Europe must reinvent itself or markets will tear it apart February 24, 2017 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 [...]
A tale of two Eurozones: Greater Germany and Club Med are drifting ever further apart February 15, 2017 At the end of last week Federica Mogherini met leading members of the Trump administration. Mogherini, yet another Italian politician turned Euro-bureaucrat, is in fact the foreign policy chief of the European Union. She stood on her dignity, or rather the dignity of the European Commission, issuing a warning to America not to interfere with [...]
Blame France’s incompetent and corrupt elite for the rise of Marine Le Pen February 13, 2017 “Apres moi, le deluge.” (After me comes the flood) – Louis XV Say what you will, Francois Fillon, the disgraced former frontrunner in the upcoming French presidential elections, is no Professor Moriarty. As the investigative journal Canard Enchaine reports, Fillon paid his wife Penelope over €800,000 for work as a political assistant it is unclear whether [...]
Scandal-hit Francois Fillon could gift Marine Le Pen the French presidency February 9, 2017 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 [...]
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have fired the opening salvoes of the coming trade war January 23, 2017 It's only the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency, but the contrast between Trump’s “America First” protectionist rhetoric and other world leaders’ hopes of globalisation working for the many could not be starker. The Trump rally had already stalled before the 45th President began his inauguration speech, as investors sought more detail on his plans. Despite [...]
Meet the Anglophile who could soon be Trump’s man in Brussels January 4, 2017 This week, Dr Ted Malloch faces an Apprentice-style grilling at Trump Towers in New York to see if he will be hired as Donald Trump’s US ambassador to the EU. Like the President-Elect, he is in tune with the peaceful revolution of 2016 and argues that the liberal elite in Europe need to wake up [...]
Trump will bring growth to the United States – but instability to global markets and trade January 3, 2017 Developments in the United States tend to drive global markets. We expect this to hold firm in 2017. This year I expect Trump will bring growth to America, but instability to global markets and trade. Donald Trump’s two key business appointments are aggressively pro-business. Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross both come [...]
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 [...]
Political shocks have been a buy signal in 2016 – why not in 2017 too? December 12, 2016 It's that time of the year for financial journalists: we are being inundated with lengthy outlook reports for the coming year. My inbox is littered with ominous warnings about how 2017 will see more uncertainty, and the overwhelming theme for the year is: it’s the politics, stupid. Given the rise in populist voting in 2016, which manifested [...]
From Italy and Brexit to Trump, don’t blame every electoral upset on “populism” December 5, 2016 In a world characterised by steadily decreasing attention spans and rampantly rising information onslaughts, the temptation to simplify just to keep on top of the newsflow is immense. The risk, of course, being that critical nuances are disregarded and inaccurate conclusions are drawn before being flung around on social media and becoming alleged “fact” in a [...]