Comment, analysis and other offerings from Tuesday’s FT,
Gideon Rachman: The west re-examines the rat race
If somebody loses their job, they sometimes also lose their bearings. A decision is made to take an entirely new direction in life: get out of the rat race, downsize, learn a language, take up ballroom-dancing. The economic crisis that began in 2008 seems to have unleashed a similar search for meaning among some western intellectuals and economists, writes the FT columnist.
Nouriel Roubini and Arnab Das: Solutions for a crisis in its sovereign stage
The largest financial crisis in history is spreading from private to sovereign entities. At best, Europe’s recovery will suffer as the collapsing euro subtracts from growth in its key trading partners. At worst, a disintegration of the single currency or a wave of disorderly defaults could unhinge the financial system and precipitate a double-dip recession, write Roubini and Das, of Roubini Global Economics.
Analysis: Eurozone – state of the union
Four scenarios for the fate of the eurozone as laid out by the FT’s Ralph Atkins.
Insight: Hugh Hendry – China’s like a cocktail party without the cocktails
Asia has won the hearts and minds of the financial world’s most demanding investors, writes the founder of Eclectica Asset Management. I think our elites have it wrong. It is my contention that China produces gross domestic product growth without per capita wealth creation. It is analogous to a cocktail party without the cocktails; what is the point?
Lex on exit, pursued by a bear
Scaremongers warned that the end of quantitative easing in April would be calamitous, notes Lex. Asset prices that were artificially supported by the US Federal Reserve would fall, they claimed, forcing yields higher and stopping America’s nascent recovery in its tracks. But the date passed with barely a whisper of trouble and it seemed as if markets were functioning fine without help. The Fed, it appeared, had finessed its so-called exit strategy just right.
Westminster Blog: Who are Britain’s most highly-paid civil servants?
The government today (Tuesday) releases a list of the 172 civil servants who earn more than £150,000 a year. Some of it is not new information – for example the permanent secretaries’ salaries – although it’s instructive to have it all in one place, says Jim Pickard.
Brussels Blog: “Nul points” from Germany for Greece in Eurovision song contest?
Apart from wars and economic slumps, nothing divides Europeans as much as the Eurovision Song Contest, writes the FT’s Tony Barber. This annual televised orgy of glitzy musical mediocrity is now in its 55th year. Good God, it is even older than the European Union’s 1957 founding Treaty of Rome!
Money Supply: The emollient Mr Geithner with an eye on Basel
The boyish Tim Geithner was in Europe this week blowing strangely warm about financial regulation and praising Germany’s leadership in the area, writes Alan Beattie. Given the short-selling ban imposed by Berlin, and the hedge fund directive currently passing through the bowels of the European decision-making process, this looks a bit odd.