Between the lines

“For India, China and many of the other new powers, they don’t see simply a crisis of the euro zone. They see a crisis of the rich world and it makes them even more confident that their time has come” – Kleine-Brokhoff at the George Marshall Foundation of the United States… It’d be difficult to […]

Italian writer and politician Giuseppe Mazzini called for the creation of a federation of European republics in 1843. This set the stage for perhaps the best known early proposal for peaceful unification, through cooperation and equality of membership, made by the pacifist Victor Hugo in 1847. Hugo used the term ‘United States of Europe’ (États-Unis

Whilst all eyes are on Italy’s bond crisis, Greece’s potential default and France ultimately being ordained into the dishonorable members of the inglorious PIIGS (finally putting the f in the ‘efin PIIGS) a real bombshell was dropped by one of the European Central Bank council members Jens Weidmann on Tuesday afternoon when he reminded the ‘inglorious insolvents’

I thought this Between The Lines blog entry would be a light hearted joke given ‘the Mark’ relates to money, you know the script; 666, Berlusconi (beast), Rome, “muhahahahaha” etc. Then the parallels got a bit scary once I engaged in a bit of fact finding research. The rise of a supranational currency in the

It’s been bonfire “weekend” in the UK. Lots of the festivities and many of the organized displays now have funfairs running alongside. Not so great as parents, as your pockets get emptied, but if indirectly the proceeds go to the organizers then all’s good given many of the shows are put together by volunteers and charities, many local events

An estimated 200 million people live at or below subsistence levels in China, spending 20 billion euros on them, instead of buying some form of Eurozone bond as part of the EFSF bail out package, would raise their standard of living by half for a year calculations by research firm High Frequency Economics show. The

Nicolas Sarkozy can’t watch a film released in May exploring why his wife left him on the same day he was elected as he needs to “protect his sanity”. The film, La Conquete, (The Conquest) covers Sarkozy’s second divorce from Cecilia Attias and his rise to power until his election in 2007. It showed at

There is a sub text to the threatened Papa G referendum that’s been missed by the mainstream media and it’s not the obvious fact that he’s actually an American and may have another agenda. He was born George Papandreou in 1952 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States and didn’t repatriate to Greece until 1974. George

Is it irony or coincidence that as we welcome our seventh billionth global citizen into our world global unemployment reaches 200 million according to the ILO. The International Labor Organization said in its report that about 80 million net new jobs will be needed over the next two years to return to pre crisis employment

George Soros, who achieved fame when he bet against sterling remaining within the Exchange Rate Mechanism in the 1990s, believes the 50 percent “haircut” for private bond holders agreed last week as part of the overall bailout package will only reduce Greek debt by 20 percent. In Soros’ opinion it’s insufficient to stop an economic