Pieria View

Empathy : The ability to imagine oneself in another’s place and understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. When faced with an example of injustice it is a common psychological trait to relate the suffering of others to our own experiences. While this can be helpful in fostering greater insight into the personal hardships they may be undergoing it can also cause people to prioritise the similarities of their situations and underplay the differences. It is in this light that I view attempts to liken the haircuts to Cypriot depositors to ultra-low interest rates in Britain. Yet to my mind this false equivalence does a disservice to understandably panicked depositors in Cyprus and causes undue concern for savers in the UK. I first came across this particular line of argument on twitter in a tweet from Ros Altmann , former director general of Saga and pensions expert. She wrote: “UK vs. Cyprus - Sterling devaluation +inflation +ultra-low...

As sterling hits another new low against the dollar many have started question whether the supposed benefits of a weak currency have been overstated. Among the voices within the sceptic camp is Andrew Sentance, former Monetary Policy Committee member and currently senior economic adviser at PWC. In a recent blog post Sentance suggests that while Britain’s economic weakness and reduced fear over a eurozone collapse have both played their part in lowering the value of sterling, there has also been a concerted effort by policymakers to “talk down the pound”. He writes: “[A] weak pound appears to be an important ingredient of official economic policy. Government ministers, including the Chancellor, have talked of rebalancing the economy and emphasised the role of a competitive currency in achieving this. The Governor of the Bank of England has argued along the same lines. In his major speech earlier this week, he argued that the 25% fall in the value of the pound ...

On June 5, 1989 the attention of the world was grabbed by the image of an anonymous man standing in front of a column of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square. Elsewhere, however, in the People’s Republic of Poland an equally momentous event was unfolding in the narrative of the Cold War. Solidarity, a Polish labour union movement born in the Gdansk shipyards at the start of the decade, was poised to shake the Communist stranglehold on power for the first time since 1944. In the first multi-party elections since the country’s liberation from the Nazis the party, led by shipyard worker Lech Walesa, won between 70-80% of the vote and shattered the semblance of Soviet political invulnerability. The impact across the USSR’s expansive empire was seismic. By the end of 1989 Azerbaijan, Hungary and Czechoslovakia had declared their sovereignty and these were soon followed by Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and ultimately Russia itself the following year. Over 12 months the Eastern...