Leonard Cohen live in Lisbon

Masterful, superb... it's easy to run out of superlatives to describe Leonard Cohen's concert yesterday at Pavilhão Atlântico. For close to three hours, his catalogue of classic songs was delivered with deep subdued feeling and insuperable precision.  The band was perfect - is there any other word? - and Cohen himself, his voice intact, his body lean, presided over the show with majestic serenity like the high priest of song he is.  Time flied, the audience roared and a beatific smile of elation and gratitude came over me.

Globalization

In the 1930's, two Swedish economists formulated a simple law of economics which goes a long way towards explaining some of the dynamics of globalization. The Hecksher Ohlin theorem states that a country will tend  to specialize  in sectors which use the factor of production it possesses in relative abundance. Thus, countries with abundant labour, like China or India, will tend to produce labour intensive goods whilst countries rich in capital, like the US or Germany, will tend to specialize in capital intensive goods. This apparently self evident law has a corollary: as world trade expands and the global economy becomes increasingly integrated, the cost of these two factors of production will tend towards equality across countries. Thus, the cost of labour will tend to fall where it is high, like in Europe, whereas the remuneration of capital will tend to rise, because capital is scarce in less developed countries with high demographic growth rates. As the cost of the factors of production become more similar across countries, so do their social structures. Hence the rise of inequalities in the developed world, where salaries are increasingly compressed - just ask any regular "mileurista" - and an increasingly smaller part of the population - those who have capital - get richer and richer. If you want to go more in depth into this, read the work of the brilliant French social scientist, Emmanuel Todd. If not, just stay with Leonard Cohen's age old wisdom: "the poor stay poor and the rich get richer ... as everybody knows".

A country made for walking

From pictures and novels, everybody has in mind a familiar image of the english countryside: lush greens, rolling hills, white cliffs, a strong sea wind, boys dressed in white playing cricket, horseriding in country lanes, elaborate picnics, classic convertibles in narrow country roads with old gentlemen and young ladies. Well, after a recent weekend in Sussex and Kent, I can confirm nothing has changed. Globalization is still kept at bay in these counties. Life remains much as it was and as it should be. 

Victor Pimstein

Blue is the dominant colour in Victor Pimstein's new show at Joan Pratts, in Barcelona. The line in the horizon, abstracted landscapes, chinese ceramics are distilled into pure evocative images  at once familiar and exotic. We are in a realm of rarefied imagery. The gloss of the painted image, the steady glow and perfect finish of these works only  add to their mystery. 

Celebrity culture

Yesterday, 45 000 people went to Real Madrid's stadium to greet Kaka, the new brasilian star acquired by the club for 60 million euros. They cheered wildly the short speech by the club's president, the real estate magnate Florentino Perez, and the even shorter speech by the star, who appeared fully clad in white, like an angel, with Real's trademark equipment. Real Madrid, who is expecting even more fans to greet Cristiano Ronaldo, who was purchased for 92 million euros, feels sure that these are great investments, not because of the goals they are expected to score but because of the financial returns in publicity and merchandising. This is celebrity culture gone awry. Politicians are hounded by the press and seen as little better than criminals; except in Italy, if they have entertainment value like Berlusconi. Now that ideals have vacated the realm of politics, they seem to be fully invested in football. Great players are no longer merely stars, they are heroes.