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Egypt: five possible scenarios
Egyptians in Tahrir Square celebrate the army's 48-hour ultimatum to President Morsi (Getty) In the surreal world of Egyptian politics, the embattled president, Mohamed Morsi, issued his response to...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 3, 2013
♦ Keeping Brussels on board in its counter-terrorism data-gathering operation has arguably been Washington’s most important diplomatic concern with the EU. However, this has been put at risk after the...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 4, 2013
♦ The Egyptian military reasserted its privileged political position by removing Mohamed Morsi from power. Troops surrounded the state broadcasting headquarters and General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the...
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Egypt’s coup is a serious blow to Turkey’s vision of a more democratic Middle...
Erdogan with Major General Hassan al-Roueini in Cairo, 2011 (Getty) Two years ago, Egypt was the scene of one of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s greatest foreign triumphs. Now it is a...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 8, 2013
♦ Manufacturing is on the rise in Nigeria, as the global recession cuts returns in developed countries. But the country faces great challenges — political discord, corruption, broken infrastructure and...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 9, 2013
♦ An Egyptian doctor observes the pro-Morsi protests outside the Republican Guard barracks in Cairo and the subsequent military intervention that wounded hundreds and killed 51 people, mostly...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 11, 2013
♦ As the Chinese economy slows, some believe the government will stand firm in the face of the deceleration, potentially leading to much more pain as the cash-tight environment forces companies to cut...
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Egypt coup rattles Turkey’s Erdogan
Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Getty) The coup in Egypt might be bad news not just for Turkey’s government, which had cultivated ties with Cairo’s Islamist leadership, but also for the thousands of...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 16, 2013
♦ A recent ECB study asked what effect policy makers’ comments had on euro area sovereign bond yields: the FT’s Michael Steen thinks “it is hard to resist the temptation of wondering whether senior...
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Technocrats cannot fix Egypt’s political dysfunction
Chief justice Adly Mansour is sworn in as interim president the day after Mohamed Morsi is ousted (Getty) Among Egyptians of all political stripes, there is a pervading conviction that talented and...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 17, 2013
♦ Martin Wolf argues that world trade remains vulnerable to problems such as financial crises and inequality: “As we learnt in the first half of the 20th century, liberal trade and investment cannot be...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 18, 2013
♦ Ben Bernanke and the markets appear to be friends again, which might make tapering easier. ♦ George Bizos, Nelson Mandela’s lawyer, recalls the good times they shared. ♦ Chris Giles argues that,...
View ArticleSmart Reads July 19, 2013
♦ Detroit became the largest US city to file for bankruptcy. Time magazine looks at the decay of the city. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein points out Detroit is not alone. ♦ Sunday’s election for the...
View ArticleSmart Reads August 7, 2013
♦ Eike Batista built an empire and became Brazil’s richest man with the OGX oil company. It now stands on the verge of bankruptcy, however, after it turned out the oil fields meant to produce more than...
View ArticleSmart Reads August 8, 2013
By Catherine Contiguglia ♦ An era of “digital hippies” answered the needs of crunched budgets with start-ups that focused on building communities where goods and services could be traded and shared....
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Turkey loses friends in the Middle East
Turkish actors Kivanc Tatlitug (L) and Songul Oden (R) (Getty) It looks like the unkindest cut of all. After years in which the march of Turkish soap operas across the Middle East has been hailed as...
View ArticleSmart Reads August 13, 2013
By Catherine Contiguglia ♦ The signing of a contract between the Somali government and UK oil and gas exploration company Soma to collect data on onshore and offshore oil has been called...
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Why Egypt’s army can ignore the US
Army chief Gen Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on an anti-Islamist protester's placard. US president Obama is depicted as a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. Getty When the army and security forces ignored...
View ArticleSmart Reads August 16, 2013
By Catherine Contiguglia Egypt ♦ The Obama administration’s initial approach of staying mostly neutral following the ouster of Morsi is now moot, writes the FT’s Geoff Dyer. Though the United States...
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