Why the French presidential election will have consequences far beyond its borders It has been many years since France last had a revolution, or even a serious attempt at reform. Stagnation, both political and economic, has been the hallmark of a country where little has changed for decades, even as power has rotated between the established parties of left and right. Until now. This year's presi..
Wind and solar energy are disrupting a century-old model of providing electricity. What will replace it? From his office window, Philipp Schroder points out over the Bavarian countryside and issues a Bond villain's laugh: "In front of you, you can see the death of the conventional utility, all financed by Mr and Mrs Schmidt. It's a beautiful sight." The wind blowing across Wildpoldsried towards ..
Bill Gate's proposal is revealing about the challenge automation poses Bill Gates is an unlikely Luddite, however much Microsoft may have provoked people to take a hammer to their computers. Yet in a recent interview with Quartz, an online publication, he expressed scepticism about society's ability to manage rapid automation. To forestall a social crisis, he mused, governments should consider a..
The Gipper would turn in his grave "Conservatism can and does mean different things to those who call themselves conservatives," said Ronald Reagan soothingly, in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1977. He referred to social conservatism and economic conservatism, tendrils that then seemed disparate, but which he, speaking shortly after Jimmy Carter's inauguration, wo..
But that's no reason for governments to stop supporting them Almost 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world's electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them com..
Firms are increasingly accused of failing to look ahead. That is a misdiagnosis. As America's economy has misfired over the past decade, several grand theories have emerged about what went wrong. Economists fret about secular stagnation, debt hangovers and whether demography explains sluggish growth. In American boardrooms, meanwhile, a widely held view is that a dangerous short-termism has take..
Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and other European populists try to make common cause Two ghosts haunted a "counter-summit" of Europe's nationalist leaders in the German city of Koblenz on January 21st: Angela Merkel epitomized everything that is rotten in Europe: out of touch, elitist and besotted with immigrants. (Chants of "Merkel must go!" punctuated the day's speeches.) The energy of Mr Trump'..
How executives balance shareholder expectations and social pressures As they slid down the streets of Davos this week, many executives will have felt a question gnawing in their guts. Who matters most: shareholders or the people? Around the world a revolt seems under way. A growing cohort - perhaps a majority - of citizens want corporations to be cuddlier, invest more at home, pay higher taxes a..
Populism, economic concentration and regulation are some of the reasons foreign bosses are souring on the land of the free Which is it? The home of free speech, the rule of law and the rich world's most dynamic economy? Or a land of social decay, septic politics and the rich world's worst roads and schools? America divides foreign observers. It divides foreign firms, too. Some bosses fall head o..
It is easy to say that people need to keep learning throughout their careers. The practicalities are daunting. When education fails to keep pace with technology, the result is inequality. Without the skills to stay useful as innovations arrive, workers suffer - and if enough of them fall behind, society starts to fall apart. That fundamental insight seized reformers in the Industrial Revolution,..
And what does that mean for the way people use computers ? This past Christmas, millions of people will have opened boxes containing gadgets with a rapidly improving ability to use human language. Amazon's Echo device, featuring a digital assistant called Alexa, is now present in over 5m homes. The Echo is a cylindrical desktop computer with no interface apart from voice. Ask Alexa for the weath..
Donald Trump should not abandon Afghanistan Eight years ago Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart wrote a book called "Fixing Failed States". Now Mr Ghani is in a position to follow his own advice. He is the president of Afghanistan, a state that failed in the 1990s and could fail again. State failure causes untold misery. Broadly defined, it is the main reason poor countries are poor. Its chief cause..
Soaring share prices suggest the end of the tunnel for big banks In the bible, seven years of feast were followed by seven years of famine. For banks there have been ten lean years. Subprime-loan defaults started to rise in February 2007, causing a near-collapse of the industry in America and Europe. Next came bail-outs from governments, then years of grovelling before regulators, mass firings o..
The governments of poor countries are right to complain about the West's restrictive immigration policies. But they are often guilty of the same A political brain teaser: which party in which country has promised "punitive measures" against illegal immigration, has threatened to disenfranchise people who arrived half a century ago and has told migrants to "be prepared with their bags packed"? Th..