Europe might consume progressively less oil and gas, but as long as it consumes any, outsourcing the ability to refine them merely increases dependence and thus vulnerability, warns Ana Palacio. bit.ly/46ScuBL

Europe Still Needs Molecules

Ana Palacio points out that fossil fuels cannot be replaced immediately, nor can they be replaced only with electrons.

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With risks to energy security becoming a fact of life, the question of how to build resilience has become urgent. Diego Hernandez Diaz, Luciano Di Fiori, and Tiago Devesa (McKinsey) advise countries and companies on a way forward. bit.ly/4xVu2Ii

Energy Security in an Age of Disruption

Diego Hernandez Diaz, Luciano Di Fiori and Tiago Devesa consider how countries, especially fiscally constrained emerging economies, can build “response capacity.”

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Emphasizing fiscal integration would help solve one of the fundamental weaknesses of ECOWAS / CEDEAO’s monetary-integration project: the lack of a robust mechanism to address asymmetric shocks, Fofack Hippolyte observes. bit.ly/3TunWQM

Africa’s Common Currency-in-Waiting

Hippolyte Fofack explains why the Economic Community of West African States needs fiscal federalism before monetary integration.

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Because neither the European Union nor Canada can disentangle itself from the American economy, both need the capacity to act when a US president becomes coercive. My latest @projectsyndicate.bsky.social prosyn.org/n2LnHuF

An EU–Canada Partnership Against Coercion

Alberto Alemanno explains how a new association agreement between the two US-dependent economies could work.

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The Reconciliation League, an international association of 13 colleges and universities, seeks to prepare the next generation of society’s leaders to engage constructively across different perspectives, Gordon Brown and John Sexton write. bit.ly/47vgmZv

Learning to Reconcile

Gordon Brown & John Sexton tout a new leadership program that will help counter the secular dogmatism dividing societies.

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As detailed in my latest PS column (link below), "two secular trends will shape finance in the years ahead, one powered from the bottom up by transformative technological innovations, and the other from the top down by geoeconomic influences. Managing each will require major... 1 of 2

The Opposing Forces Reshaping Global Finance

Mohamed A. El-Erian thinks the industry will be transformed by new technologies and the rise of zero-sum economic statecraft.

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The race for general intelligence is ill-advised. It would be better for models to focus on clear domain-specific applications, with narrow tasks and metrics calibrated carefully to each, @dacemoglumit.bsky.social argues. bit.ly/4ACuLk0

Distorted Intelligence at the AI Frontier

Daron Acemoglu offers a novel explanation for why OpenAI and Anthropic’s most advanced models have been going rogue.

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Europe's offer of associate membership to Canada could serve EU integration more than the federalist dream, by renewing our understanding of interdependence in a post-Trump world. My latest for @projectsyndicate.bsky.social www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/e...

For most of the last three decades, the United Kingdom has recorded the lowest level of total public investment in the G7, a gap equivalent to roughly £500 billion in foregone investment, notes @mazzucatom.bsky.social. bit.ly/3VTvzRC

Good Growth Requires the Right Public Finance

Mariana Mazzucato explains how state lending and investment bodies can be empowered to shape markets for the common good.

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The charge that @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu overture to Mark J. Carney lacks substance is hardly damning. After all, it was improvisation that brought the European Union into being in the first place, writes @alemanno.bsky.social. bit.ly/3VeYNuc

An EU–Canada Partnership Against Coercion

Alberto Alemanno explains how a new association agreement between the two US-dependent economies could work.

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Although the old adage about “garbage in, garbage out” applies more than ever in an “agentic economy,” this framing could be dangerously simplistic, Shuwei Fang warns. bit.ly/4zmTmrV

Today's round-up marks World News Day, and includes articles and insights from around the world including the White House journalists still blocked and rebuked, and the BBC chief on its precarious future. Click to read, share and subscribe. www.linkedin.com/pulse/celebr...

Celebrating World News Day

Plus: White House journalists still blocked and rebuked | Nothing safe at the BBC | How newsrooms can prepare for disasters Journalism Today. 28 September 2026 Research | Reporting | Fellowships | Lea...

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One should not underestimate the structural and secular challenges facing finance. Notwithstanding digital technologies’ exciting potential to unlock new efficiency gains, companies will face many new uncertainties, @elerianm.bsky.social writes. bit.ly/3VkIgEU

The Opposing Forces Reshaping Global Finance

Mohamed A. El-Erian thinks the industry will be transformed by new technologies and the rise of zero-sum economic statecraft.

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The purpose of social science is not to measure the world as it is, but to explain why it is that way and how it might be otherwise, points out @cacrisalves.bsky.social. When economics forgets this distinction, it risks becoming an obedient science. bit.ly/3VceyC4

The Dismally Obedient Science

Carolina Alves warns that empirical research in economics is displacing investigation of underlying causes.

