Cicero's Songs

Over the last week the global financial crisis, as it affects Europe, has changed direction. Several of the critical uncertainties that were dogging the Euro have now been resolved. The German constitutional court has ruled that German participation in the current rescue plan is legal, and that future plans are a matter for votes in Bundestag. The Dutch electorate have sung solidly behind pro-EU parties, and the European Central Bank has begun to deploy substantial firepower directly in the markets. The countries that have advocated greater Eurozone integration seem to be winning the argument, and the focus of debate has moved on towards how and not whether a new European Federation can be constructed. Many on the right in the UK are determinedly contemptuous of these increasingly dramatic developments. As at the Messina Conference , where the founding members of the EEC sent Ministers, while the UK sent a junior civil servant, the UK has- by default- taken a decision not to be ...

It is a matter of public record that banking crises usually reveal criminality as well as incompetence. "when the tide goes out, you can usually see who lost their swimming costume" as the old joke has it. In the course of the credit crunch, it was not just Bernard Madoff - a name straight from Dickens central casting- who was the criminal. What the crisis revealed was systemic criminality. These latest allegations against Goldman Sachs are not receiving front page coverage, but they should, because what is alleged is that the "Vampire Squid" is not so much a legitimate business as a conspiracy to defraud its customers. Goldman, remember, is the pre-eminent investment bank in the world: these allegations could hardly be more serious. If Goldman willfully and knowingly cheats its customers, then the whole investment business is nothing more than a multi-trillion racket which not only serves not useful purpose, but is actively malign to society at large. It is not ...

Whatever happened to the word "enterprise"? Once upon a time, the political discourse in the UK was all about it. Now it is scorned: deregulation is considered to be one of the major causes of the economic crisis that we now face. Yet how can free enterprise be considered to be triumphant when the number of people working in the private sector is at its lowest level in over a generation? It is as though the Thatcherite revolution had never happened. Britain is now dominated by not just state power, but state ownership. I hold a few non executive directorships in businesses that I believe in. As a result I am on a register- a mailing list for people seeking to take on other non executive roles. I would say that more than half of the non executive roles that are advertised are in state or quasi-state bodies: NHS Trusts and the like. Nor are these the sinecures that you might imagine- the remuneration that one can expect from a state body is higher than the equivalent in...

Over many years a visitor to the United States has had to run the unwelcoming gauntlet of US immigration. Long lines at each desk were followed by intrusive and rude questioning and in recent years by fingerprinting and even more questions. Though in recent years the process has become more organised and slightly more welcoming, it remains the case that if passengers are not US citizens or green card holders then it can still take a long time to clear US border controls. At the end of the day, though, the controls are targeted against foreigners and the United States has the perfect right to control foreigners who enter their country. The United Kingdom, however, does things backwards. Although non European citizens still need to fill in a landing card and be interviewed by an immigration officer, there is now a special kind of hell reserved for European travellers, including British Citizens. The lines to show your European passport are now regularly over an hour long, and at certai...

The news that HMS Cumberland attacked and captured a Somali pirate vessel in the Gulf of Yemen was one of those slightly quaint pieces of news that is somehow rather cheering. On the one hand while we know how desperate the situation is in Somalia and the autonomous Puntland , Pirates, by definition, are the bad guys. The seizure of the Ukrainian ship " Faima " and its cargo of weapons was clearly the last straw for the international community. The fact is that we can not allow global logistics chains to be disrupted like this. On the other hand, there is not the global political will to actually sort out the truly awful situation on the ground in the wreckage of Somalia. Personally, I think it is about time to admit that Somalia as a state is not fixable. To my mind that means recognising the independence of Somaliland - the former British Somaliland - and allowing that country to develop more normal relations with the rest of the world. It is, after all a more or less ord...

It has been one of the most dramatic weekends in finance that I can remember. The failure of Lehman Brothers and the shotgun marriage of Merill Lynch with Bank of America are seismic shifts in the world of money. The fall of the House of Lehman ends a 158 year business overnight. Nearly 27,000 people- including several friends of mine- have lost their jobs. The merger of Merill could lead to even larger job cuts as the workforce of some 60,000 is slimmed down. It is hard not to feel sad when venerable institutions disappear. Yet such is the nature of capitalism. I well remember at the time of the fall of Barings, walking past their offices- lights ablaze as the executives of the bank struggled with the developing crisis. In the end the losses of Barings- about £600 million look pretty minor compared with the scale of losses in the financial markets today. In those days my own office window overlooked the building that was being fitted out as new offices for Barings, and a poster was pu...

I have spent an emotional day with Georgians. "My best friend- I have known him since he was six- is in the artillery in Gori . I do not know if he is dead or alive". "The lines are down, I don't know where my family is" Make no mistake -this was a war of Russia's choosing. As the government of Georgia make a stand in the compound in Tbilisi, Russian troops have roamed at will across the country. The defeat is complete, but Russia continues to pretend that Georgia fights on. The latest nonsense is "Georgian agents are creating terrorist incidents in Russia". Only someone educated with the tin ear of the Stalinist could think that anyone beyond themselves could believe such a complete lie. In my opinion, Russia can no longer be treated as anything but what she has become: a treacherous aggressor, contemptuous of human life. People in the West are wringing their hands and saying "but what can we do- surely nothing?" Do Russian spies not fun...

The enlargement of The European Union to include Bulgaria and Romania has not quite been the celebration that the previous enlargement to ten other countries was a couple of years ago. Perhaps this is because to some degree this is an enlargement of the also- rans : the countries that could not make enough changes to get entry in 2004. Perhaps too, by every estimation, there is still considerable work for the acceding states to complete, even after entry. Bulgaria and Romania are a third as wealthy as the EU average, which itself is diluted, since the 2004 entries were themselves only half as wealthy as the EU of 15 states. Bulgaria and Romania are still poor, with weak institutions and considerable problems with corruption and crime. The UK, having opened the door to the 2004 applicants has retained work restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians (albeit that these restrictions are more cosmetic than real). So this enlargement has been a subdued affair- in keeping with the air of gloom ...