I was in Paris last week, reporting on the Task Force for Financial Integrity and Economic Development’s annual conference. After a fascinating day hearing how illicit financial flows and tax avoidance are destroying the developing world, American economist Jeffrey Sachs gave an excellent keynote speech over the video link. Particularly interesting were his points on [...]
Last night, the American House of Representatives passed legislation to raise the debt ceiling and heavily cut public spending – a historic move if you take into account the first has never been conditional on the latter. Today, the Senate unsurprisingly passed it. This trimming of the budget was inevitable considering the normalisation of neoliberal policies. [...]
A version of this article was first published in International Tax Review Bongo players, Robin Hood, men dressed as drag dinner ladies and Mrs Doyle from Father Ted proclaiming the only tea she does not like is poverty greeted activists as they filed into Westminster Central Hall to lobby their MPs. But behind the fun [...]
Following Obama’s 45 minute speech about the Middle East and North Africa, I am left predictably bored by it all. We were told the U.S. would be “turning a new page” regarding its relationship with these states which are experiencing great upheaval right now. Hillary Clinton took the stage first and said “new” about 38 [...]
With recent news of the U.S. deploying predator drones in Libya to “degrade Gaddafi’s forces”, and Europe’s involvement teetering on the brink of all out invasion, we have to think carefully about what kind of message this sends out to the various protest movements which are on-going in the region. This is important not only [...]
“There’s always a bigger fish.” – Qui-Gon Jinn Paul Krugman on his New York Times blog notes a symptom of just how far the West has regressed in the distribution of income: so much of America’s wealth is concentrated in the top 1% of the income scale that those only just below actually feel insecure about [...]
The rise of the Tea Party in America has presented lefties and liberals with more than two brain cells to rub together on both sides of the Atlantic with a problem. Picking a facepalm of the week just got a whole lot harder. Following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Republican senator Jon Kyl [...]
TTE readers will probably be aware of the ‘It Gets Better’ internet campaign against homophobic bullying. This was started by the brilliant American sex advice columnist Dan Savage, reacting to the suicide of Billy Lucas, a fifteen-year old gay teenager who hanged himself after suffering intense homophobic abuse from his peers. His mission statement: “I wish I could [...]
I’m a massive fan of the Daily Show. In the dark days of Dubya, it was a welcome – and all-too-rare – voice of sanity from the other side of the Atlantic, and since Obama took power it’s never been anything but on-target in its skewering of the hysterical reporting of Fox News and the [...]
This has been a goodish week for liberal America. A judge has halted the enforcement of the ”Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” laws, under which thousands of soldiers have been discharged after the military discovered they were gay. I have always been a little queasy about fighting for people to have the right to join one [...]
