Continental Drift

Germany and Europe: analysis, context, and the occasional verdict.

Most of what gets written about Germany and Europe falls into one of two categories: daily news that explains everything and understands nothing, or academic work that understands everything and reaches no one.

This is something different.

Continental Drift is where I think through what is actually happening in European politics and economics – not what the headlines say is happening, but what the underlying structures produce, almost inevitably, regardless of who is in office. Why democracies discount their own futures. Why stability is politically unattractive. Why good decisions produce bad outcomes, and bad decisions sometimes produce nothing at all.

Politics has been my obsession since I was old enough to follow it. I grew up in a family where it was a daily subject, and that early habit never left. It shaped what I studied – economics, because markets without politics are a fiction – and how I have worked ever since. As a trained economist, a CFA charterholder, and someone who has spent the better part of two decades in senior roles across the financial industry, I have always been most interested in the place where politics and capital markets meet. That is where the real explanations live.

I am also part of an international family, and I have spent much of my adult life in conversation with people across several continents – friends, colleagues, people who see Europe from the outside and find it alternately admirable and baffling. That perspective has shaped how I think. Europe looks different when you understand both what it believes about itself, and what others actually see.

I read European politics the way a long-term investor reads a balance sheet – with attention to what is visible, and deep suspicion of what is not.

Most posts are analytical. Occasionally I will offer a verdict. When I do, I will say so.

If you are trying to make sense of Germany and Europe from the outside, this is written for you.