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Benjamin Wolf 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Benjamin Wolf 🇺🇦
@benbawan
Journalist 🗞️ Historian 📚 Writer ✏️ European 🌍 Austrian 🎶 Styrian 🌳  Jedi ☄️ Eldar ✨ Schwoaza ⚽
Jan 15 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I understand the security aspect of the US mandate to sell TikTok to American owners.

But it’s also a pretty nice way to get a cutting edge social media platform in American hands.

Imagine Europe would do that with the European business of American social media platforms. Of course, Europe and the US are allies, so there’s no immediate security reason for doing such a thing – though past data handling scandals and Musk’s recent actions on Twitter could go into this direction.
Dec 6, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The French 🇫🇷 alone were right and ready to act on Syria in 2013.

Had we listened to Hollande, not Obama, we could have prevented one of the greatest humanitarian and geopolitical calamities of the 21st century - and so much that followed from it. Hundreds of thousands killed, millions of people displaced, Europe wrestling with the political implications of taking in refugees (incl. Brexit), Russia annexing Crimea and fighting Ukraine, long before the full-scale invasion - all consequences of this utter failure in 2013.
Jun 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We like to talk about the rise of the far-right.

And believe me, I like them as little as anyone.

But we shouldn’t tell their story for them - the voter potential has been here for decades, but it’s *not* growing.

From time to time they get much less, then again their max. Of course I wish we'd find ways to keep their voter share lower for longer.

And I also wish other political parties (the conservatives, ahem) would not help them get into government, be it regional or national.
Jun 3, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Indeed. Ireland and the Netherlands are two of the most stunning examples how different demographics can develop even within Europe.

Both are small, fertile, strategically decently well-placed places - with astonishingly different population trajectories. We often also forget that Ireland is 2/3 the size of England and similarly fertile and easy to settle - yet it only has 1/11 of the population.
Jun 2, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It's quite curious that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the EU 🇪🇺 in 2011 and 2021 was virtually the same (1.54 to 1.53) while that of the US 🇺🇸 dropped by over -15% in the same period. It's not least curious because the US actually had more robust growth in that period (even though headline numbers make the difference seem starker than GDP per capita) and unemployment fell much faster in the US.
Mar 21, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It's funny that Germany has these complex processes for EU voting and an Austrian minister of one coalition party can just waltz in to EuCo, veto Romania’s & Bulgaria’s Schengen accession (coalition partner not pleased, parliament not informed) and it's all whatevs 🤪 And with funny I mean sad.

And if somebody now explains that Austria also has these processes formally in place I wanna see actual proof that that's what happened before that veto by interior minister Sobotka on Schengen accession.
Mar 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
That’s a bug and important step forward!

And in really glad Austria joined the initiative.

There's been lots of (justified!) debate over Austria’s neutrality and the sham it is.

However, some important things did change and that’s one of those. Contrast Austria 🇦🇹 joining the initiative for buying and procuring munition for Ukraine with Switzerland 🇨🇭 destroying munition that they could have sold to Germany for delivery to Ukraine. Every neutrality is different.
Mar 20, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
It is wild to think that in 1794, only 12% the population of France spoke French.

Tbf, many others spoke languages closely associated with it, but still.

In the same year, about 14% percent of the population of the Habsburg Empire spoke German. Over the following century, France would actively, aggressively and comprehensively squeeze other languages and impose one French language for as many citizens as possible. Italy did the same thing, so did (low key), Germany, Spain, Great Britain. The Habsburg Empire did not.
Mar 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It’s a bit hard to see on this graph, but the yellow dots show how big these banks are as a share of euro zone GDP.

That’s a good thing, only one bank breaches 20%, most are well under it. US banking sector even more diversified. China (up to 40%) and Canada (80%) much less so. Switzerland is of course in another league, with its soon mega bank UBS-CreditSuisse approaching 200% of GDP. That’ll be a major risk and headache for Switzerland going forward.
Mar 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
On the one hand, this warning call is very important, as always.

One the other, and looked at with a purely analytical eye, I can’t help but doubt the forecast that emissions will just plateau after 2040 for another 60 years.

That seems very unlikely. If we want manage to stabilize our emissions from here all the way to 2040, we need massive upfront investments into everything green, renewable and electric.

But if this investment then continues further beyond, they should start to plunge sharply (probably even sooner).
Mar 20, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
There’s at least three parts to this story:

First, both world wars and the disruptions in the interest period made sustained economic growth hard or even massively destroyed and reversed it.

