Jack SMith

2 weeks ago | eurointelligence.com | Jack SMith |Jack Smith |Wolfgang Munchau

In interwar Denmark, the writer Aksel Sandemose came up with a concept that would come to define his home country, and Scandinavia as a whole: the law of Jante. Named after a fictional town, the gist of the 10 so-called laws is that nobody was to think they were anything special, or better than anyone else. Sandemose joked that Jante’s penal code was gossip and recrimination. The townspeople always knew something about everyone else.

1 month ago | eurointelligence.com | Jack SMith |Jack Smith |Wolfgang Munchau

May 8th, last week, was Victory in Europe, or VE Day. It is a public holiday across much of Europe. This year’s is a bit different. It marked 80 years since the end of World War II in Europe, after Germany’s unconditional surrender. On VE Day this year, I thought about two memories from my own, relatively short, life. One was of all the people I met who fought in the war, but particularly a man my family knew as Uncle Ned. He was a quiet and reserved man.

2 months ago | eurointelligence.com | Jack SMith |Jack Smith |Wolfgang Munchau

The fall in oil price is both dramatic in terms of its scale, and the reasons that lie behind it. This is not only about Donald Trump. As of the morning of April 8th, Brent crude is down to $60.27 a barrel, $19.59 down on the week, and $19.25 on the year to date. In the same time, West Texas Intermediate has gone down to by almost 20%, to $58.38 at market open. Two different factors have triggered the sell-off.