Just How Populist Does Obama Want to Get?

Enough to purchase a list of Wall Street tax evaders from a renegade HSBC employee?  Angela Merkel, facing far less angst at home than Obama, has now declared an interest in availing herself of the list.  The BBC puts the potential yield from for the country at a relatively modest $100m; for the US, it would undoubtedly be far greater.  Sadly, from a political perspective, the odds that the President would order up the list are remote.  Still, the story of how the list surfaced is worth checking out.

Update 2/4: LeMonde now reporting that the Germans stand to recoup "well above" the $100m figure initially quoted.

The Areva-Siemens tiff: more bad news for Franco-German relations

Franco-German relations continue to deteriorate.  The latest point of contention involves a legal tiff between French nuclear conglomerate Areva and the German engineering giant Siemens.  In 2000, both companies signed a cooperation agreement for a joint nuclear venture, giving Siemens a 34% stake in the project.  However, one month ago Siemens pulled out of the plan, putting its stake in the nuclear venture up for sale.  It seems that Siemens was frustrated when attempts to increase its stake in the Areva parent company were blocked.  Apparently the French government wants Areva to stay French and perhaps merge with French engineering giant Alstom, a competitor of Siemens.  The Economist did a nice piece on this business.

That's all fairly vanilla stuff.  But what makes the story interesting is that last week Siemens signed a new nuclear deal with the Russian nuclear conglomerate Rosatom.  The French at Areva are less than amused, and they claim that the new agreement violates their 2000 contract with Siemens.

The important point here is that Areva, Siemens, and Rosatom are all at least partially owned by their national governments.  This fact, coupled with the strategic importance of nuclear energy, makes the Areva-Siemens fiasco a fascinating story that mirrors the geopolitical developments we see taking place.  Franco-German relations continue to worsen, while German-Russian business interests are converging more and more...