying “the best thing about Geneva is that it only takes 15 minutes to get to the airport.”
Apart from the political commentariat, I think most people are sick and tired of the latest twists in the Blair vs Brown saga. The incessant feuding mainly serves to reinforce disillusion with politicians: however much they say that what really matters to them is improving our schools and hospitals or safeguarding our pensions, they appear [...]
