Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
Lorenzo Bini Smaghi: Europe cannot default its way back to health
Among the many things we have learnt from this crisis is that governments and financial markets find it difficult to understand each other, writes Smaghi, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank. Governments cannot grasp why the markets lose confidence in the state of public finances so quickly and regain it so slowly, after a long period of fiscal consolidation. The markets, for their part, are mystified by the failure of governments to take simple and timely steps to sort out the problems they face. To tackle the problems of public finance, one of the measures that many believe should be adopted in some developed countries, particularly in Europe, is to default on or restructure public debt. Not a day passes without a suggestion of that kind being made by market participants, economists and commentators.
Philip Stephens: On the way to a new global balance 
We are living through one of history’s swerves, writes the FT columnist. A multipolar world has been long predicted, but has always seemed to be perched safely on the horizon. Now it has rushed quite suddenly into the present. Two centuries of western hegemony are coming to a close rather earlier than many had imagined. The story is unfolding in dry economic statistics. Next year, just as this year, the economies of the rising states – China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and the rest – are likely to grow by 8 per cent or more. Debt-burdened advanced nations will mostly struggle to expand by more than 2 per cent. The pattern is well-established. The global divide is between slow- and fast-growing nations as much as between the rich and the rising.
Analysis: The Madoff affair: Along for the ride?
When Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty last year to running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, he emphasised to the court that he had acted on his own, write the FT’s Brooke Masters, Megan Murphy and Kara Scannell. Solemnly, the disgraced fund manager insisted that he had lied even to those closest to him and had deceived the world with misleading transfers, falsified trade records and fake account statements. But Irving Picard, the bankruptcy trustee charged with recovering money for Mr Madoff’s thousands of victims, has come to a rather different conclusion.
Samuel Brittan: Brown’s is a message that we need to hear
The reception accorded to Gordon Brown’s Beyond the Crash does not say very much for Britain’s scribbling classes. In too many parts of the media, it has been ignored, misrepresented or used to settle partisan scores, its serious message ignored. Even some of the more favourable reviews wander off into discussing possible implications for UK politics. One should admit straight away that the book is not a laugh a minute and it is unlikely to find its way into many people’s Christmas stockings. Nor is the former prime minister the clearest and most elegant of writers. But some of these seeming faults rebound to his credit, the FT columnist argues.
Lex on Twitter
Much less money is changing hands in the current dotcom boom than in the last one. That is good. But the sale of equity in Twitter is a sign that valuations are no less heroic – and that cash will soon be wasted on a vast scale. The new round of fundraising – $200m of cash, valuing the whole company at a putative $3.7bn – bolstered Twitter’s status as internet darling. The site has spent the past year trying to figure out how to convert trying to turn the large and rapidly growing userbase of its free microblogging service (tweeting in 140 character snippets) into a substantial revenue-generating business. It will now have venture capitalist John Doerr – who backed both Google and Amazon early on – on the investor roster. Yet Twitter is still not profitable, Lex notes.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft: The perils of moral fervour in the Balkans
In 1999, the western powers used military might to drive out Serb forces from Kosovo after Serbia had attempted to maintain its domination in the disputed region, committing in the process what were widely condemned as atrocities. The Serbs’ eviction from Kosovo was hailed as a victory for justice and humanity, writes the author of ‘Yo Blair!’. But there has been news in the past week which casts a very different light on the passions of more than 10 years ago. We have been reminded of old truths, about unintended consequences, the vanity of human wishes, the way that best-laid plans go wrong, and the danger of taking sides in conflicts about which we may know little, or not enough.
Energy Source: The cost of the Gulf oil spill
The civil suit against BP brought by the US government on Wednesday had been inevitable since we first found out that thousands of barrels of oil were spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, writes the FT’s Ed Crooks. The timing of Wednesday’s announcement, mandated by the judge at the New Orleans court where the trial will be held, was the only surprise. It perhaps did not send the best message about the business-friendly nature of the administration, on a day when President Obama was courting many of America’s top CEOs. The share price reaction was modest, reflecting the fact that while the headlines are terrible for sentiment, investors always knew this day would come.
Jonathan Guthrie: Bungling in the corporate jungle
At this season, publications anoint their Men and Women of the Year, the FT columnist writes. These Promethean achievers can make Average Joes feel diminished however. As a counterbalance, Notebook – the street urchin that tugs impudently at the frock coat of flustered Deference – announces its Bunglers of the Year Awards. We hail cockups whose incidence was quotidian, but whose perpetrators, faithful to the Peter Principle, have achieved seniority that gives their errors hefty impacts.