Politics Roundtable

Tension surrounding the application of a series of so-called “unorthodox policies” by Hungary’s Fidesz government has certainly been rising in recent days. While Washington has been reasonably quiet as govenment emissary Tamas Fellegi meets with top IMF officials, Brussels has seen a veritable avalance of official statements and policy initiatives. ...

Swinging off this post at Unlearning Economics, I was motivated to write a long comment that really ought to be blogged.

The industrial economics of extreme wealth is an interesting subject. It’s often been observed that a lot of the spending of the rich goes into positional goods. A ...

Hungary’s unofficial ambassador to the IMF,Tamás Fellegi, is reportedly facing a “terrible atmosphere” after his arrival in Washington on an exploratory mission whose objective is to open up communication about a new financial lifeline for the country. Frankly, given the recent record of relations between the two institions involved it isn’t ...

Things in Spain are never exactly what they seem to be. This is a painful lesson that even Angela Merkel must have learnt in recent days, especially since she put her credibility so much on the line in backing the country’s deficit reduction efforts. “Spain has really done its homework ...

The Italian government, Mario Monti informed the country’s parliament last Thursday, is now planning to concentrate its attentions on achieving economic growth. A timely decision this, since the statistics office announcement a day earlier that the country had once more fallen back  into recession, while not being a surprise nonetheless does constitute a cause ...

At a time when many eyes look hopefully towards the ECB for the kind of action which may prove to be the salvation of the much beleagured Eurozone other, more critical, ones are casting themselves back over the recent track record of the institution itself, and asking what, if any, responsibility the ...

The British newspapers are full of lines like “UK vetoes EU uniting to save euro” and worse. This illuminates a huge problem with the European Union.

The first problem is that this assumes that somebody’s going to save the euro. This is an error of the same form as the classic ...

The British decision to veto the proposed new EU treaty is not surprisingly provoking an avalanche of commentary this weekend. Among journalists, at least, there seems to be a consensus that David Cameron committed some kind of major diplomatic blunder.

Possibly this is so, but given the difficulties presented by having ...

So, a bit of Euro-summit processology and diplo-speak. Why not? This was a failure of diplomacy, after all – all the states involved are allies and have largely convergent interests, the problem is managing conflict politely, but here we are.

The first question I’d really like answered is why David Cameron ...

Bond contracts and diplomatic notes aren’t the only places where the casual asides can be more rewarding than the main text.

NASA announced yesterday that its Kepler space telescope has helped scientists identify an exoplanet clearly positioned in an orbit that would allow it to have liquid water on its surface.