Author Archives: Edward Hugh

About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

A Life Without Regrets

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There is a danger I think of taking our criticisms of contemporary French political life to ludicrous extremes. So taking the opportunity that today is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Edith Piaf, I’d like to offer a small celebration of the enormous contribution of Francophone culture to our modern European identity. And to enter really into the spirit of things, the link below is posted in French. Incidentally, one small confession: when working on-line and not listening to music I seem to have gotten into the habit of listening to French radio. It was the commentary about Piaf on this morning’s news that altered me to the date. They also made the interesting comparison between Egypt’s Om Kalthoun, and the Portuguese ‘Queen of Fado’ Amalia Rodrigues as women of their time who came to symbolise something important about the popular sentiment of their countries.

BTW yesterday was also the 25th aniversary of the disappearance of Jacques Brel: ne me quitte pas.
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He Who Pays the Piper

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My Bulgarian ‘assistant’ still won’t let me forget Chirac’s last faux pas: that the biggest favour the candidate countries could do for themselves was to stay quiet. It looks like we’re going down the same road one more time. I really don’t think it is possible to effectively ‘buy’ opinions. I mean in the short term it may work as a tactic, but long term this will lead to more, not less, resentment and tension. I already feel that the Swedish euro vote was more a political statement than an economic one. The Netherlands are getting louder and louder in their denunciation of stability pact ‘flexibility’, and now the aid-recipients are effectively being told to put up and shut up. This is not a very auspicious start for a new constitution, nor does it offer a very encouraging insight into how it might work.
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A Laid-Back Notion of Risk

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I was listening to a programme on French radio about whether the government should intervene to prohibit investigation related to genetically modified food when I came across this piece about obesity in the US. Food and the way we eat it seem to constitute an important part of our cultural identity. Do we have a distinctive European attitude to food, or are the North European cultures more like the US, and the Southern Europeans in a class of their own?

On the other hand when I accepted the idea of Americans as ‘risk takers’, it wasn’t exactly the risk of being a cigarette-smoking, six-pack-drinking, couch potatoe that I had in mind. But then again maybe we are not so different, since most of the Parisians I get to speak to these days go on less about ‘je t’aime, moi non plus’ and more about ‘boulot, metro et bobo’.
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Berlusconi’s Road to Damascus?

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The Italian unions are threatening to strike against pension reform, while Berlusconi says government plans to reform Italy’s expensive welfare system are “necessary, fair and wise” (Silvio ‘el savio’?). The Unions say: “There is no pensions emergency. The government…is dramatizing the pensions problem. It doesn’t correspond to reality,” while Corriere della Sera finds a new Berlusconi, one who is a ‘reformed’ character who “For the first time…..turned his back on the miraculous optimism and creative economic recipes of the last two years and smiling persuasively,……tried to reassure people, to win more of their trust”. Meantime one Bank of America economist is reported as saying that “the reform is very weak. They should have gone for something much stronger but that’s more to do with internal opposition rather than the union threat”.

So where are we, is the pension reform question simply an excuse to have a battle with the unions, or is there a real problem in Italy? My own feeling is the latter. In a way I find myself agreeing with Pedro Solbes (which is why, pragmatically I would prefer him not to resign over the Eurostat scandal, although ethically I think he probably should). We have focussed too much on the question of the 3% limit on the decifit, and not enough on the level of the debt (Italy’s debt is currently over 100% of GDP). Even with this small reform Italy’s financies still look very precarious. But cutting pensions, as we can see, is not popular. So which is it? Can Europe reform itself and face up to its demographic reality, or are we going to have to go for ‘fiscal trainwreck’ US style? Do our politicians have more in common with the US ones than we like to imagine?

Should Prodi Resign?

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Well, I didn’t generate too much controversy yesterday, so let’s see if this one is a runner. Prodi is going to have a face to face meeting with members of the European Parliament to try and explain how the Eurostat mess was allowed to happen. According to the FT story Prodi is ‘attempting to fight off calls for his resignation’. Apparently he will explain that Commission members first learnt of the problem on reading about it last May in the press. So what do we say, is this a resigning issue? Should Prodi go? Would Solbes going be ‘settling scores’ on the SG pact differences? Well, this may be the sort of thing that brings the EU administration into ridicule, but at least we are able to ask the question.

They’re Selling Postcards of……the Fiesta

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It’s party time in Barcelona. There’s no circus in town, but there is just about everything else. In fact many of you may be surprised to learn that today is a public holiday here, and indeed it may surprise you even more to discover that the holiday is only Barcelona. This situation is strange for many outside Spain, and draws attention to the fact that decisions about public holidays (and of course, many other matters) are taken at three levels: national, autonomous community, and municipal. (Oh how well I remember the days of travelling round Europe, and needing to change money on just the day………that everything was unexpectedly closed). It also draws attention to the prevalence and social importance of public holidays and festivals here. Of note too is the way these holidays draw attention to that unique combination of the traditional and the modern which characterises contemporary Spain. (Actually, to be really pc here I should say ‘the modern Spanish State’ since this is the terminology adopted by those of its citizens who do not especially consider themselves to be Spanish, there is no equivalent of the British/Welsh/Scottish/English classification here, and Catalan, Basque, and Galician football teams are definitely not encouraged in the new ‘multicultural’ Spain).
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