Bush refusing to allow us to get cheap drugs from Canada, which he justifies because of concerns about the safety of Canadian drugs.

So why don't things ever change, even as the death toll mounts? As always, the answer can be found by following the money. The big pharmaceutical companies continue to be the 800-pound gorillas of American politics their power stemming from a muscular combination of lobbying ($150 million a year), campaign contributions (close to $50 million doled out to federal candidates over the past four years) and powerful friends in very high places (Don Rumsfeld was formerly CEO of drug industry powerhouse G.D. Searle, and Mitch Daniels, the former White House budget director and now governor-elect of Indiana, was a senior vice president at Eli Lilly).

In adecline of this French reformist ambition in the shape of the latest manifesto for saving Europe by the economist Thomas Piketty and his supporters – published this week. Professor Piketty has been active in producing eurozone reform agendas for a number of years – an earlier manifesto was produced in 2014. It is, therefore, interesting to observe the effect of recent European developments on his proposals.

In 2014, Piketty put forward three main proposals: a common eurozone budget funded by harmonised corporate taxes to be transferred to poorer countries in the form of investment, research and social spending; the pooling of public debt, which would mean the likes of Germany and Holland helping Italy, Greece and others in a similar situation to bring down their debt; and a hybrid