While we’re working on the update, our latest changes to the back end seems to have left us vulnerable to more comment spam than usual. (On the other hand, it’s become much easier to add pictures.) We’re doing our best to take out the trash, but there may be a bit more of it than you’re used to seeing here. Also, if we happen to take out one of your real and valuable comments by mistake, just let us know. We’ll try to rescue it from the assorted bits and bytes laying around in the construction site here.
Whoops!
Hungary, as readers of this blog well know, is struggling with a large budget deficit and a terrible balance of payments problem, which has led to a certain amount of trouble. Specifically the fighting in the streets kind. Now, the Socialist government of Ferenc Gyurcsyany came up with a simple plan to cut the deficit from 10.1 per cent of GDP to something more reasonable.
Essentially, he decided to tax the rich until the pips squeaked. More accurately, he decided to tax industry until the pips squeaked, introducing a new 4 per cent “solidarity tax” on company profits. During the Chinese civil war, one of the more depraved warlords used to levy a “Happy Tax” on the unfortunates who lived in his territory – the taxpayer was meant to pay up and be happy. Presumably Hungarian businessmen are expected to do something similar.
The first results don’t look good. In fact they look disastrous. Volkswagen-Audi has reacted to this by cancelling €1 billion worth of investment at its plant in Gyor, which produces 20,000 Audi TT sports cars a year. The Gyor plant is Hungary’s biggest exporter, all on its own. VW had been planning to double its output. It is fair to say that essentially all the extra cars would be exported.
Doh! On one level, I suppose I should be sympathetic to the Hungarians because they are being pushed around by an arrogant German multinational. On another, though, you can’t deny that this is a really incredibly stupid policy. Hungary’s biggest economic success has been its fast-growing export manufacturing sector, concentrated around Gyor. And it’s only that sector that is making an impact on the current account deficit. After all, if you don’t increase exports, the only way you can reduce a current account deficit is to reduce imports, which means reducing the standard of living…
Elections: Bulgaria
Bulgaria has a Presidential election this weekend. There’s no question who’s going to win, but there’s still some nail-biting suspense.
Why? Well, the current President is former Socialist Georgi Parvanov. (“Former” Socialist because the Bulgarian President must not be affiliated with any political party.) He seems to be a decent enough fellow. The Bulgarian Presidency doesn’t have a lot of power, but Parvanov looks good, says all the right things, and has generally acted Presidential. Earlier this year, he acknowledged that he’d “cooperated” with the State Security Service back in the days of Communism; perhaps because he was quick to admit it, nobody seems to hold it much against him.
Parvanov is reasonably popular. He’s not considered brilliant, but he’s energetic, peripatetic, and constantly in the public eye. (There’s a joke that if you want to see him, build a doghouse, and he’ll show up to cut the ribbon.) So, he will almost certainly win the election this Tuesday.
But. Under Bulgaria’s election law, Presidential elections go to a second round if (1) nobody wins 50% of the votes cast, or (2) 50% of eligible voters don’t turn out. Parvanov will probably get well past 50%, but low turnout seems likely — in the last national election, only 42% of the voters showed up. So there will probably be a second round.
This raises the interesting question of who’ll come in second.
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Working on it
The intrepid Tobias Schwarz is working on an update to A Fistful of Euros. It’s great stuff, from what he’s shown us in previews, and he has been very good not only with the heavy lifting and template tweaking, he’s been very open about incorporating the odd suggestion from the rest of the crew.
It’s scheduled to go live Real Soon Now, but first, a look behind the scenes at a developer’s work…
18 Mistakes that Kill Startups
In honor of the Lisbon Agenda
[T]here’s just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you’ll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don’t do. And if you don’t make something users want, then you’re dead, whatever else you do or don’t do. So really this is a list of 18 things that cause startups not to make something users want.
From Paul Graham, by way of Bruce Sterling.
Radioactive Bloggy Goodness
If you want news about nuclear tests, nonproliferation and other arms control topics from people who actually know their throw weights from a hole in the ground, go and visit the Arms Control Wonk blog. They’re low on heh-indeed, and high on things like “Cooperative Monitoring in Outer Space to Manage Crowding and Build Confidence,†(pdf) so be prepared for plenty of facts and genuine know-how.
At the moment, they’re full of North Korea news, spiced with things like nuclear forensics, which will come in handy if a nuclear bomb ever goes off somewhere it shouldn’t, and retaliation has to answer questions like whether it originated in Iran, Pakistan, North Korea or somewhere else.
A Pocketful of Pamuk
The definitive(ish) review I’ve been meaning to write for months will obviously have to wait now that Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here are the AFOE talking points on Pamuk:
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Visits to an Orange Country
What happens in countries that fall out of the international headlines?
Two years ago this month, Ukraine was headed toward a presidential election that turned out to be much more tumultuous than anyone had expected. Anyone, that is, except the thousands of people who worked for months and years to make it a tumultuous election for change. Which, at one level, is yet another reminder of the superficial nature of international news. At another, it’s a challenge for people who are particularly moved by one event or another to keep an eye on what happens when the crowds subside and the bigfoot correspondents move to the next photogenic tumult.
At Fistful, we have our problems with limited attention as much as the next blog, so it’s good to hear of folks who have the time, resources and inclination to take a deeper look. In this case, the 21st Century Trust and the John Smith Memorial Trust have sponsored a study group to visit Ukraine, and Maria Farrell has put up a blog where she and other group members record their impressions and invite discussion.
The very first post explains more of the mission and links to full-time Ukraine blogs. Later posts focus on specific places, future projects the visitors will be undertaking related to Ukraine, and the EU-Ukraine relationship. Ukraine’s a big and complicated place, but it will be an EU member one of these days, and it will be an important neighbor in the meantime, so the more of these kinds of links there are, the better for all. It’s a good blog, go read and discuss.
Tinderbox
Spark?
A missile fired from a hand-held launcher damaged a mosque in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar on Tuesday just before worshippers were due to gather for a pre-dawn Ramadan meal, officials said.
The mosque is in the Jasenica area, a Croat-majority suburb of the town which is split evenly between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. It was built last year on the ruins of an Islamic building destroyed in the fighting in 1993-1994 between the two groups.
The missile was fired from a “Zolja” hand-held grenade launcher at around 4:30 a.m. (0230 GMT), local police said. Nobody was hurt.
Spain and Senegal Enter Migration Deal
Migration from poorer areas to richer areas can either be managed or un-managed. After years of the latter, it looks like Spain and Senegal are going to try the former.
The deal would discourage illegal migration and give Spain the opportunity to recruit a significant number of workers, Mr Moratinos said.
More than half of the 26,000 migrants who have reached the Spanish Canary Islands this year come from Senegal.
[Spanish Foreign Minister] Moratinos also signed a co-operation deal that will give Senegal up to 15m euros (£10.3m) of Spanish aid annually over five years.