In the past inflation was the number one enemy of economists. Nowadays, you might find that the exact opposite is true, and that a fall in prices is now in the spotlight. Deflation has arisen as the main threat to the economy, and the European Central Bank (ECB) is under pressure to take decisive measures against it. Prices in the Eurozone have seen the first year-on-year decline in five years, according to Eurostat.
…Apart from maintaining its single market, Europe must promote among others its cultural and historic wealth through the media, its educational system and through appropriate festivals and gatherings. The European identity, what unites us, needs to be stressed and take precedence over what divides us. This will serve everybody well in times of crisis, keeping the unity of the continent and benefiting from the accumulated strength of all EU nations. It will also help strengthen the sense of solidarity and promote equality in opportunities and living standards across the EU.
On Sunday, 14 December 2014, representatives of all UN member countries and the European Union managed to agree on the “Lima Call for Climate Action”. This was the most important result of two weeks of exhausting deliberations at the conference but also before. If one reads the three-and-a-half pages of this decision one will see many repetitions of code words that may not mean much to non-negotiators. The question easily arises: is all this diplomatic commotion of any use? How is it connected, if at all, to the real world of climate impacts and much-needed climate action?…
The purportedly most democratically legitimate President of the European Commission has made a surprising statement, just days before the Greek parliament votes for a new president of the republic, by telling Greeks who they should not vote for. The President of the European Commission cannot tell European citizens, or their representatives, what to decide, it should be the other way around: Greek citizens, together with the rest of Europeans, should be telling Juncker what to do.
“The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it has already begun,” said Gorbachev, now 83, at an event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He accused the West and the US of “triumphalism” after the fall of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, and noted that trust between Russia and the West had collapsed during the events in Ukraine.
In the second half of September, each and every year, world leaders gather in New York for the annual high-level meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is like the annual town hall meeting of the planet, an opportunity for presidents, kings and prime ministers, to make public statements on the big issues facing their countries and our world as a whole, and to discuss privately possible solutions to the thorniest among those issues.
