Lame duck or eurosceptic: France is in trouble whoever wins the presidency I’m back in Paris for a fleeting visit while the markets wonder whether Marine Le Pen – leader of the extreme right Front National – can win the second turn of the French presidential elections in May and destroy the European Union. It’s a 17 hour escapade to interview Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, former ECB [...]
Europe must reinvent itself or markets will tear it apart As I sit on an over-crowded train at rush hour for the fourth time this week after a 12 hour shift (I hope my American co-anchor who doesn’t believe in European holidays is reading this), I look around and wonder how many people in the carriage still believe in Europe. On 23 June 2016, 59.9 [...]
Scandal-hit Francois Fillon could gift Marine Le Pen the French presidency His campaign is in serious crisis, but Francois Fillon – candidate of the centre-right after a convincing victory in the primaries – said on Monday that he will continue to fight to become the next President of France despite a scandal engulfing him and his family. Trying to save his campaign, he apologised to the French [...]
Business needs more leaders like George Soros – to fearlessly speak out against Trump’s bullying January 26, 2017 There was something odd about the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos this year, and it wasn’t only that the typical Davos-attendee (pro-trade, pro-global) felt he was under attack because of the wave of populism that crashed through the US and the UK in 2016. There was also the odd moment when the President [...]
Wanted for 2017: A leader with a strong moral compass December 21, 2016 It feels like 2016 is never-ending. As I sit here writing my final column of the year I’m looking at the news: 12 killed in a lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas Market and the Russian ambassador shot dead in Turkey. In the last 12 months, the UK voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump was [...]
Plan B for Italian banks is like Fight Club: You don’t talk about it (except in Italy) December 8, 2016 Back in 2010, as the Greek crisis began, I was up in the mountains of Davos interviewing Joaquin Almunia, the then EU economics commissioner. Eight times I asked him: does the EU have a Plan B if Greece’s banks fail? After fudging an answer on the first four attempts, saying Plan A was surely going [...]
His presidency could make or break the US: Would you serve under Donald Trump? November 21, 2016 After 10 days in the United States, and 216 hours or 12,960 minutes talking about the President-elect, how he won, his fiscal stimulus plans, his fraught relationship with the press, his tweets, his controversial comments about women, Mexicans and Muslims, the conflicts of interests, his children, who gets security clearance, his apologies, his friendliness towards [...]
Time to take a hint: A weak currency means a weak country October 11, 2016 As the global elite (the “dirty” word du jour) descended on Washington on Friday, working the corridors of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, there was one thing they couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t weak growth, it wasn’t negative rates. It wasn’t even Donald Trump. It was Brexit and the pound’s dramatic flash crash. In [...]