Is Everyone the Same Person? Nautilu
America Is Locked in a New Class War Foreign Policy
The Class War Comes for Condiments Slate
Trump is making Europe great again The US president has provided the biggest stimulus towards European integration since the end of the Cold War
Donald Trump will never win the Nobel Peace prize. But he should be a strong contender for the Charlemagne prize — which is awarded each year to the person who has made the greatest contribution to European unity.
The US president has courted Russia, undermined faith in the Nato alliance, threatened the EU with tariffs and boosted the far right in Europe. All this has had a galvanising effect on the EU. Fundamental steps towards greater European unity — stalled for decades — are now under way.
There are three key areas to watch. The first is European defence; the second is joint European debt; the third is repairing the breach between the UK and the EU.
Dramatic swings in European public opinion underpin these developments. A poll last week showed that 78 per cent of British people regard Trump as a threat to the UK. Some 74 per cent of Germans and 69 per cent of the French agree. In another poll, France was rated as a “reliable partner” by 85 per cent of Germans and Britain scored 78 per cent — the US is down at 16 per cent.
Many European leaders agree that Trump’s America is now a threat, though few will say it out loud for diplomatic reasons. They are also uncomfortably aware of how the transatlantic alliance, now in its eighth decade, has made them highly dependent on American military support. This is not just a question of money. The really dangerous dependencies are on US technology and weaponry.
The Europeans can see how much trouble the Ukrainians are in after the Trump administration’s decision to cut off flows of intelligence and weaponry. So they are pursuing a two-track policy. They need to delay the severance of American military support to Europe for as long as possible, while preparing for that moment as fast as possible.
That was the logic behind last week’s decision to allow the European Commission to raise €150bn to spend on the EU defence industry. The new spending is likely to be concentrated on areas where European countries are particularly dependent on America, such as air defence.
The issuance of common European debt is not just a way of raising money for defence. It also offers the chance to build up the euro as an alternative to the dollar as a global reserve currency. The capriciousness of the Trump administration means that there is a considerable global appetite for an alternative to US Treasuries as a safe asset.
The taboo against common European debt is traditionally strong in frugal Germany. It was partially broken during the pandemic. Now it is likely to be swept away. Friedrich Merz, who will be Germany’s next chancellor, is also moving to exempt national spending on defence and infrastructure from his country’s constitutional limits on deficit spending. Its past fiscal prudence means that Germany has much more space to borrow than heavily indebted France or Britain.
A form of military Keynesianism could restimulate Europe’s largest economy. As one leading French businessman put it to me, with more than a touch of ambivalence: “It is very clear. The Germans can’t sell their cars. So they will make tanks.”
Trump’s final favour to Europe is to hasten the post-Brexit rapprochement between the EU and the UK. Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the British and French leaders, have worked together closely on Ukraine. They could form a powerful triumvirate with Merz.
One mechanism for increasing military spending would be a new European defence fund, in which Britain could participate. This would have the added virtue of giving the UK and the EU a new form of co-operation that avoids reopening the Pandora’s box of Brexit.
The prospect of repairing some of the damage done by Brexit underlines that this is not just a moment of threat for Europe. It is also a moment of opportunity. Europe can now plausibly offer a more stable business environment than Trump’s America — which may already be reflected in the relative performance of stock markets in the US and Europe.
As the Trump administration increases its assault on US universities, there is also a chance to attract leading researchers to Europe. The gap in salaries and research money between North America and Europe is large. But the overall sums of money involved are small, when compared with the amounts being thrown around for defence.
There will be plenty of disagreements and setbacks on the way to greater European unity. France and Germany are already clashing over how the new EU defence fund will spend its money.
Every clash like that will feed the scepticism of those who say that Europe will never get its act together. There were similar doubts and setbacks on the often bumpy road to setting up the original European coal and steel community in the 1950s and the single currency in the 1990s. But European leaders got there in the end because the political imperative to agree was so overwhelming.
