Global Strategy - blog

When national governments and politicians make decisions about economic policies, they often shape the viability of businesses at the industry level.

Auguste Comte memorial lecture was given today by Prof. Philippe Van Parijs. The topic was interestingly ‘European Democracy and the Language Question'. Despite democracy being interesting and all, what appeared to me to be the most striking insight of his talk was the whole discussion around European Union, unified (political) decision-making bodies and the apparent question of lingua franca. Van Parijs is also originally from Belgium, a country struggling with severe problems of identity, language and governance, so he also has some additional weight in his words.

Facing the "need" to bailout the country's Finance Industry as well as Auto Industry, politicians and industrymen in the US are puzzled over an important question: To which direction one should next take the industry corporations, as the bailout monies effectively give the government control over them ? This debate is -- for sure -- interesting also to other national governments which are struggling with their own finance and other industries (such as that of Finland with its pulp & paper industry).