Briefly following up on Tobias’ post below: DeLong has re-thought and amended his remarks on G?nter Grass.
(Thanks, Henry, for the pointer.)
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Turkey Under The Magnifying Glass
The European Court of Human Rights ruled has just ruled that the trial of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, which took place six years ago, was unfair. Turkey has already suggested that it is willing to conduct a retrial. Those of us who favour the proposal that Turkey should eventually join the EU, but who feel that this should happen conditional on a major improvement in the handling of human rights issues (amongst other reforms), can only welcome both these pieces of news.
A Question of Identity
“I can’t really say that I’m myself,” he thinks. “I don’t know who I am. . . . I am the late Mattia Pascal.” So speaks the anti-hero of one of Italian writer Luigi Pirandello’s better known novels “Il fu Mattia Pascal” (The Late Mattia Pascal).
Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life?only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he left behind, it’s too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal’s fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.
Having long been an admirer of this story, you can imagine my surprise when yesterday I found myself watching a real life version of it on local TV. The man behind the case: Enric Marco, 84 year old head of Amical de Mauthausen. Amical de Mauthausen is a Spanish association dedicated to commemorating the victims of the notorious death campwith that name. What is really incredible about Marco’s case is that he passed himself off for over thirty years as a concentration camp victim, whilst the real life ‘Enric Marco’ never set foot inside any such camp till he entered as a victims representative sometime during the later years of the twentieth century.
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European GDP Numbers
Provisional GDP numbers for eurozone countries in the first quarter are out today. The German economy surprisingly bounces back, whilst Italy is now officially in recession after two quarters of contraction. Also worthy of note is that the Dutch economy contracted slightly in the first quarter, which may have some implications for the forthcoming constitution referendum there.
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Shifting points of reference?
Two days ago, Brad DeLong published an unfortunate post with an even more unfortunate title – “G?nter Grass minimizes the Holocaust” – in which he harshly criticised the German Nobel laureate G?nter Grass and even called him “Nazi scum”, an accusation he retracted later following intense criticism on his own blog as well as on others, including Crooked Timber – for statements he made in a radio address on German NDR radio a couple of days ago (“Freiheit nach B?rsenma?” – mp3 in German, read by himself, text in German (via DIE ZEIT), English translation) which was later translated and reprinted by the New York Times on May 7, the day before the 60th anniversary of VE-day.
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No Fire Without Smoke
First a bit of ‘breaking news’ for German readers: the main factor which has lead to the massive round of cost cutting and staff reductions in Germany has not been the activity of a small group of hedge funds, the main culprit, let’s get it out of the cupboard, has been the high euro.
Whilst the contents of G7 meetings are never formally disclosed, it has been a more or less open secret that for some time now that the focus of recent meetings has been on how to overcome perceived imbalances in the global economy, and in particular how to force through ‘structural reforms’ in countries like Germany and Japan where such reforms are enormously politically unpopular. So the structural reforms have been pushed via the indirect route: making them virually inevitable due to cost pressures in export dependent economies.
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Working girls
Apropopos this post Edward’s post on fistful a couple of days ago, an observation. I find it remarkable how when people discuss these issues, (the working age population declining) no one ever talks about female participation in the work force. In some euro countries it’s pretty low, and an increase could make a real difference.
It’s weird.
Happy thought
Happy thoght about the British elections. No one else seems to thought of this angle:
Isn’t this like the first time in living memory that a party has made anti-immigration message the centerpiece of its campaign and not only didn’t succeed, but possibly maybe, lost votes because of it? I think in Europe it’s literally the first time in my lifetime.
God, let it be the start of trend.
Just In Time?
Tony Blair inched home to a historic Labour third term in the UK last week. But looking at the changing tempo of the British economy over the last couple of months, you could be tempted to ask: was this a case of ‘just in time’ electioneering?
At the present time there seems to be a general consensus that Blair will back down during this parliament, and that the natural heir apparent is Economics Minister Gordon Brown. However if Blair won the election despite the Iraq war, and thanks mainly to economic prosperity, we could ask ourselves whether changing winds of fortune might not make the heir rather less apparent when the time for handing over actually comes.
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On Their Knees
It should be noted that Germany is not the only EU member state where controversy is growing about economic stagnation and what to do about it. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the chairman of Confindustria, Italy’s employers’ group, has made his preferences clear: ?I don’t want an Italy like Disneyworld”.
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