Syed Kamall
11/16/2010
Without risk capital, Europe will go nowhere, says Kamall. He regrets that stricter EU rules for hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers will be expensive for the economy. From 2018 fund managers for businesses in the EU will have to meet stricter guidelines monitored by the new European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). These fund managers will have to comply with strict disclosure rules about their business strategies and hold larger amounts of capital, which reduces their revenues. Kamall argues that European investors must not be isolated from the financial action in the rest of the world. While protection against default or negligence is desirable, nobody wants protection against risk itself.
Kamall is a conservative member of the European Parliament for London.
Link to full text in primary source.
Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum
Marco Annunziata
Anne Applebaum
Parallels between Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and the global financial crisis are manifold. As with the housing market and the derivatives craze, the euro tale is one of easy money, excessive leverage, bad accounting, and failed supervision. De Vos states that the euro’s Stability and Growth Pact, meant to restrain budget deficits and national debt, was violated in its application and ignored in its supervision. In short, this was a bubble of public excess waiting to be pricked. For the sake of the euro’s and the continent’s future, political scapegoating needs to stop. The cardinal issue for the euro is whether its members will implement structural reforms that coincide with increased austerity before doing so only furthers their decline.
The UK lags well behind other European countries and the US when it comes to bringing prosecutions for bribery, writes Falconer. This is largely due to outdated laws that leave the Serious Fraud Office ill-equipped to fight corruption, especially when it involves UK companies trading outside the UK. For this reason, Falconer says it is vital that the Bribery Bill makes it through parliament before the general election. Failure to do this could lead other nations to doubt that the UK is serious about tackling the problem.
The newly elected Greek government is faced with an economy in a recession, a grave fiscal situation, and deep-rooted structural problems, with a public deficit estimated at 12.7% of GDP and debt above 110% of GDP. On top of this, Greek statistics and Greek policies now suffer from a lack of credibility as a consequence of the previous government’s reporting a fiscal deficit only half as high as we now know to be the case. However, Papaconstantinou makes the case that as the new government in Athens pushes for economic and budgetary change, skeptics should suspend their disbelief.
From a once-promising democratic leader in the region, Ukraine has dissipated into a source of disenchantment for the democracy activists in neighboring ex-Soviet republics. The EU and other democratic nations need a clear, constructive, and principled policy with regard to Ukraine. If Kiev’s next leaders prove unwilling or unable to halt the nation’s slide toward its authoritarian past, Western powers will have to support the civil society movement and new emerging leaders. This may help preserve the few gains of the Orange Revolution. But even if Ukrainians lose their way, Gongadze believes that the basic democratic reforms they have earned will ensure that their destiny will still remain in their own hands.