All the while, technological progress was continuing apace. When peace and stability finally came - at least for some parts of the world - there were 30+ years of largely unfulfilled potential and technological breakthroughs to be put to use (particularly in Europe and Japan, but not only).
Mar 20, 2023 • 14 tweets • 7 min read
It’s pretty remarkable that among the world’s largest economies, only Europe 🇪🇺 is forecast to return to its pre-pandemic debt to GDP level pretty soon.

All others are expected to have permanently higher debt levels: the US 🇺🇸 by about 20%, Japan 🇯🇵 by 25% and China by 30%. ImageImageImageImage This is - almost by definition - not really a story of fiscal prudence vs profligacy.

It’s about both growth and spending.

Basically, how much bang (growth) did governments get for their bucks (additional spending).
Sep 2, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
In England, the life expectancy of Black men and women is *higher* than that of white men and women.

Black men in England can expect to live *10 years longer* on average than Black men in the US.

kingsfund.org.uk/publications/w… I would love to have data on life expectancy according to ethnicity in France, but I suppose they don't exist. What say you, @thomasforth?

Between 3-5 million Black people live in France, that's half of all Black Europeans.
Sep 2, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The time of Russian gas flowing to Europe is coming to a close - finally.

But how much Russian gas did Europe get these past 6 months, when we kept importing the stuff instead of doing an embargo right away?

Well, it's some, but a lot less than you might think. Over the past 6 months, the EU imported about 41 billion m3 of Russian gas - about 400 TWh.

That's akin to about 35% of total EU gas storage or European gas consumption in about one-and-a-half winter months.
Sep 2, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The EU 🇪🇺 was back at its pre-pandemic employment level already in Q2 2021.

Now it's two percentage points above. An incredibly strong labor market performance for Europe, stronger than the US.

(Albeit we're still below the US 🇺🇸 level overall, tbf) I remember lots of people giving Europe's success with employment short shrift all throughout 2021.

One of the main points was that it might well be short-lived and will peter out or reverse once furloughs and short-term work schemes fully end.
Sep 1, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The problem with that is that the UK and the pound are imho not in a position to pull that off over a long period of time and on a big scale.

It's not Japan, which has had decades of deflation, a huge positive net international investment balance and wants currency depreciation. The UK doesn't want the pound to keep on dropping, nor can it count on international investors lending quasi unlimited amount to the UK government, especially not with current inflation and growth numbers.
Jun 1, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Okay, two things I’m struggling to understand right now:

– Do we genuinely believe that China will *not* implement more lockdowns in the fall and winter, when Covid usually surges?

– And do we believe growth will stay robust in the EU, US and Japan for the entire H2 2022? I reckon most economists would, in their heart of hearts, say “no” to the former and to the latter.

Yet we all seemingly still assume energy prices will stay sky-high for the rest of the year, and perhaps next year, and who knows how long. Don’t we?
Jan 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The relationship between the UK and the EU is rapidly becoming similar to that between Canada and the US - public opinion in the former cares lots about what the latter does, but that's not so much the case the other way around. In the UK bubble I follow I see lots of frantic takes and debates hlabiut how this or that move by the EU should or could be seen.

In my EU bubble I see discussions of what AstraZeneca did or didn't do and when and how we will get the vaccines (or not). The UK hardly figures.
Dec 15, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
So the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine will probably be approved by the EMA on December 23. We know that because we know it'll be approved. But we still wait a week for actual approval because - yeah, why, actually? It's odd, at the very least. If the EMA experts agree that the vaccine merits approval, just go ahead and approve it. If there's bureaucracy involved that make it longer, well, reform it then. It's profoundly weird to wait for an approval that we know is coming, just because.
Dec 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Austria can borrow billions for 100 years for a yearly coupon of 0.88%.

Imagine the Republic would borrow, say, €9 billion and then put €1,000 for each of its citizens into a fund that invests like Norway’s National Fund.

Fanciful but fascinating.

ft.com/content/d55687… A small, stable country could probably even get away with that. It would raise some eyebrows, but in the end, nobody would mind much. And you could repeat it for a couple years. Then you wait until global growth does its miracles.
Dec 8, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
In 1990, the population of Western Germany (62 million) and France (58m) was within a whisker.

Then reunification happened – and Germany suddenly had 80 million.

In 2050, France’s population could reach around 80 million and overtake Germany as the EU’s most populous state. France’s demographics – current & historical – will never cease to amaze me.

France was one of a few countries to kinda miss out on the massive population increase of the 19th century. And it got worse until 1950.

But then, when everyone else slowed down, bonjour la France!