The debate about the Eurozone crisis has moved onto issues of political accountability and responsibility.
We have the governments of two historically important countries – Greece and Italy – in the hands of technocrats rather elected politicians, and many, including Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian , are asking: is this right?
In many senses, it isn’t. No public mandate exists for technocrats to lead a democratic, nation state.
But at this moment of crisis, the operating principle is ‘needs must’, and the real question is whether or not sufficient expertise can be brought together to allow the European project to do its job in investing in, and providing for, its citizens.
Technocratic skills are vital if Europe is to be able to effectively target and move money to address [...]

Currently, there is a real shortage of public capital, but at the same time there is a lot of private capital currently sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to recreate the 2002-08 economic situation before the crisis.
What the country really needs is to unlock this capital against long-term strategic investments. In order to make this happen, there is a need for an independent report on what the infrastructure concerns within the UK are, which would have to be a broad, systematic review of where we have deficiencies in our society. This would have to call upon the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to bring to the surface the levels of poverty, vulnerability and deprivation that we have in our society – particularly for the elderly and children.
The efforts of chancellor Osborne to persuade the private sector to invest is ‘too little, [...]

Europe’s debt crisis is worsening, as noted in this recent Time article by Michael Schuman . We can see this reflected in the markets from the lack of mobility. We have countries that have not managed their affairs particularly well, such as Portugal or Greece, where they have created a high level of debt without nurturing their wealth creation sector. But equally, certain investment entities have made it their business to deal with bad debt situations and hence make considerable amounts of money out of the present circumstances.
The question is, as the debt crisis gets worse, what is the way forward? One option would be the break up of the Euro, which would see Europe becoming a series of separate states with separate borders and passports and currencies. Or Europe could go the other way and become one singular country. This unified Europe would have [...]

Patience Wheatcroft’s article in the Wall Street Journal on the death throes of the Irish economy highlights a major concern of a small country in a mass market world. The situation in Ireland will be dire for a long while yet. In order to pay back the £85 billion bail-out loan, further cuts will see the same level of Irish austerity as was experienced there in the 1950s and 1960s. The issue here is- will European economies continue to work as individual nation states?
An Irish banker recently told me that he could see the current situation coming, but was forced to adopt the instruments that are used in the UK and US. If he didn’t he would be sacked. Ireland is a small economy. In order to create longer term infrastructure investments as required in the UK and US a unified Europe is needed. [...]

I was intrigued by this article in the Times last month about Nicholas Sarkozy. At first glance, Sarkozy appears unbelievably arrogant, denigrating other leaders and feeding his own insatiable ego, saying France is fine but everyone else isn’t. However there’s much more to Sarkozy’s comments under the surface. [...]

Let’s take a look at the corporate strategy of the large financial institutions that played an instrumental role in bringing on the financial crisis. The chief executives at these companies tended to favor an aggressive leadership style, which for a long time led them to aggressive growth; as they acquired companies, the largest companies became ‘financial supermarkets’ with a whole range of services. These financial institutions grew and grew, but eventually reached a point around 2004 where their growth stopped. The leadership of many of these companies started to be criticized for not integrating their acquisitions well. And so chief executives responded by making their companies more governance-oriented, with new constraints for things being signed off by teams. These new protocols and procedures made the financial institutions stabilize and stop growing, but they didn’t prevent the financial crisis, and the whole sector is now suffering as banks (and [...]

Earlier this month as a reaction to the global collapse of the financial sector, the members of Parliament made BBC Business Editor Robert Peston defend his reporting on Northern Rock last year. Peston outlined that he was acting on his duties as a reporter and was not responsible for creating a panic by highlighting the deficiencies of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. He’s quite right. How can a conscientious investigator cause a panic when in fact the system in which we work has such glaring deficiencies?
It is absolutely right that the press and the media should bring to the surface the social issues that we face, particularly one as worrying as the collapse of the financial system. I can see why MPs would wish to take the line of blaming greedy and selfish bankers and an insensitive press and media. The reason we [...]

It is little wonder that banks are reluctant to offer credit to the citizen, to businesses or to each other when bearing in mind the level of debt that currently exists. Official estimates of the American debt currently sit at $10.6 Trillion Dollars. A boutique investment analyst in Moscow considers the US debt to be nearer $11 Trillion dollars. However, two well known US investment banks are far less optimistic and unofficially estimate the debt level to be $26 Trillion Dollars, in effect 250% of US GDP.
In the UK, informed sources place UK debt levels nearer £2.5 trillion pounds. By the way, the UK’s GDP stands at about £1.5 trillion pounds.
What debt are we talking about? – Housing debt, credit card debt and debt ridden financial instruments, such as derivatives, all of which undermine the confidence of the market.
What value is better [...]