Monthly Archives: June 2012

Slow Finance

Slow Finance, by Gervais Williams, Bloomsbury, London, Sterling £20, 183 pages

There’s food for thought in adopting the principles of the Slow Cooking movement and applying them to making investment decisions. Typically the Slow Cooking aficionado chooses ingredients carefully, preparing them the night before, cutting meat into small chunks, trimming the vegetables. In the morning they go into a vessel which cooks them slowly at a lower heat, allowing all the juices and flavours to blend. In the evening the smell of a delicious casserole wafts out from the kitchen. This makes a much more appetising prospect than zapping an “unidentified frying object” in a microwave, as celebrity chef Keith Floyd used to say.

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Democracy – Under Threat in Europe – Must be Struggled and Fought For

A threat to democracy frequently follows major shocks in international relations. The period between the two World Wars saw Germany, the USSR, Spain and Italy sacrifice democracy at the altar of populist dictators. Unfortunately some of the slouching beasts from history that led to that collapse of democracy have now awakened from their slumber in Europe.

Greece, long  associated with the very concept  of democracy, is but an extreme example of this  growing threat. Many of the issues that threaten the future of democracy in Greece are present in a number of other countries in Europe, including in Ireland, though obviously with different emphasis and to a different degree. The future of democracy in Europe is being ever more closely  linked – through a ghastly financial domino theory  which says that if Greece falls, Spain, Italy, Ireland and  Portugal cannot be far behind.

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