Us politics

In this week’s Books Podcast, I’m joined by the economic historian Adam Tooze, author of the new book Crashed: How A Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World. How are the subprime collapse in the US and the Eurozone crisis that came after linked? Why did a cartel of mega-wealthy businessmen do a good job at rescuing the US from disaster, and a group of well-intentioned political technocrats make such a hash of it in Europe? And how is the Balance of Financial Terror between the US and China holding up these days? Here’s some stuff you won’t learn from Michael Lewis… 

From Nixon’s ‘détente’ to Obama’s ‘reset’, every new US administration makes one attempt at reconciliation with Moscow. Today it’s Donald Trump’s turn, at his summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. At first, such meetings are sensationalised as historic turning points, with the future of the world hanging in the balance. But that view doesn’t usually last long. It only takes a couple of state-sponsored assassinations by Russia, and maybe a small war in addition, for the parties to realise that they are at cross-purposes. And if you are in geopolitics, as a US president has to be, you have to talk to foreign dictators from time to time. That

When Theresa May first met Donald Trump, she was pictured strolling arm-in-arm with the president through the grounds of the White House. But a lot has happened in the 18 months since that meeting, and now it seems May doesn’t even want to touch the Donald’s hand. When Trump greeted the Prime Minister at the Nato summit in Brussels, May refused to shake the president’s hand. Perhaps Trump’s overtures to Boris Johnson haven’t gone down well…

Theresa May’s bad week just got worse. After two Cabinet Brexiteers – David Davis and Boris Johnson – resigned on Monday, the Prime Minister attempted today to suggest it was business as usual tweeting of a ‘productive Cabinet meeting this morning – looking ahead to a busy week’. However, right on cue, President Trump has arrived on the scene to enter some drama. Ahead of the US president’s working visit on Friday, Trump has been commenting on the UK political situation which, by the way, is in ‘turmoil’. The part that will particularly concern No 10 is not Trump suggesting his trip to Helsinki to see Putin will be easier than

Historians will still be asking in 100 years’ time why public outrage did not do Donald Trump more harm. How come he could keep seeming to offend three-quarters of America yet still end up with half the vote? The answer, I think, is that his opponents kept falling into the same trap: they kept over-reacting. Mildly-objectionable comments and policies were met with full-on Twitter storms, making his opponents end up looking like the ones who were deranged. When you went back and thought about what Trump had actually said he kept coming across, if not reasonable, then as less unreasonable than the voices raging against him. You found yourself asking:

Oh, dear. The myth that James Comey has sedulously cultivated of himself—the ascetic warrior for truth, the vigilant sentinel of liberty—is coming in for a bit of a pounding today. In his report to Congress on Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation, the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded, “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.” Comey’s recent memoir was titled A Higher Loyalty, but his