Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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HE DESERVES A BREAK.
PHOTOGRAPHER: JASPER JUINEN/BLOOMBERG

Greece’s Euro Membership Looks Vulnerable Again

by Mark Gilbert | Feb 26, 2017 | Opinion

Greece is caught in a spat between its major creditors. On one side is the International Monetary Fund, which says “significant debt relief” is needed. On the other are the euro-zone institutions, insisting on a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of...

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Bye-bye single market?
Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images

Theresa May’s Brexit was Always Going to be Hard

by Mark Gilbert | Jan 21, 2017 | Opinion

In February 2015, economists at HSBC Holdings in London coined the terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit. The latter would maintain “much of the status quo” if the U.K. voted to quit the European Union; the former entailed “huge risk...

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A Union Jack flag flutters next to European Union flags ahead of a visit from Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium February 16, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Post-Brexit Britain Faces a Pay Squeeze

by Mark Gilbert | Dec 15, 2016 | Opinion

Don’t tell Tiny Tim, but even if Brexit hasn’t put a damper on Christmas 2016, next year might be a different story. Come January, Britons will pay 5 percent more for their Lego sets, as the Danish company raises prices in response to the pound’s...

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The hair-raising cost of energy security. Photographer: JENS SCHLUETER/AFP/Getty Images

The U.K.’s Nuclear Gamble

by Mark Gilbert | Sep 17, 2016 | Opinion

The U.K. government had to perform two distinct calculations in deciding to proceed with building a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, one political and one economic. The political reckoning was always going to argue strongly against abandoning the project. The...