Monthly Archives: April 2004

Means and Ends

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I have not had a lot of blogging time lately, as a check of the archives will reveal. Since taking the King’s coin to do translation research, I’ve been waist-deep in the ugly, practical, code-in-the-compiler end of algorithmic information theory. What I had taken to be a very clean and simple application of a very elementary mathematical proposition, on which I hung some bells and whistles to make it look impressive, has some actual programming consequences which are quite challenging.

It’ll all work. My math is sound and my preliminary returns are excellent. This is, after all, a reseach project. Doing this is how we find out what we didn’t think of when we started.

But, in conjunction with my class load, this means I have not been able to blog much, or even follow the news closely. I apologise for this to all my comrades in blogging here at AFOE. However, my long commute has given me a good deal of time to read. I am currently reading a fascinating but long out of print book which I have tried for quite a long time to find and recently acquired through Ebay: The New Class by Milovan Djilas.
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Fingering India.

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So far, no one has convinced me that the “outsourcing” discussion that has suddenly gained steam on both sides of the Atlantinc is not mainly a consequence of two agenda-dominating events: The looming EU enlargement over here, and the Presidential elections over there.

In my experience, this discussion is largely a cyclical phenomenon much less determined by facts than by their political representation. The last German outsourcing debate I remember was in 1996, and not by chance did it occur during a regional electoral campaign. Since then, quite a few jobs have been outsourced, while others have been created without having been realized by too many people.

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Baden-W?rttemberg has become the first German state to ban headscarves in state schools. Unlike the controversial French ban, this one affects only teachers, not schoolgirls. Also unlike the French ban, this one is targeted solely at Muslim symbols; Christian and Jewish religious accessories remain permissible. (From the tageszeitung; link in German)

The Distance of Death

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Ageing populations ‘will create crippling debt’: at least this is how one of today’s Financial Times headlines reporting on the latest Standard & Poor’s assesment of OECD sovereign debt dynamics has it.

In fact the article says S&P argue that:

“industrialised countries face crushing debt burdens – greater even than those during the second world war – unless governments make politically painful cuts in social spending in the next few years”

At the same time this weeks Economist has a special supplement on ageing prepared by ‘death of distance’ guru Frances Cairncross which argues that :

a larger generation of old folk than ever before will need support for longer than ever before from a population of working age that is shrinking continuously in absolute size for the first time since the Black Death. And the level of that support is unprecedented.

Seems bleak, doesn’t it? Crippling debt, black death: are things really that bad?
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Nail Biting Time Outside the ECB

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Update: The ECB has now announced that it will leave rates unchanged for another month. This in my view is a mistake, essentially putting off the inevitable for another month – unless, that is, Trichet has info that tomorrow’s US employment numbers will be much better than expected. If not this is only going to lead to more upward pressure on the euro over the month, and a further month’s delay in offering stimulus to an overly lethargic euroland economy. I don’t buy the rapid-recovery-round-the-corner, ever-present-inflation-danger scenario.

While most observers look anxiously over to Frankfurt to see what they will finally decide, it might be worth just noting that Sweden has lowered its interest base rate. The current 2% rate is now the lowest in a century:

The Swedish Central bank cut its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 2 per cent on Thursday, its lowest level for a century, reflecting low inflation and rising unemployment in the Nordic region’s largest economy.

In a statement the central bank said the recent decline in inflation had been “greater than anticipated,” partly due to unexpectedly low import prices but also to a weaker labour market.

I am highlighting this decision lest those of you with wicked minds have come to the conclusion that I only take note of events which confirm my preoccupations about the viability of the euro. Sweden of course voted to stay out of the euro.

In fact as I reported on Bonoboland last month:

Compared with February 2003, all the Member States registered a decrease in their annual inflation rates. The biggest relative falls were in Sweden (3.3% to 0.2%), Finland (2.1% to 0.4%) and Denmark (2.9% to 0.7%)

Two of the three countries with a marked drop in inflation are not in the euro. So clearly having control of your own monetary policy is not the be-all and end-all of the problem. You also have to get the decisions right. Now let’s see if Sweden has been bold enough with today’s move.

The Lighter Side of Siberia

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Andy Young over at Siberian Light has an interesting post about the Khodorkovsky open letter.

I can?t quite decide what to make of his critique of liberalism. It is obviously an attempt to destroy the last vestiges of liberalism in Russia (although, lets face it, that wouldn?t take much at this stage). But is he going to follow this up and throw himself fully behind Putin, and argue that stability is the only way to go? Or is he trying to lay the groundwork so that he can be the undisputed leader of a phoenix-like liberal resurgence in Russia? He does, after all, lay out pretty bluntly that he sees a political future for himself?

Andy has also started posting on the Central Asian Blog “The Argus” (he gets around a bit does our Andy) which as he points out has some pretty up to date info on places like Uzbekistan. Andy’s focus is on the impact of ‘external agents’ in Central Asia and the Caucasus: not least amongst these Andy’s very own ‘beloved’ EU:

Chris Patten, the EU’s Commissioner for External Relations (kind of like a foreign minster) visited Central Asia last week. And why? Well one reason, of couse, is that the EU would like a slice of lovely Central Asian oil pie…