Tag Archives: problem

This Just Looks Bad

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Is the new double-decker Airbus vulnerable to sudden drops in cabin pressure? That’s the kind of problem suspected in this summer’s crash of a Helios Airways plane that killed all 121 people on board.

The former chief engineer for the company that designed the microchips controlling the motors that runs the pressure valves thinks so. The company, TTTech Computertechnik AG, of Vienna, fired him for going public with his concerns. For good measure, it has sued him in both civil and criminal court. Austria has no laws to protect whistleblowers.
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More Bigtime Divergence

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As people may have noted, last weekend Tobias and I were in Stockholm. One of the topics I wanted to post on but couldn’t was the latest Human Development report from the UN. There was plenty of press coverage: here, here, and here

There was even coverage in the blogs, but the tone seemed to be set by Slugger O’Toole who seemed mainly to take issue with Ireland’s rating in the HDI.

Personally I think the issues involved are much bigger than this.
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A Little Levity

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at the expense of the airlines. (Don’t miss the more serious Europe-stuff in the posts below.)

Mark A.R. Kleiman summarizes a recent experience flying the friendly skies:

In general, the performance of every United employee I dealt with today convinced me that the airline has identified its basic strategic problem as an excess of customers; I plan to do what I can to help solve that problem. (This after ten years of using United as my primary airline; I’m a “Premier Executive” frequent flyer, which means >50,000 actual air miles per year.)

Lufthansa treated me similarly on July 26. In fact, that experience was every Internet-enabled traveler’s nightmare: online e-ticket, check-in, boarding pass in hand, denied boarding at the gate for lack of a paper ticket. WTF does not begin to cover my reaction. I reached the same conclusion as Mark did about United, and I have been working to help Lufthansa solve their problem.

Killer Identities

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Sorting through some old books yesterday, I came across one from Amin Maaloof that I hadn’t looked at in years. So I dusted it off, and started thinking about this post.

The English title of the book is “In the Name of Identity“, but the French title “Les Identit?s meurtrieres” (Lethal Identities?) or the Catalan one ‘Indentitats que Maten’ (Killer Identities) are much more expressive and to the point.
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Oooops It Isn’t Baaack….

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Morgan Stanley team members Steven Jen and Eric Chaney (joined by Takehiro Sato and David Miles) debate today the interesting question of whether the eurozone economies have entered a liquidity trap (LT). Those who have no idea what one of these would look like could do worse than read Paul Krugman’s classic article on the topic: It’s baaack! Japan’s Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap (pdf).

So what is all the fuss about?
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China Trade With EU

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I’m not very happy with the ‘US Trade Figures‘ post I put up last Friday. I think it’s a glorious mess. The key to the problem is that I tried to deal with two – interrelated but disinct – topics at once: the euro and China trade. So today lets ignore the euro (which has once more resumed the downwards drift, even as I write) and take a bit of a closer look at where we are – in trade terms – with China. (Btw: the planet has finally returned to its orbit, and Brad Setser has an analysis of the US trade data here).

The big item in this weekend’s news is, of course, the agreement reached with Beijing on textiles. The EU textile industry will now have three years to adapt, but since textile manufacturers don’t appear to have taken too much advantage of the ten previous years, it is hard to know whether this will serve any useful purpose. Doubly so, since it is not yet clear how the calculations will be made, and I have the distinct impression that much of the recent surge in imports will now, in effect, be consolidated.

Be that as it may, what about the broader issue?
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‘Those Politicians’

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Last Monday I had some ironing to do. Then I remembered that television still has one advantage over surfer-blogging: you can do the ironing at the same time. Of course the upcoming referendum was on several channels. I could not stand more than 20 minutes of it though (neither the ironing nor the tv). The various program presenters seemed to want to make it look like this was a political *debate as usual*, or so it seemed. National politicians dominated the guest lists. And most of them did what we expect from them nowadays: instead of seriously and conscientiously considering arguments, the majority of them seemed more intent on achieving a high score in something resembling a high-school debating-contest. Television comes in handy here.

In fact one of these *debates* was actually organized like a contest. Six politicians were invited. On every issue two of them went into a direct confrontation and the 6-minute sessions were immediately followed by a ‘flash vote’. And the winner is…
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ECB: Plus ?a Change?

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The ECB met earlier today to conduct the monthly review of interest rate policy. It came as a surprise to noone that the outcome was to leave everything just as it is. Surprisingly though the decision this month is surrounded by a little more controversy than has been the case of late since Italy’s Berlusconi and economic opinion in Germany have been suggesting that some reduction of rates might be no bad thing, whilst Spain’s economy minister (and former EU commisioner) Pedro Solbes is reported to have been pushing for an increase. Why the difference?
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