Eurozone - A crisis waiting to happen?

French colleagues around at the time report that General de Gaulle was a man of few words; one of them being "Non" But he wasn't averse to soundbites: "How can you govern a country which makes 146 types of cheese?"

Imagine how much harder it is for the European Union with a domain stretching from the Baltic to the Aegean. Election results in France and Greece demonstrate there is no longer an appetite for austerity and despite scolding from Chancellor Merkel, the days of the complete Eurozone could be numbered, with some members taking an early exit.

It started well; after World War II the desire was to co-operate not fight. We had the ECSC, EFTA, then the EU: lots of initials, little actual co-operation. So how could the venerable ideal of a European Union become so unstuck?

NIMBY ... or not in my back yard until “buddy can you spare a loan?” – all currencies accepted

For those with a long memory, you might recall that globalisation was touted as a sort of business panacea; embrace this concept and all will be well with international trade. A keen supporter, surprisingly, turned out to be Bin Laden himself (or perhaps one of the 20 plus people the CIA believe might be him.) He appeared in a video wearing a Taiwanese watch; carrying a Chinese Kalashnikov; speaking into a Japanese camera; and transmitted via a US satellite uplink, espousing his particular version of the Internationale.

Ah, things were so simple then. Now, it is not a good time to be a foreigner in a globalised, UK, world. Workers at nuclear power plants in Sellafield, and Heysham joined oil refinery workers at Lindsey to protest at the employment of non UK nationals, leading Lord Mandelson to proclaim that the strikers were pursuing the “politics of xenophobia”.

Diagnosing the financial pandemic

... or why Wall Street’s problems could cause more than a sneeze across global markets.

When Canadian communications specialist Marshall McLuhan wrote about the rise of the global village in the 1960s, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The whole “village” concept of interdependency coupled with self help and a drive towards levelling out inequality was an attractive one.

What followed eventually was a drive towards global standards for good and services; cross-border brands which delivered wherever you lived; free trade as a matter of course; and the famous time/space continuum reduced by the increasing power and penetration of electronic communications. In fact many years before, Richard Cobden argued in 1843 that any law which hindered the free movement of goods “interferes with the wisdom of Divine Providence and substitutes the law of wicked men for the law of nature.” Strong stuff.