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14
Nov 11

Germany thanks the southerners

Saudi investment opportunities

Angela Merkel today gratefully acknowledged the southern European contribution to the euro. “Without the incorporation of those sunny southerners, the euro would be the deutschmark. It would have reached Swiss franc levels, ruining our exports,” she stated, while munching on sardinas at the opening of the Museum of Greek Siestas & Tax Evasion. “Instead, we have this delightfully devalued deutschmark, which has allowed our trade surplus to reach a three year high.”

As she flicked the tail of her flamenco-inspired suit, she thanked Germany’s fellow members in the EU and the Eurozone for being responsible for nearly two thirds of the country’s foreign trade. “Vielen Dank for being less competitive than us and buying our goods,” said Merkel, as she headed off for a week’s holiday in the newly opened Deutsche Acropolis Hotel in Athens.


24
Oct 11

London and Caracas: two sides of the same coin

Income inequality and the foreign conundrum

There are echoes of pre-Chavez Venezuela in the UK these days. A classic example of elite capitalism and the virtually insurmountable gap between the haves and have nots. In Caracas, the elite lived in guarded mansions in the Eastern hills of the city with bodyguards accompanying them everywhere. The benefits of decades of petroleum revenues never made it into the barrios of the Western hills of the city. President Hugo Chavez was the result.


9
Jun 11

The coming Euro Ministry of Finance

SIF and the Mayr: intrusive interventions

How the mighty are fallen! Not only Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF head who allegedly sexually assaulted a chambermaid, or former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Tunisian counterpart Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

There are a host of others: one of the world’s foremost Israeli football agents, a household-name UK broadcaster, plus a number of European chairmen. Last week they were all at the infamous Mayr Clinic, whose mission it is to clean out its residents’ guts to restore them to health and energy via a quasi-liquid fasting cure. One would imagine the conversation would range from the FIFA scandal to Greek debt restructuring.


15
Apr 11

History’s verdict: Zapatero vs de Gaulle

The de facto eurozone haircuts

It wasn´t just Emperor Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Two other political figures come to mind.

Post World War II, Charles de Gaulle was preoccupied with "la gloire" for France and, rather less admirably, for himself. At the time, the French were starving. In the summer of 1945, the country had less than two weeks´ supply of grain, while the winter was much worse. Malnutrition was such that the generation raised in this period were to be shorter than the previous one. With some humour and a large degree of exasperation, the governor of the Bank of France, Emmanuel Monick, told a foreign diplomat that Belgium was handling its affairs far better than France.*