Brad Plumer on the relation between the size of government and growth, and an irony.
Henry Farrell on why he’s more optimistic than he has been in a long time about the European experiment.
Laura Rozen prints native readers thoughts on the referendums in France and Belgium.
Eulogist on the EU and the constitution.
Col Lounsbury on why he’s hoping for a non. (It’s much less interesting than his usual fare, but it gave me an opportunity to link to him.)
I know that web statistics are inherently unreliable. I have seen server statistics that differ from each other to an extent it raises important epistemological questions. However, in the blogosphere, sitemeter figures are the most common currency – and by that standard, we at afoe at some point earlier today welcomed our 400,000th unique visitor since the day that will live in infamy.
I would like to take advantage of this brief moment of reflection to thank all of you, our gentle readers, for your continuing interest in the fistful and, of course, for your immensely valuable contributions to the debate!
Brad Delong has a post on the Euro, and Dave at Macroblog has a couple of relevant posts (and here) . In particular he has an extended extract from the Martin Wolfe article on the Euro and Italy, plus he reproduces a useful graphic showing how ‘sovereign spreads’ in Italy Greece and Portugal declined dramatically with entry in EMU.
Last week, the Swedish finance minister said that we should consider allowing immigration of labor. (Link in Swedish) This has long been demanded by the right-wing opposition, but the Social Democrats were against it, partly because of opposition from the unions. This is just a trial baloon, not a shift in policy, and is unlikely to lead to anything i the short run. In any event the opposition is favored to win the 2006 elections.
Sweden is very much the odd man out here, no?
This is a very intelligent move:
Between the rock of the French and Dutch referenda and the hard place of the looming early elections in Germany, Turkey has reiterated its determination to seek full EU membership. Ankara has also named its chief EU negotiator.
Turkey’s 38-year-old chief EU negotiator Ali Babacan is a founding member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) who believes that there is no slowdown in Ankara’s reforms, notwithstanding that “political reforms, unlike economic reforms, do need some adjustment time to change the mental framework of the people”. In an interview with Reuters a few days prior to his appointment on 24 May, Babacan said that Turkey had no reason to fear from the referendum in France provided that Ankara stayed calm, pursued its own reform agenda and met all EU conditions for opening accession negotiations on 3 October 2005. He has said that he had “no solid reason” to believe that the scheduled 3 October launch of accession talks would be in jeopardy.
Handling matters this way throws all the pressure back on the EU. “We are ready to negotiate, now lets get on with it”.
Well here’s one more reason some people might have for wanting Turkey as an eventual member of the EU:
It is 42 inches wide, 1,090 miles long and is intended to save the West from relying on Middle Eastern oil. Nothing has been allowed to stand in its way – and it finally opens today…
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“A car bomb exploded in the Spanish capital on Wednesday, injuring three people, 45 minutes after a Basque newspaper received a warning in the name of Basque separatist group ETA, police said.”
Reuters One Hour Ago
Thankfully no-one was killed. On this occassion there seems little doubt who was responsible. This bombing follows recent controversial moves by Spanish president Zapatero to open a peace process. At the time of writing the linked post I was optimistic. Despite what has happened today I remain so. Eta is not to be trusted, and it is important to keep this in mind all the time. My ‘off the top of my head’ analysis: negotiations about the conditions for holding negotiations are in process, both sides are trying to exert pressure, the Spanish government is demanding a permanent truce from Eta, Eta is demanding a concentration of prisoners in the Basque region, and so things continue.
A right royal row is brewing at the ECB. Basically the old guard theorists of the ‘one size fits all’ monetary policy are being challenged by more pragmatic observers of day to day realities. For the moments it is the politicians who are making the running (but there are plenty of competent economists in Germany and Italy who are ready to back them up), and yesterday the OECD joined the fray.
Continue reading
I remember it was not so long ago that people imagined China was so, so far away. Now this kind of news is almost daily.
“Media and publishing group Bertelsmann on Tuesday announced the first big Sino-foreign wholesale book distribution business in China, as overseas investors seek new ways to get access to the country’s book-sales market.
Bertelsmann’s DirectGroup said it had set up a joint venture with Liaoning Publishing Group worth Rmb30m ($3.6m), with the Chinese group controlling 51 per cent“.
The ever readable Martin Wolf has been writing in the FT on Italy:
“Let us think the unthinkable: could the eurozone disintegrate? The answer is yes. Disappearance of the zone as a whole seems hugely unlikely, so long as the commitment to the European project survives. But the exit of one (or more) members, a sovereign default or both is not at all inconceivable.”