Year: 2013

Bilateral deals such as TPP and TTIP complicate the world trade situation and create concrete winners and losers. Whereas free trade allows different hm to compete across national boundaries and allows countries with different absolute and comparative advantages to benefit, competing protectionist blocks trade on political and economic clout.

General elections are meant to pick a government and election campaigns to discuss the most important issues facing a country. If that’s your definition of an election, you may wonder whether Germany is really heading to the polls on September 22.

For as long as Greece remains trapped in a cycle of troika consultations, it will not escape its predicament of economic decline. And the longer the Europeans continue to give Greece bailout after bailout, the more entrenched Greece’s dependency will become.

A few years ago, my pet hates in the English language were narrowly defined. They were the handful of words and phrases football star David Beckham typically uttered when reporters courageously interviewed him. ‘You know’, ‘like’ and my personal favourite, ‘like, you know’ were chief among them.

Sometimes Australia seems an odd country indeed. Kevin Rudd’s elevation to the Australian Labor Party (ALP) leadership last week after three years spent undermining his own leader, colleagues and political party, is the latest astonishing development.

For the fate of Europe’s youth to change, Europe must change.

By throwing a little money at the problem of youth unemployment and giving some nebulous guarantees, the EU’s leaders have just made clear that such genuine change will not happen anytime soon.

Rudd’s second premiership may turn out to be short-lived because Australian Labor, divided and exhausted, lies in tatters. Only someone like Rudd could not care about that. After all, he never cared for anyone or anything other than himself. The kindergarten of Australian politics has finally turned into a farce. It is the Australian people who will have their say on it in the forthcoming elections.

After more than 200 years, the case for free trade remains as strong as in Adam Smith’s times. But the so-called free trade agreements such as the trans-Atlantic deal are not the best way to promote this ideal. The result of such initiatives may well be a step in the opposite direction.