Month: April 2023

The drive towards a global monetary and financial system as an alternative to the dollar is in full swing. At this point, several countries have made arrangements to use either national currencies in bilateral exchanges, or the yuan (renmimbi) in trade with China or with third parties. One such agreement was just made by China and Brazil, while France’s Total […]

While the creation of a new reserve currency is being discussed by the BRICS, the City of London still has delusions about avoiding a collapse of the dollar system. Columnist Gillian Tett, however, in her March 30 article in the Financial Times, is forced to acknowledge that China’s “trade invoicing” system is working quite well and has positioned the yuan […]

Reflecting the growing anti-war movement in Germany, a conference was held in Berlin on March 27 under the banner: “Dialogue Instead of Weapons — Nonpartisan Action Against the War”, organized by the East German Advisory Board of Associations (OKV, founded in 1994). The initial impetus to hold the event came from two open letters issued on Jan. 31 by two […]

The traditional labor movement in Germany finally launched a powerful appeal to Chancellor Scholz on March 31 under the title “Make Peace! Armistice and Common Security Now!”. The call, signed by 100 leaders, was initiated by historian Peter Brandt, the son of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who originally launched the policy of détente with Soviet leader Brezhnev in the […]

Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron are in China from April 5 to 7. They make a strange couple indeed, one with an olive branch and the other one with a gun. But the difference may be only apparent, as the ideological bond between the two is well known (it was Macron who imposed Ursula as Commission President, bypassing […]

In the wake of the Credit Suisse debacle, the need to reinstate a strict separation of banks along Glass-Steagall criteria in order to avoid future bank bailouts is gaining support in Europe. In Switzerland, the bipartisan coalition that campaigned for bank separation in 2009-2014 is being formed again, while the leading government party in Italy, Fratelli d’Italia, has filed a […]

As always in trying to understand the political storms surrounding Donald Trump, beginning with Russiagate and continuing up to his indictment last week by a New York City prosecutor, a deep dive into context is essential, as nothing which appears on the surface is real. That is why the former President’s characterization of reporting about him as “fake news” resonates […]

It’s an understatement to say that President Biden’s second “Summit for Democracy” on March 28-30 was not the success he had planned. The president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, called it “a bad idea that won’t go away”, given that “American democracy is hardly a model for others”. And Financial Times editor Edward Luce pointed to the […]