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While access to truthful reporting has long been considered a fundamental right, journalism’s traditional business model is breaking down. Join the World News Day movement and support your favorite news outlets. #WorldNewsDay #ChooseTrustedJournalism

@jefffrankel.bsky.social (@harvard.edu) argues that US politics is broken not because of inequality, but because people believe different facts. bit.ly/4dYJ3Si

Oligarchy Is a Symptom, Not a Cause

Jeffrey Frankel argues that US politics is broken not because of inequality, but because people believe different facts.

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In Saxony-Anhalt, the anti-immigrant AfD needs to win the support of another anti-immigrant party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which is led by a woman whose father came from Iran, Sławomir Sierakowski observes. bit.ly/46Ln5OL

The Immigrants Leading the Anti-Immigrant Far Right

Sławomir Sierakowski emphasizes how many of those appealing to nativism and xenophobia are guilty of rank hypocrisy.

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The US is operating on the assumption that AI is the only tool available for fending off a financial crisis caused by excessive debt, even though mounting AI risks themselves contain the seeds of financial panic and disaster, notes Harold James. bit.ly/4z31AVT

The Great AI Gamble

Harold James warns that the US and China have, for different reasons, embraced a dangerous zero-sum logic.

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Gordon Brown and Daron Acemoglu offer different diagnoses of democracy’s crisis, one centered on the erosion of community, the other on workers’ loss of power. Both show why the way back is anything but clear, argues LSE News’s Gene Frieda. bit.ly/3TjGrrh

The new nationalism that is ascendant in both Germany and France represents an open betrayal of Europe, and a vote in favor of Russia, Joschka Fischer observes. bit.ly/47jXT20

The Return of the German Question

Joschka Fischer fears that the victory of the far-right AfD in Saxony-Anhalt could augur a nightmare scenario for Europe.

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Argentina and Ecuador illustrate how the austerity measures typically prescribed by IMF News not only weaken long-term development prospects, but also often fail to achieve financial stabilization, @ideadevecon.bsky.social's Martín Abeles writes. bit.ly/4hqaXry

The Return of the IMF to Latin America

Martín Abeles warns that financial dependence and geopolitical alignment could become intertwined in the region.

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In a new PS Big Picture, @b-eichengreen.bsky.social, @gabbadraws.bsky.social, Angela Huyue Zhang, and others assess claims about the technology and consider what responses are warranted. bit.ly/4AwqdeS

Nobody can win a race whose end no one can understand, and that includes the AI labs sprinting the hardest, @audreyt.org observes. bit.ly/3VdfOVp

If the EU, the US, and China all liberalize trade with Mercosur, the bloc’s agricultural area may increase by 2–9%, finds @bardharstad.bsky.social. If the EU incorporates deforestation into a contingent trade agreement, however, this expansion would be avoided. bit.ly/4xzQk1T

How Trade Deals Can Save Nature

Bård Harstad argues that incorporating deforestation-linked tariffs could lead to more conservation and more trade.

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Political leaders, particularly in Europe, must wake up to the deteriorating situation in the Balkans, where nationalist tensions are high and still rising, @cbildt.bsky.social warns. bit.ly/3V96YIh

Alarm Bells in the Balkans

Carl Bildt worries that recent political developments and rising ethno-nationalist tensions could prove destabilizing.

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Competitive markets reward successful firms and allow unsuccessful ones to fail. Keeping loss-making companies afloat under government control undermines that process, notes Anne O. Krueger. bit.ly/3TKf8Xe

Trump’s 21st-Century Mercantilism

Anne O. Krueger warns that letting politicians pick corporate winners will make America poorer and ultimately less secure.

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@fordfoundation.org President @heathergerken.bsky.social set the stage for our latest event by noting that any discussion on how to reform the UN must begin with a different question: What kind of global governance the world will need in 2030 or 2050? bit.ly/4xzsK5B #PSEvents #UNGA

As long as AI is used to eliminate wage labor while syphoning off profits from actual markets into our tech lords’ cloud rents, the economic value produced per worker will tank, writes @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social. bit.ly/4zeg3hV

The AI Productivity Delusion

Yanis Varoufakis sees the technology converting markets into fiefs and profits into rents, ending capitalism as we know it.

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Since AI amplifies existing know-how, a country with a deep engineering talent pool and strong institutions can use it to accelerate domestic innovation, whereas a country lacking these assets risks becoming a permanent consumer, Mark Doumba writes. bit.ly/4dsW2LS

Technological Leapfrogging in the AI Age

Mark-Alexandre Doumba points out that development depends on building indigenous capacity, not mere access to imported innovations.

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Investing more retirement savings in capital markets could provide innovative German firms with the long-term capital they need to scale and compete globally, explains @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social’s Ulrike Malmendier. bit.ly/4rs9dTa

Germany’s Moment of Reckoning

Ulrike Malmendier warns that the country is trapped by its own success and urges policymakers to remove barriers to innovation.

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