Global Strategy - blog

Ended up viewing this during my weekend hassle.

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

The arguments presented against "Lex Nokia" become increasingly odd (see also my earlier blog entry).

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).

Why the Europeans will miss Bush? An Obama presidency will be greeted in Europe with enthusiasm, but as some Europeans have put it to me, "We realize that we won't have the excuse of George Bush."...  [Obama is] going to want Europe to stand up and do more... And Europeans will have a problem, in that they will embrace him, and they will not be able to say: "Well, this is the Bush administration. We have to resist."

Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb paid LSE a visit last week. Continuing the already well-developed political debate in this blog, I now make a brief re-cap of what was the message of a politician.

Since the political thread of this blog has been opened, I thought it is time to discuss Finland - at arm's length. It seems to be the general opinion in the Finnish society to see the underlying adaptive-submissive tendencies of the people as a bringer of strength in the society. One should sneer upon trouble-makers and show appropriate respect to the carrying forces of the society. If I remember correctly, ‘national consensus' was claimed to be the main source of efficiency by one of the contributors in a fairly recent issue of Kanava. Unfortunately I do not have the access to this issue right now.