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Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard
3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Save on hats and palaces
Several US states are considering abolishing the death penality as a cost-cutting measure in the financial crisis. Columnist Ilja Leonard Pfeijfer suggests the Dutch could save quite a lot on the Dutch royal family, whose costs are currently being examined by the former finance minister Gerrit Zalm. "The financial crisis gives us a magic argument for abolishing things we always wanted to abolish but couldn't without the magic argument, for example the royal family. Could Zalm already be finished counting the beans? In fact, however, it makes no difference how much the royal family costs exactly, because it certainly costs a lot. All those palaces, hats, trips abroad, as well as the Green Dragon, the royal yacht. All of that is pretty hard to swallow in these times of crisis, don't you think? 'A president is a halfwit in a raincoat', a buddy of mine likes to say. Exactly. But whatever he is, he certainly costs a lot less than a monarch. And what could be more Dutch than appointing a president because it's cheaper?"
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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Netherlands
The demise of an ideology
The international financial crisis is a sign that capitalism is also in its final throes, writes the newspaper NRC Handelsblad. "If for no other reason, the current financial crisis is a historic event because no one can maintain any longer that unlimited free trade automatically leads to a better world. And the old liberal fairy tale that the market always corrects itself has also been discredited. ... The late summer of 2008 will go down in history as the moment when the last political ideology of the 20th century experienced its demise. Almost 20 years after what looked like the definitive defeat of communism, the victor from those days is also down for the count. Both Cold War camps are now washed up. It will take a couple of years before the bankruptcy crystallises out. Then the 20th century will finally be over, just as the 19th century only ended in 1914."
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More from the press review on the subject » Economic Policy, » Financial Markets, » Global
The EU wins in Beijing
China is the absolute front runner in the Olympic medal table. In the daily NRC Handelsblad writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer doubts that this is an accurate reflection of the new global balance of power: "In the past few years China's official policy has been focused on winning more medals than the US in Beijing 2008. And it may well accomplish this because the Americans have fallen too far behind. ... In the past few days I have seen several analyses which draw the inevitable conclusion that the global balance of power has definitively shifted towards Asia. ... But all these analyses fail to take into account that all the European countries are competing as individual nations. I counted them up and by my reckoning the European Union has won a dizzying total of approximately 200 medals, which is more or less the same as China, the US and Russia put together. Now that is a true show of power."
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More from the press review on the subject » Sport, » Europe, » Global
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