The decline in the level of political discourse is truly appalling – given that a major US presidential candidate has been pushed out of the race, not because he demonstrated breathtaking ignorance by cautioning that “China was trying real hard to go nuclear” (something which actually happened in the late 1950s…) but because he (oh–my-god) had affairs!

That is a disgusting state of affairs.. American political commentary a la Who Weekly. I know you guys rag on the FT and Economist from time to time, but just remember the 99% of garbage publications that are left for the masses.

My perception about Russia is that corruption is the biggest obstacle for progress and healthy growth; it’s also a hindering of the growth of middleclass and rule of law. All of this in my opinion goes hand in hand. Also I share your opinion that Russia will never be an appendix to the west. That is a thing that I admire the Russians, their history and self acclimation to be a great nation.

I’m sorry to say that your opinion is not longer that essential any more… The perception that you have an agenda of protecting the incumbent system is clearer by the day. It’s sad because I think you could have made important contribution to improvements for business climate instead of acting like a guardian for something that all can see needs improvements and reforms. But I guess that you are one of the few that belongs to the “inner circle” and receive benefits for keeping the status quo.
Personally I don’t have anything against Putin, but if he cannot handle the challenge with corruption, I think he should let others that wants’ to fight this, have a try. I think you also could agree that if nothing would be done with this, it’s a failure that will lead to very high costs for the Russian society.

Just a reflection…..

Best Regards
Somebody that want the best for Russia

The fact is though, whether you like the IMF or not (and Eric clearly does not), the need for a central body that has the ability to rescue countries from the fiscal incontinence of their own so-called “leaders”, and impose reality in order to protect the rest of the world from related “contagion”, has never been higher.

While there is some truth in the notion of “economic decoupling”, the idea of “financial de-coupling” is a myth. Global markets are becoming more and more inter-connected. So we need the IMF, or something like it, now more than ever.

Imposing a politician as IMF boss who still harbours ambitions of high office can do nothing but undermine the Fund’s ability to take and impose the tough decisions that some Western politicians seem incapable of taking themselves. This is particularly true if the politician in question actually hails from the very region that needs to hear harsh truths perhaps more than any other part of the world.

The best person to lead the IMF is someone from one of the emerging markets (EMs) who combines genuine economic expertise with political smarts and who has a track record of successful policy reform, of facing down vested interests and of speaking truth to power.

We need a IMF boss from the EMs not only to correct the massive pro-Western favoritism and discrimination of previous decades – and to signal to the rest of the world that the West “gets it”. That is reason enough.

In addition, though, the EMs now have the fiscal strength and reserve. Their policy elites also have recent experience, in tricky political conditions, of steering through successful fiscal consolidations. The current batch of Western “high-ups”, in stark contrast, generally comprises over-pampered, spin-obsessed, economically-illiterate drongos – who are expert only at avoiding reality and kicking the can down the road.

There are quite a EM few candidates who fit the bill to lead the IMF – and who could help steer Europe away from the cliffs while commanding the respect of the EMs and helping to usher in a new economic world order. These include Fraga and Manuel. Dervis is also very capable, but perhaps the prospect of a Turk taking the punchbowl away from the Greeks would open up Pandora’s box.

The stand-out candidate to run the IMF, in my humble view, is Alexei Kudrin. I am serious. Kudrin has now been Russia’s Finance Minister for 11 years and, in terms of track-record, intellectual heft and political courage, he is head and shoulders above practically all of his international peers. I ain’t gonna float his name in my Sunday Telegraph column, though, ‘cos the Western world simply isn’t ready to consider the idea of a Russian at the top of the IMF. In addition, Kudrin is doing a fantastic job where he is – and I don’t want him to leave !

Abramovich is free to launder his dirty money through Chelsea FC, London, as it’s owner

http://itstrueitellya.blogspot.com/2011/04/corporate-acquisition-appears-imminent.html

When will we have the pleasure of reading your next newsletter ?

Best wishes and kind regards

Karl

Sent from my iPhone

Yes, alas, we are apes in airplanes. Ca doit etre triste de voyager dans un monde qui s’effondre. Man is in love,and loves what vanishes. What more is there to say? I would have wished for a better ending.