All of the great leaps forward for European unity have been caused by geopolitical shocks — first the end of the second world war; then the end of the cold war. Now, courtesy of Trump, we are looking at the end of the transatlantic alliance. Europe responded with strength and inventiveness to the last two great challenges. It can do so again.
Unprecedented attack by the White House on a law firm with past and current representation of clients who are “adversaries” of Donald Trump. The pretext for this attack is that Perkins Coie implemented eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP. Executive Order, March 6, 2025.
“Section 1. Purpose. The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP (“Perkins Coie”) has affected this country for decades. Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false “dossier” designed to steal an election
Method in the Madness?
We study the link between exposure to anger and performance, something that to our knowledge has not been studied before. We exploit the US version of the nationally syndicated television cooking competition MasterChef and collect data on every instance in which judges objectively demonstrate anger to individual participants in each of the episodes in ten years, from 2010 to 2020, of this competition. Contestants exposed to anger from judges end up higher in the final rankings, increase their probability of success in cooking challenges, as well as their probability of reaching the top three and even winning the competition.
Clever paper from Alberto Chong. Now if only you donkeys would improve your comments.
KPMG bosses are demanding dozens of mergers among the national partnerships that make up the global accounting firm in a move they hope will boost growth and prevent audit scandals, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort to more closely integrate the businesses, which are separately owned by the partners in each country, amounts to one of the biggest overhauls of a Big Four network in years and comes at a time of sluggish growth and uncertainty for the industry.
KPMG is aiming to slash the number of “economic units” that make up the international network to as few as 32 by next year, from more than 100 two years ago, according to a presentation executives made to analysts last month that was described to the Financial Times.
The target represents an acceleration of a “clustering” strategy that the firm has been pursuing since 2023, which has already led to the combination of several member firms in the Middle East, and a similar initiative in Africa.
In a further consolidation, KPMG’s UK partnership voted last year to merge with the KPMG business in Switzerland.
Unlike multinational corporations, the Big Four accounting firms have historically been made up of a network of locally owned partnerships, reflecting local audit regulations and protecting partners in one country from liability for scandals elsewhere.
But the model has become increasingly strained as consulting, which requires substantial investment in technology, becomes a more important part of the business.
According to people familiar with the matter, the company is concerned that smaller countries may struggle to keep up with these investments while also funding the compliance procedures necessary to protect audit quality and prevent reputational scandals.
KPMG had global revenues of $38.4bn in its last financial year. At 5.4 per cent, stripping out currency fluctuations, this was the fastest growth among the Big Four but represented a slowdown from the previous year.
The outlook for the industry in 2025 has been clouded by economic and geopolitical uncertainty affecting clients.
Bill Thomas, chief executive of KPMG International, was given a one-year extension to his leadership term to see through a strategy of investment and integration that runs to September 2026.
Executives have set a $300mn revenue threshold below which a member firm might be too small to remain a full member of the KPMG network in the long term, one of the people said.
KPMG is also insisting that, in any mergers, the profit pools for partners be at least partially shared across the countries involved, with the aim of moving to full profit-sharing over time, the person said.
Previous merger attempts within KPMG have proven fraught. In 2007, the company’s UK, German, Swiss and Liechtenstein businesses merged to form KPMG Europe, but the move was reversed after it failed to deliver the intended efficiencies.
Other Big Four firms have faced similar challenges adapting their structure to meet the need for technology investment and more efficient service for international clients.
A plan by EY to merge its national consulting operations and float them on the stock market collapsed in 2023 amid bitter infighting.
Deloitte has successfully combined clusters of member firms, including in north-west Europe in 2016 and Asia-Pacific in 2018.
KPMG said it would retain country-level legal entities to comply with local audit regulations, but that reducing the number of economic units would facilitate the investments needed for its growth strategy.
“The fewer business units you have, the easier it is to do business globally,” said Gary Wingrove, chief operating officer of KPMG International.
“We want better scale in our member firms. It deals with factors related to resilience and quality [which] protects the fabric of the organisation, and bigger units can invest more so as to deliver the right services to clients across the globe,” he said.
“It also provides our people with better career prospects, as it is easier to move within a unit than between them.”
