Here is just a portion of what the reader needs to know about Mr. Bremmer.
This week, I am in Berlin to join David Lipton, IMF first deputy managing director, and other key stakeholders in a conversation on the shifting global economic and political landscape, and these are the sorts of questions we’ll be grappling with. It becomes more obvious with each new day’s headlines that we face a growing number of transnational challenges that, in a G-zero world, only the IMF, with the UN, World Bank and other multilateral institutions can manage.
https://www.ft.com/content/92782b36-ce7d-3ce5-b115-bb736b89a87c
He is a self-characterized ‘key stakeholder’ along with ‘David Lipton, IMF first deputy managing director’ who will examine ‘the shifting global economic and political landscape, and these are the sorts of questions we’ll be grappling with.’ Might the key vexing question be, how did these technocrats and their addiction to Neo-Liberalism’s catastrophic failure be addressed by these ‘key stakeholders’? What is the probability of such a question, of a candid self-critical evaluation, being expressed by these advocates/enactors of that egregious economic /political dead end?
Mr. Bremmer is an entrepreneur, a species of homo economicus that The Financial Times reveres. Let me point to Mr. Bremmer’s 2016 interview with The Economist, as indicative of his ability to, like the good salesman, to create opportunities during seemingly fallow periods. Here is quotation from that interview done by the Bagehot columnist, that is instructive as to the ‘how’ of creating opportunities: a strategically motivated tweet, by a ‘stakeholder’ proves to be very effective :
BAGEHOT: You mentioned the idea that Britain is becoming marginal and a “second-tier power”. To put the counter-argument, it’s spending its 2% of GDP on defence, it is an international aid superpower, Osborne has stopped the haemorrhage of funds out of the Foreign Office. Britain is still on the UN Security Council, we’re still in the EU. Is it exaggerating to say that the country is pulling back from the world?
IAN BREMMER: Philip Hammond’s speech at Munich was a hell of a lot better than the British statements last year. So I do think there’s something to it. I’m the one who tweeted that the most influence Britain has these days is what’s written in The Economist. And I meant it. Precisely because that is soft power, it does matter and Britain is seen as much more relevant on stuff that it has done for a long time than on what the British government is coming up with these days. The fact that you’re in the Security Council? Who cares. It’s an irrelevant, feckless organisation.
Look, I think that there’s something to be said: if you vote to stay in the EU the Brits can and should embrace a leadership role in what is a weaker Europe that needs Britain. That needs Britain. Why is it that this entire debate is only about what Britain needs? That shows how much smaller Britain has become.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2016/02/meaning-brexit
Also see my comment on the Bremmer interview, that also takes a more panoramic view of Bremmer as thinker and political, economic actor, at The Economist web site here:
http://www.economist.com/comment/3039253#comment-3039253
If you are unable to read my comment on The Economist web site, please, read my comment here:
Political Observer
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