1- 2 questions to Jacques Attali 2- revisiting 2020 forecasts around Jack Ma’s fate and a plea for a Climate Reconstruction Bank
(cross posting from my Substack newsletter Perspective And Context, with updates from today)
Jacques Attali is a rare voice on the global landscape: special Adviser to French President Mitterrand for 10 years; founder of 4 international institutions: Action contre la faim, EUREKA, BERD and Positive Planet; his more than 80 books are available in 22 languages have sold 9 million copies worldwide.
His 1990 book Lignes d’Horizon (Millennium in the English version) famously served as an inspiration for Sun Microsystem’s Java programming language.
Attali is a columnist for French daily Les Echos and on attali.com. He recently turned his keen…
Lessons for our world 40 years after François Mitterrand’s pivotal election & Launching Green Helmets across the globe
May 10 1981 rocked the Western world as Mitterrand’s election propelled the French Left to power. His 3rd try after 1965 and 1974 capped off decades long political experience as Minister for French Colonies, the Interior, Justice and more.
Path to power
The son of Southwestern “petite bourgeoisie” Mitterrand’s path during WW2 was much like France’s: resigned to Pétain in 40 and a Résistant in 42–43.
Mitterrand was elected to post war Parliament on a center right platform and his singular insight was that he could, as an outsider, unite the fractious Left. His bold takeover of the Socialist Party in 1971 and…
Every JFK needs an LBJ — Biden’s first 100 days have been epic in scope and ambition
Prologue: this writer confesses to being a Biden fan since 2007, this tweet from 2008 is digital proof: https://twitter.com/fredericg/status/896538154?s=20
If Barack Obama was how DL Hughley put it, “what we aspire to be, Trump is who we are”, Joe Biden is truly America at its best: setting ambitious goals and making them happen, the hard way. His massive COVID relief bill, coupled with a sweeping infrastructure investment bill, could shift America’s political and economic landscape in ways unseen since the 1960s. Joe Biden, the veteran legislator, could be LBJ 2.0 and deliver lasting and profound change.
Accuracy score: 6.8/10
(cross posted from Perspective and Context)
On Oct 25 2020, this writer set out to forecast the possible outcomes for the 2020 election, worth revisiting now. On a scale of 1/10 the correlation between possible and actual ranks at 6.8.
1- Biden wins in a sweeping 1932/1984 landslide
2- Biden ekes out a slim victory and Trump contests the win, sending the US into a self-destructive tailspin
3- Biden ekes out a slim victory and Trump huff and puffs but doesn’t contest the win, preferring to hedge his bet on the future
The last 5 months saw a relative mix…
Constant and unencumbered access to them is key to the global economy.
30 years after the start of the first Gulf War, clearly fought by the US-led coalition to deter Iraq from taking over the Saudi oil fields, the world could see a decisive pivot to another “hot” conflict, this time over preserving access to semiconductor chips.
These chips could act as “the new oil”, in the sense that constant and ready access to them is key to the global economy.
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President George HW Bush convinced a coalition of 35 nations to rout Saddam Hussein to ensure the flow of oil in 1990–91 and the preservation of control of the Saudi…
Are we wasting the Covid crisis and avoiding the Great Reset ?
NB: this is a cross post from my Substack newsletter, published in Oct
Born during the baby crash years of the 1970s and coming of age in 1980s America images of the future beckoned and excited the imagination. Notwithstanding the “Day After” nuclear Armageddon fears, our childhood was bookended by the 2001 Space Odyssey-style visions of the future and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Futurists like Alvin Toffler graced magazine covers and the “year 2000” was a calling card for progress. The first 2 decades of the 21st century, rocked by terrorism, wars and climate catastrophes, and too often…
America needs to update its federation to prevent a deeper unraveling
NB: originally published on Oct 17, this is a cross post from my Substack newsletter
The AP released a disheartening poll yesterday on the state of US democracy:
Add to it that US media thinks little of the fact there was no debate between the candidates for President this week says a lot about the state of America. In 2004 at the DNC Barack Obama appealed to the better selves of America and asked for a leap of faith to transcend the red/blue divide. His call to action mostly failed, due to entrenched interests and more.
