Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Greece’s Financial Woes

An impassioned plea for reason from one of Europe’s leading Greens:

The Innovation Deficit

Last week, I attended an evening seminar at the Management school of my university. The lecturer was, in a former life, a senior manager in a pharmaceutical firm. What he had to say about the state of the industry was not particularly comforting: apparently, the industry’s present business model is thoroughly broken, and indeed, many […]

Run into the Ground

I have been struggling to come up with a suitable metaphor for the state of the economy at present; however, I literally fell into one this morning. It’s my habit to awaken at 5 AM on weekdays to go running; as pedestrians and passing motorists tend to be unkind to joggers, this is an ideal […]

Oh, Mandy

I’ve lately taken to referring to Gordon Brown as “Prime Minister Crackpot”. Part of it is due to his mad insistence on clinging to power when no one believes he can actually accomplish any further good. Beyond this, however, he has shown even greater signs of mental disturbance: for example, he has tried to squash […]

The End of the American Era

Perhaps one of the funniest yet most obscure Monty Python sketches portrayed a meeting of senior British Civil Servants. John Cleese entered and spouted off a great deal of bureaucratic gibberish, which was then translated by his colleagues into a simple problem: the government needed something new to tax. Terry Jones then said, “…most things […]

Economic Crisis for Dummies

I think I’m a reasonably good manager in at least one respect: I try to shield my team from the horrors of what exists outside of our limited domain. I don’t rehash every argument I’ve had, or tell them every silly quip that has been said by my superiors; I try to create an atmosphere […]

Drunk or High?

President Bush just offered an explanation as to what has happened to America’s financial system: In his parlance, Wall Street “got drunk”. He also advised them to get rid of those “fancy financial instruments”. I suppose this is an improvement to him repeating the same mantra about the economy’s underlying strength; the housing market is […]

A Matter of Trust

Much of the recent hullabaloo about the “credit crunch” and “sub prime crisis” is emotionally satisfying. The stockbrokers, hedge fund managers, and other grey pinstripe suit hucksters with six figure gas guzzlers who got us into this mess have a healthy air of panic about them and a salubrious paranoia born out of wondering when […]

Up from Utopia

The collapse of Bear Stearns into the arms of the JP Morgan Chase was a seminal moment in economic history. It was not only indicative of how deeply the present “credit crunch” has affected long-time bastions of Wall Street, it was also an indicator of how far and wide the spectre of mistrust has affected […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.