Italian authorities said Friday they have issued arrest warrants against 13 American intelligence operatives, charging that they kidnapped a radical Islamic cleric as he walked to a mosque here two years ago, held him hostage at two U.S. military bases and then covertly flew him to Cairo. He later said he was tortured by Egyptian security police.
Category Archives: A Few Euros More
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Bulgarian Elections
Tomorrow Bulgaria will have elections:
Nearly six decades after Simeon II, Bulgaria’s 9-year-old child-king, was removed by the Communists, their heirs are again poised to oust him from power. The opposition Socialist Party is leading opinion polls ahead of the June 25 general election and is likely to defeat Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski.
Actually I know a little bit about Bulgaria as I did some research into Bulgarian immigrants in Spain a couple of years back. My impression is that the Simeon regime is extraordinarily corrupt. Many Bulgarians have had to leave simply to send money home to their parents who can only survive with difficulty on the state pensions. Of course, one extract in the article did catch my eye:
Bulgaria’s demographic decline is also likely to favor the Socialists, who count heavily on the country’s 1.8 million pensioners for support. An estimated 700,000 mostly young people have left the country since the fall of communism in 1989 in hopes of a better life in the West
.
German Unemplyment Drops (slightly)
According to preliminary figures released today the number of people looking for work in Germany dropped in June for the third month in a row, but the slight change revealed little evidence of a real labour market turnaround.
Bild quoted preliminary figures from the Federal Labor Agency — the body responsible for compiling monthly unemployment statistics — in its front-page story.
The paper quoted agency sources as saying that the wave of layoffs in the country appeared to be ebbing.
The …..newspaper said that about 60,000 fewer people were jobless this month versus in May, leaving the national total at 4.75 million unemployed.
FDI in France and Germany
John Snow obviously had had sight of the document ( and here pdf ) when he went round lecturing us that Europe may become a non-favoured environment for US FDI:
“Foreign investment in France and Germany fell sharply in 2004, reinforcing concerns that inflexible labour practices and weak domestic demand are driving investors elsewhere.
In France, inward investment almost halved from $43bn (?35.44bn) to $24bn, according to figures released yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the group representing the world?s most industrialised countries“.
But as much as the facts, the reasons behind the facts are interesting.
“Mark Zandi, chief strategist at Economy.com, the consultants group, said the data showed US companies the main source of direct investment funds in 2004 were spending their cash piles mainly on Asian investments.
?US companies are attracted to Asia partly because the currencies remain competitive, but also as low cost bases for production destination and as growing markets in their own right,? he said.”
Actually there is little realistic way that the EU or the US can reasonably expect to compete with China for FDI on China’s own terms, we both have to find another way.
More Bad News From Italy
Italy’s crisis rumbles on, and I don’t expect it to get much better any time soon. This week we learn that Italian retail sales fell sharply in April,
After adjustment for seasonal factors, retail sales in April were down 0.8 percent on the previous month ? the steepest month-on-month fall since May 2004. Compared with a year earlier, sales were 3.9 percent lower – the sharpest decline in the series? history.
and that consumer confidence in Italy fell in June to its lowest since last September:
The ISAE institute reported that its consumer sentiment index fell to 102.9 in June, from 104.3 in May. The index has now fallen in six of the past eight months.
ISAE noted that the index measuring expectations about the general economic situation declined to its lowest level for ten years, largely due to concerns about job security.
Also Italy posted a trade deficit with non-EU countries of 487 mln eur in May compared with a 109 mln surplus a year earlier:
Exports rose 10.3 pct year-on-year in May to 10.647 bln eur, while imports rose 16.6 pct to 11.134 bln.
In the five months to May, the trade deficit widened to 5.225 bln eur from 1.732 bln, as exports rose 7.6 pct and imports increased 15 pct.
Spanish Hotel Prices
Hotel prices in Spain remained in May at 2004 levels according to a National Statistics Institute (INE) report today. This could be a significant reading if price inflation in fact is disappearing from the sector. As the report notes, most of the recent increase in business has come from Spanish nationals.
Spain is running a large trade deficit. Tourism is one of the key ‘exports’. The combination of a high euro, and continuing domestic inflation has been hitting this badly. The non-increase is obviously a measure of the pain reading. Hotel and tourism prices have been rising at an annual rate of 5% plus since the start of the century.
France: INSEE To The Rescue
Just days after new French finance minister Thierry Breton suggested that French growth would be around 2% for 2005, France’s principal statistical agency, INSEE, point out that this is virtually unachieveable given what we already know about growth this year. 1.5% is the INSEE forecast, and even this figure they say has downside risks.
Meanwhile apparently, down at the commission they have M. Breton in their beady eye.
Now For Some Real Medicine
Paul Krugman has on occassion suggested ironically that Bagdad was only for the boys, that the ‘real men’ would go to Teheran. Well here’s another of those ‘real men’ in the economics field: Paul Betts writing in the FT, with one of those delicious ‘wingnut’ arguments:
“A dose of sado-monetary policy from the European Central Bank could force long overdue structural reform in Europe. Rather than follow Sweden’s example by cutting interest rates, the ECB should consider pushing them higher.
Politicians, especially in Berlin and Paris, would hate it. Wolfgang Clement, Germany’s finance minister, applauded the Swedish decision as showing how a central bank could support general economic policy without upsetting its price stability strategy.”
Turkey Grows and Grows
One of the few real IMF success stories, the Turkish economy continues with what Serhan Cevik calls its spectacular normality:
The Turkish economy is now in its fourth year of uninterrupted growth, with an average real GDP growth rate of 7.5% per annum. Indeed, the trend growth rate surged from 3.9% in the 1990s to 5.8% in the post-crisis period and to an impressive 7.8% last year. And we project 7.2% growth for Turkey in 2005 and 6.8% next year, compared with average OECD growth rates of 2.6% and 2.8%, respectively. Obviously, this is an unusual performance for a country that had long failed to keep the economy close to its potential on a sustainable basis. In fact, the growth rate of real per capita GDP decelerated from 2.3% per annum in the 1970s to 1.7% in the 1980s and then to 1.3% in the 1990s leading to the 2001 crisis. However, with prudent fiscal and monetary policies and structural reforms, real per capita income increased by 18.9% on a cumulative basis in the last three years, and should remain on an above-trend growth trajectory in the coming years.