Those who want to know which way the wind is blowing need only listen to Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. In her recent speeches, our empress of platitudes and PR has taken to arguing that the inequality of incomes is deepening, and that it is threatening growth. But where is she […]
The spread of attacks carried out by self-proclaimed jihadists is accompanied by a lot of confusion. Most Europeans are unaware of the complexity of the Muslim world. We may be forgiven of this ignorance when compared with the Americans, who set off to conquer Iraq in 2003 and hardly distinguished between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims. […]
Career politicians have become incredibly boring, which explains the appearance of rebel parties in every Western democracy. These new splinter groups include the Ciudadanos in Spain, the Front National in France, several years ago the Tea Party in the United States, and the Independentists in Catalonia and Scotland. It seems voters have understandably grown tired of […]
While Europe is bogged down in bickering over interior policy and in a rather feeble war against radical Islamism, Northeast Asia has become the setting for events which are going unnoticed in the West. However, these developments may be decisive for the future. We only need to look at the major concession made by Japanese […]
Taking their lead from French President François Hollande in the aftermath of the 13 November terror attacks on Paris, western leaders – including Barack Obama, David Cameron and Vladimir Putin – declared war on ISIL, basically a tribe of barbarians somewhere between Syria and Iraq. I find the word “war” to be an overstatement, a […]
Have Chinese communists turned over a new leaf of tolerance? The West hailed the Jinping government’s recent decision to authorise families to have two children instead of one as democratic progress. But this approval seems odd. Should we not decry any government that decides how many children families can have? Would we accept this sort […]
While in the grip of emotion, is it right to comment at all on the terrorist attacks carried out on Friday night against several hundred people in Paris? Any analysis might appear coldhearted at a time when mourning and compassion are the only appropriate responses. But avoiding commentary means not understanding the nature of terrorism. […]
The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been attributed fairly. The unrepresentative micro-juries of former Norwegian politicians and bishops have often demonstrated how easily they are influenced by current affairs, trends and personal prejudices. This observation makes the most recent nomination of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet all the more reassuring. The Quartet spared their […]
The regional elections in Catalonia have been won by the independentist, Europhobe, anti-capitalist parties, although it seems the independentists would be just under the majority in terms of the number of votes if it came to a referendum. These local ballots have however revealed a real draw to independence, as well as an unsurprising alliance […]
Welcome to Tokyo. The luxury boutiques are bustling, the traffic is constant and the crowds are still just as dense. But in accordance with unwritten social codes internalised for centuries, no one jostles. Some may occasionally, accidentally brush past others, but this is rectified with endless apologies. There is no litter, and everything is spotless, […]
At the beginning of the new millennium, it became fashionable to proclaim the West’s economic decline and the rise of a new global leadership. In 2001, Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O’Neill captured the trend by coining the soon-to-be-famous acronym BRIC, referring to the leading economically emerging nations—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—that would constitute that new […]
Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations only after having observed the economic reality in his time. He famously compared nail production in France and in Great Britain before concluding that the division of labour led to higher productivity. He favored free trade but also a modicum of government intervention to support infrastructures after he […]
The 14% drop in the Shanghai stock exchange in July may be a mere technical, contained event, with little or no consequence for the global economy. Or, instead, it could be a warning shot for a significant change of course in Chinese history: the end of the era of “miraculous” growth at 10% per year, and […]
The violence carried out by Parisian taxi drivers against self-employed Uber drivers was followed by strikes that paralyzed the French capital last week. This confirms, albeit two centuries apart, Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that “The French start a revolution when confronted with change, not a reform.” Similar incidents occurred in the United States and in […]
Are the Napoleonic Wars worth studying to better understand the current European economic situation? I doubted that until I read Andrew Roberts, an English historian, who just published Napoleon, A life (Viking 2014). One wonders what more can be learnt after some 60,000 books having been published on Napoleon, starting with his own Memories. However, […]
“Creative destruction” is probably the most accurate and pithy definition of capitalism ever. The expression was coined by Joseph Schumpeter when he taught Economics at Harvard. Without destroying obsolete activities, no progress can occur. One could see that in the former Soviet Union, where no factories were ever shut down. “Destruction” however, bears a cost: managers […]
A crystal ball is not needed to predict the future. We have at our disposal a less magical and more precise indicator which is rarely consulted: the “triadic” patent. Our collective way of life is already described by the patents which are registered every day throughout the world. Not all patents will necessarily lead to a […]
By excessively relying on the economic statistics, media pundits and political leaders tend to give a biased image of where we really stand in Western democracies. Doomsday predictions are actually based on irrelevant figures. True enough, predicting the worse and regretting the good old days are part of Western culture: one cannot prevent politicians struggling […]
Contemporary Greece is based on a geographical misunderstanding: we want to believe that it is the heiress of the Hellenic civilization. And although Greece failed to meet the conditions for admission into the European Union, it was permitted entry from 1981, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing thinking that nothing should be refused to “the mother of […]
The recent victory of the leftist party Syriza in Greece reveals the increasing influence of populist, antimarket, anticapitalist movements throughout Europe. The new Greek Prime minister, Mr Alexis Tsipras, declares himself on the Left but his discourse is not different from the far right-wingers who go under the name of National Front in France, Progress […]
