ATHENS — Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a shepherd called Gyges found a magic ring, which, when rotated on his finger, made him invisible. So, Gyges walked unseen into the royal palace, seduced the queen, murdered the king, and installed himself as ruler.

ATHENS — The silver lining in the gloomy cloud of the pandemic was the opportunity it gave the West to mend its ways. During 2020, rays of light shone through. The European Union was forced to contemplate a fiscal union. Then, it helped remove Donald Trump from the White House.

ATHENS — As the coronavirus pandemic recedes in the advanced economies, their central banks increasingly resemble the proverbial ass who, equally hungry and thirsty, succumbs to both hunger and thirst because it could not choose between hay and water.

ATHENS — A “brutal lesson in geopolitics”, is how the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel described the announcement of AUKUS, the new security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

ATHENS — On February 9, 1967, hours after the US Air Force pounded Haiphong Harbour and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC television screened a politically momentous episode of Star Trek.

ATHENS — The history of money has been the history of the struggles to control the payment system and the money tree.

ATHENS — This is how capitalism ends: not with a revolutionary bang, but with an evolutionary whimper.

ATHENS — Back in the 1830s, Thomas Peel decided to migrate from England to Swan River in Western Australia.

ATHENS — Europe has discovered its moral Rubicon, the frontier beyond which commodification becomes intolerable.