If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The European antitrust authorities have finally carried out inspections of oil firms in three countries as well as the offices of the price-index publisher Platts, to determine if they distorted published prices of crude oil and petroleum products. It is a first step, long overdue, but it targets the wrong benchmark.
Most of its member states are stuck in an economic crisis that many Europeans blame on austerity measures enforced by the EU, perceived as a faraway, bureaucratic entity that has spun out of control and is out of touch with the concerns and hardships of ordinary Europeans.
If the world is to sustain the momentum of economic development that is essential to Jim Yong Kim's optimism, the companies and countries that have benefitted from expanding free trade have a collective stake in figuring out a path forward that stanches the downward spiral of the American middle class.
When a new administration takes over in the U.S., it takes roughly one year for it to be up and going; wasn't it a bit of an exaggeration to pretend that the brand new European diplomacy would magically work overnight?
I believe Giulio Andreotti died with his characteristic grimacing smile stamped in the corner of his mouth. Indeed, the events of the past few weeks marked "his" last victories.
All this has raised enormously the political stakes involved in sustaining the eurozone and European economic advancement. How can the needed sustained political heavy-lifting be accomplished if members no longer share a vision of political union in the long term?
The WTO, unlike the IMF and the World Bank, was set up to operate by consensus, but some members have turned out to be a lot more equal than others.
It is something Washington can work together on, and a viable TAP would give a real boost to the economies of the U.S. and the EU. It would be, in Shakespeare's timeless phrase, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
While some hope of a miracle occurring in the coming months remains, so does the question of whether the new Slovenian government is willing to invest enough political capital to push through the necessary reforms before the capital markets decide to lock Slovenia out once again.
Rather than evoking sinister historical parallels, they should draw more attention to round two of a broader strategic realignment that is underway inside the European Union, its implications for the transatlantic relationship and opportunities for U.S. foreign policy.
By fixing annual budget deficits, Europe is shooting itself in the foot: while it does, of course, authorize lower budget deficits during good years, it makes it impossible to allow further budgetary deficits when the economy is in recession. Europe is in recession.
When a Laney Walker supermarket closed in Georgia, the store had arranged for a local church to pick up all of the store's food to give to the poor. But when the church never came by, the food was unloaded into the parking lot where hungry people gathered to take it back home to their families.
Previously published in Metro www.metro.us/newyork/news/international/2013/04/05/vitali-klitschko-world-heavyweight-boxing-champ-hopes-to-become-next-...
The international community, through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), is currently negotiating a treaty intended to improve access...
Of course the IMF event was not without opposition voices. The strongest was Luc Frieden, the finance minister of Luxembourg, where a light regulatory and tax regime has boosted the size of the banking sector relative to GDP to a level similar to that of Cyprus.
The colonial relationship was reasonably straightforward. The empire dictated terms to the colony, and the colonial administration carried out the orders. The neo-colonial relationship is somewhat more complicated.
