Slower is safer. In 1973, Pierre Messmer, the then French prime minister imposed a 120 km/h speed limit on motorways. The decision was motivated by the desire to save fuel…
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Since the Agreement on Agriculture of the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into force in 1995, global trade patterns have changed, but a number of distortions have remained. For example,…
Wealth taxes have played a minor role in the tax systems of the OECD bloc: they have declined from about 7.9% of total tax revenues in the mid-1960s to about…
The bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland is probably the longest living project in the world. According to some historians, it dates back to the Romans. The idea had…
Introduction How resilient is the global banking system? Are banks’ capital buffers now much larger than they were going into the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8, as authorities claim? The…
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Bank Resolution Is Dead: Authorities Dare not Use it – and instead Risk Destroying Capital Markets
by
Bob Lyddon
The template created after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8 to shield taxpayers from direct bailouts of failed banks has already folded – authorities dare not use it. The template…
On December 13, 2022, delegates from forty-nine African countries and the African Union traveled to the United States to attend the US-Africa Leaders Summit. Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Sudan…
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What are the lessons for Europe from the demise of Silicon Valley Bank?
by
Bob Lyddon
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has gone from hero-to-zero in 48 hours. From established bankers to start-ups in the tech, fintech, and biotech industries and to Napa Valley’s premium wineries on…
Last October, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared: “We are at an inflection point. The post-Cold War world has come to an end, and there is an intense competition underway…
Background Since December 2020, Azerbaijan exports natural gas to Europe via three interconnected pipelines – the South Caucasus (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum or BTE, operating since 2006), the Trans-Anatolian (TANAP, Erzurum-Eskişehir, inaugurated in…