Tag Archives: Europe and the world

On Un-Common Ground

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Now just remember, you read about it first on Afoe. Bertrand Benoit and David Pilling have an excellent article in the FT today:

Question: Which of the world’s biggest economies is holding an early election this month dominated by debate over radical economic reforms?

Two clues: The economy, long in the doldrums, is showing signs of life, thanks to improving exports and a restructured private sector. An ageing population is making structural reform an urgent priority.

The answer: Not one, but two countries – Japan and Germany.

Just my point in my earlier post, and the more this connection is recognised the sooner we’ll enter the zone of framing meaningful solutions. As the FT writers suggest, there are many intriguing parallels between next Sunday’s Japanese election and the German ballot one week later.
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China Watching

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The Economist has a timely, and very sobre assessment, of the state of the Chinese company (or should that be the Chinese state company, in any event Howard French has posted the entire piece, just in case we get link-rot), Brad Setser has a very well argued post on how China effectively seems to be continuing to operate a dollar peg (“Rather than pegging at 8.28, China is now seems to peg at 8.095-8.11”), and Asia Pundit Myrick has an excellent round-up of the general state of the argument in the ongoing ‘China Soft or Hard Landing’ debate.

Another Ripple

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From the AP via CNN:

Anti-flood measures will be reviewed in all Dutch regions below sea level in light of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath to ensure they would be adequate in an emergency, the government said Sunday. …

The government is planning to spend $3.7 billion over the next ten years on new projects against the threat from river floods, in addition to the $620 million spent annually on maintaining the current system in the country.

Can’t remember where I read this, but one report said that until the mid-20th century, Dutch dikes were built to withstand a 100-year flood. After a serious event, they decided to raise the standard to a 10,000-year flood. I don’t know if that’s even possible to calculate, but it sure sounds good.

Europe Does Its Bit

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Apart from the human tragedy dimension, the events which are unfolding in and around New Orleans will have an economic impact which in a globalised world can ripple through each and every economy. Fears that gasoline shortages could produce a recession in the US are going the rounds. James Hamilton of Econbrowser probably has the best coverage (here and here) while Dave Altig at MacroBlog is following the debate around the blogs (here, and here). Personally I’m taking a this is serious but lets keep calm view.

As Econbrowser argues the real problem is not with crude prices as such, but with the more short term issue of gasoline prices at the pump. The big problem is that the US has a large strategic crude reserve, but no gasoline reserve, while we, here in Europe, do have large stocks of gasoline. So it was a welcome surprise to open the FT in my browser this morning and read this report:

“European countries were on Thursday preparing to release emergency stockpiles of petrol as the US confirmed that some refineries hit by Hurricane Katrina would remain shut for several months. Earlier US officials had estimated the closures at only one to two weeks…..

Germany has assured the IEA that it would release stocks if asked to participate if needed. Germany holds the largest number of barrels of petrol in public storage. These extra barrels could hit the markets within one or two days. France, Spain and Italy also have large emergency gasoline reserves.”

And now AP has just reported that Germany is about to send supplies, while earlier Reuters had a similar story from Spain.

The City Of New Orleans

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While I was setting up a live sparring match between George W Bush and Tim Worstall over at New Economist I realised that George made his original provocative remarks on a show called Good Morning America. This put me back in mind of an old Steve Goodman song (Arloe Guthrie or Willy Nelson version, it’s the same to me), called City of New Orleans which has been going the rounds in my head over the last 24 hours. So, since I’m helpless to do very much for those poor folks stuck in all that water, here’s at least a little tribute.
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Higher and Haier

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Standards that is. The Chinese domestic appliance manufacturer Haier just got voted into the number one slot by FT readers in a survey which included quality, trustworthiness, innovation and management, together with branding. Haier recently hit the headlines when it unsuccessfully tried to buy Maytag – owner of the Hoover brand – now it looks like it may not have been worth the effort. Long live learning by doing.

A Certain Irony

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In a post back in May about the bloody repression in Uzbekistan I noted that Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin was suggesting that US troops should be withdrawn immediately (I didn’t agree if you read the post). Well he seems to have got his way, and the reasoning behind the Uzbekistan parliament decision is of course interesting. The parliament has backed a government order which gives the United States six months to vacate the Karshi-Khanabad airbase. The suggestion is that this order is not entirely unconnected with the U.S. decision to join international demands for an independent investigation into May’s bloody crackdown.

While I’m up posting on Uzbekistan,
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Homophobia and Minority Rights

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My recent post on identity and Amin Maalouf seems to have drawn an absolute blank here, even though I personally consider the points he raises to be at the heart of the WoT and related issues. Over in Canada, Randy McDonald has picked up the thread, and relates Maalouf’s ideas to the issue of homophobia, taking as his starting point the recent execution of two young men in Iran for what appears to have been their sexual orientation:

I was saddened, though not altogether surprised, when Ikram Saeed recently commented that criticizing those Muslims who believed that their religion requires the ritualized torture-killings of non-heterosexuals is an act of racism. I say “not altogether surprised,” since Ikram had earlier commented that people victimized under shari’a law were “wimpy” if they lacked the capital–social, economic, political–that they needed to escape. This sort of morally blind privatization of public goods that ends with the privatization of human rights, the kind of process that reduces rights from universal goods to things that you can have only if you were lucky, serves bigots’ ends quite nicely.
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Yoghurt With Soda Anyone?

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Well, this about beats the lot of them. Yesterday the shares Groupe Danone SA went through the roof on rumours of a takeover by PepsiCo Inc. Dominique de Vil-pin also went through the roof:

“Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Danone was “among the jewels of our industry”…. “We plan to defend France’s interests,” Villepin said after a cabinet meeting at his official Matignon residence, although he insisted he was “not commenting on any rum“.

Jewels of French industry… defend France’s interests, well readers might be surprised to learn that Danone originated in Catalonia after local entrepreneur Isaac Carasso brought the formula for Bulgarian yoghurt back to Barcelona and set up shop in 1911. As the encyclopaedia entry notes:

“Ten years later, the first French factory was built, but during WWII, (Isaac’s son) Daniel moved the company to New York, where Dannon Milk Products Inc. was founded. In the United States, Daniel changed the brand name to Dannon to sound more American. Then in 1958, the company returned to Paris, where its headquarters are located today“.

My interpretation is that if Vil-pin is defending any French interests here, then they would be imperial ones. Possibly another example of how some still consider the Tractat dels Pirineus a licence to do and say what they want.