The A-List

We need to begin thinking concretely about a political path towards stabilising the country and what a negotiated settlement with the Taliban might look like once the bulk of US troops have pulled out.

Mitt Romney has two options to consider if he were to face the same problems experienced by Barack Obama in advancing his agenda.

Anyone who believes that US decline is inevitable ignores history. The US will almost certainly not face market pressure this year, or for several years to come. But there’s a catch: the very absence of market pressure makes it much harder for US policymakers to reach difficult compromises. This safe-haven curse imperils US efforts to foster robust economic growth and fiscal sustainability.

We need to accept without panicking that a bank may sometimes lose $2bn. After all, far more was lost from old-fashioned corporate loans turning sour during each of the last two recessions.

Given conditions on the ground, the current 17-member eurozone needs to evolve into a smaller and less imperfect union if it is to avoid the growing risk of total fragmentation – namely a closer economic and political union among the big four (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) along with other members with similar initial conditions.

Public anger over high levels of executive pay has provoked new government proposals in Britain for binding shareholder votes on remuneration committee reports. This will mark a revolution in corporate governance as shareholders would vote both on the past year’s awards and on the coming year’s plans for salary increases, bonuses and long-term share awards. Boards will find it difficult to deal with such intervention in complex pay structures. A ‘no’ vote is a blunt instrument which will not provide a clear steer on where to go next.

In 1931, Austria was attempting to deliver the kind of austerity now being witnessed in parts of southern Europe. Under the Gold Standard, the only option to regain competitiveness was to force domestic prices and wages lower. In the process, businesses failed, non-performing loans rose and the banking system began to look incredibly vulnerable. The crisis culminated in the failure of Creditanstalt, a major Viennese bank – the 1931 equivalent of Lehman Brothers. What had up until then been only a Great Recession turned into the Great Depression. A handful of years later, Hitler was welcomed by cheering crowds in Vienna.

No one can pretend to know whether Spain is illiquid or insolvent without gauging the size of the black hole that is the country’s banking sector. The Spanish government is finally starting to do this: Bankia and other banks are reportedly set to receive a capital injection from Madrid. With the Spanish economy contracting sharply and with unemployment soaring, it was inevitable that the government had to bail out the banks. But this only deals with one piece of the puzzle. Without growth, the Spanish sovereign will need a bailout as well.

Neither the pomp and ceremony of the Queen’s Speech nor its accompanying bills can hide the fact the UK requires urgent action to restart growth.

So too does Europe as a whole. A European recovery would help the UK greatly. But Europe will take time to agree a strategy: the UK can and must get on with it. There is a clear way forward – kick-start investment now through strong, clear and credible measures that mobilise private savings.

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, talks to Alec Russell, the FT’s comment and analysis editor, on why US investors are less perturbed about the eurozone crisis than last year, and on the perils of an increasingly isolationist America