Only when the last fish has swum and the last bird has flown, will the white man learn that you can’t eat money.

Joanna

Thank you for your robust and passionate note!

Let us first establish the parameters for debate: considering that the likelihood of a global government coming into existence before the entire ecosystem collapses is precisely nil, we are here engaged in an exercise of what the French call
Politique fiction (by refernce to Science fiction) – a pure intellectual exercise with no real-world implications.

I disagree with you entirely!
First of all, I see no reason why a global government would be more malevolent than a national one. I do not think that the European Union is any more “evil” than the governments of Belgium, Germany or Italy…
And the dystopian concentration camp universe you speak of can be readily enough applied on a small scale – and I think that a larger multinational entity would tend to dilute out ideological and nationalistic tendencies.
But this is all neither here nor there.

The point is that, time is running very short – the physical/biological system which allows the fineries of competing currency systems and parliamentary government is being rapidly destabiliized to the point that one has to be wilfully blind to imagine more than another couple of decades of meta-stability. The system is breaking down NOW…climate, energy, agricultural production – the destruction of the oceans, upon which I spend a large part of my life, defies description. In 30 years, we have gone a good way towards destroying what took many hundreds of millions of years to develop. No, I do not exaggerate.

If there is a single recurrent theme to my writing, it is the danger of ideology, which like the sorcerer Circe turns men to swine.
Also, the deterioration of intellectual life to the mouthing of empty phrases and buzz-words. My un-favourite is “democracy” Apparently, it cures all ills everywhere and always. And when it doesn’t….well, we must reinterpret the results – just like a doctrinaire Marxist would do with any data which tended to disprove the ultimate truth of the dialectic.
A second buzz-word is “Freedom. ” It is taken as the ultimate good – free people will be good people, will be honest and productive people, will builid stable and sustainable societies… and…for Chrissakes, George, you accuse ME of being Fabian!
In fact, people will freely opt to drive large cars, clear-cut forests, to consume as much as physically possible, to destroy the environment for short-term gain, to assert their power over their weaker neighbours, and to happily engage in unsustainable lifestyles without concern for the consequences elsewhere. We all do – you and I and everyone else we know!

Individuals and famliies and countries may choose to produce children at a disastrous rate – for the individual in question it is nothing more than an exercise of free will. For the world, it is nothing short of a catastrophe.
Indeed, among the developing countries, the Chinese example of population control has been overwhelmingly successful – one of the only bits of good news I can think of as we toboggan into self-made obliviion.
The results of the “free–market” approach adopted by India defy description – population growth totally out of control.
The consequences of this model are there for all to see in Egypt, and across the Middle-East. And that’s just the starter…the problem is that, in the good old days, these countries, having made the wrong choices from themselves, would be left to suffer the consequences. Given globalization, they will export these problems – emigration “of biblical proportions” being just one consequence

The problem with the ideologically–based Ayn Randish system you seem to advocate is that it takes no account of the externalities of our acts.
Great – so we have small, self-enclosed communities – democratic as you may wish – who happily dump their toxic waste on their neighbours. Who deplete the oceans, who build nukes along fault-lines, who pump C02 into the atmosphere and ignore the obvious consequences, while in the “developing world,” other small, democratic societies aspire to nothing more than the lifestyles you and I enjoy – despite the obvious fact that they cannot conceivably attain them without irreparable damage to the planet.

It is unfortunate that we live in a finite environment. It would be so much easier if it were non-finite, and we could simply focus upon enhancing growth. In fact, like bacteria depleting their milieu, that growth will prove our undoing.

Yes, the victories of the multinational approach are modest and few. The United Nations has a few victories to its credit (obviously, I do not refer to the Security Council, corrupted by the interests of a few preponderant countries).
The whales have, amazingly, been saved – for now. Perhaps so will a couple more species – the survival of the photogenic. The release of ozone-destroying gases has been halted (that wasn’t too difficult).
Were our brains configured differently, we would be desperately thrashing around for solutions – however uncomfortable in the near term – to keep the system working. In fact, our brain evolved for a vastly different environment, one very similar to the one you advocate (tribal) – they are manifestly maladaptive for the world we now inhabit.

Après moi – le deluge!