Yes, that’s what Bloomberg’s William Pesek suggests we might see evolving. As Pesek notes, the creation of an Asian Monetary Fund would:
“have major consequences for the global elites and the so-called “Washington Consensus” on how developing nations should go about raising living standards for their swelling and often poor populations.”
In particular, if this came off, not only would we be talking about a European social model, we would also be looking at an Asian one.
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Despite a widespread feeling that interest rates in Europe may be about to rise, futures markets seem near to pricing in a rate cut for the second half of the year.
One interesting knock-on consequence of this that no-one seems to be twigging is that any such move might well cramp the style of Alan Greenspan over at the US Federal Reserve. To date everyone is imagining that interest rates in the US will continue to rise at a ‘measured’ or ‘not so measured’ pace. But with the current account deficit to worry about there will be a limit to how far Greenspan can push the difference in rates (or spread) without driving up the dollar, something I’m sure he dearly wants to avoid doing.
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Vladimir Putin, speaking in Moscow today, paid tribute to the courage of “all Europeans who resisted Nazism.” He also stated something which for my generation seems to be simply a fact: that the war?s most ?ruthless and decisive? events had unfolded within the Soviet Union, whose sacrifice of 27m citizens had underpinned the Allied victory. Had the Stalin-Hitler pact held, the war in Western Europe would probably have looked very, very different. However, as the FT notes:
Mr Putin stopped short of issuing the apology demanded by the Baltic states for the four decades of Soviet occupation that followed the war. He also made no reference to the post-war division of Europe.
Why is it sometimes so hard to say sorry?
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It seems we’re not the only ones who are beginning to see governance model incongruencies behind some of the German economic ills (see two of my last posts (1, 2), and, especially the comments to the last one).
Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell (who knows Germany well, having beeen a research fellow at the The Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) gets a bit angry at the Economist for their usually biased coverage of Continental European social and economic models, before declaring his support for Franz M?ntefering.
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Anybody else been watching the new Doctor Who?
I was always a bit lukewarm towards the show when I was a kid – it seemed slow moving and awfully cheesy by 80’s standards – but I’m really starting to like the new version. So far, it’s lampooned the rush to war in Iraq only a couple weeks before the election – “massive weapons of destruction” indeed – and now has gone on to attack 24-hour cable news in last night’s episode. I don’t remember the old Doctor having such political content.
The Dalek episode, though, was pure fan service.
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Views of immigration are changing. Back in the mists of time, when I first came to the conclusion that ongoing demographic changes were going to be important, the voices in favour of a reconsideration of immigration policy were few and far between. Perhaps the first and most notable of these voices was the UN population division. Now things are different, and a series of recent international conferences and reports highlighting the positive advantages of immigration as an economic motor only serve to underline the fact that discussion of this important topic is very much back on the agenda.
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As I write, Nick hasn’t updated last night’s post on the UK election, but it’s a good summary. Enjoy.
Some tidbits:
It looks like campaigning vigorously against the war in Iraq is worth about a 4 percent swing in Britain. Who’s Old Europe now?
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Her Majesties’ subjects have spoken again. It’s just that we don’t know yet what exactly they have said. Well, a majority among them will have probably sighed a little in the booth and then more or less resignedly or enthusiastically ticked off the box next to their local Labour candidate, thus likely ensuring Blairs “historic” second and a half term in office. Earlier, Exit polls predicted a reduced Labour majority of 66 seats.
But because we want to know all this in detail, it is worth mentioning again on top of the page that afoe’s Nick Barlow is blogging the election night over at “What you can get away with” as well as on the 2005 UK General election blog. Here’s why he thinks it’s worth staying up:
“Conservatives take back Putney on a 6.5% swing, Labour hold Newcastle Central but have an 11% swing to the Liberal Democrats. There?s not going to be anything even resembling a uniform national swing tonight, so this could be a long night.”
If that’s still not enough information for the true election junkies among you, then check the list of election bloggers compiled by Chicken Yoghurt. Oh, and before I forget it, the BBC does also offer extensive election coverage including an automatically updating scorecard.
For once something positive to report:
After months of deadlock, the Doha round of global trade talks has taken a big step forward, thanks largely to an abstruse but important deal over agricultural tariffs….On May 4th, negotiators from America, the European Union, Brazil, India and Australia hammered out a formula for converting specific tariffs on agricultural goods, such as 10 cents per pound in weight, into percentage (or so-called ad valorem) tariffs.
Measuring all tariffs as a percentage of the goods? value is a prerequisite for further progress in talks about reducing trade barriers for agricultural goods. Under the broad outline for the farm-trade talks agreed last summer, countries pledged to divide their tariff barriers into different tiers. Higher tariffs will be cut more than lower ones. Not surprisingly, those countries that protect their farmers most wanted a conversion formula that translated specific tariffs into lower percentages, as that would imply smaller cuts down the road. In the end, the deal was based on a compromise proposal made by the European Union.
Source: The Economist
Obviously this is a dense technical issue, but the good news is that the EU has moved to break the deadlock. The slightly ironic detail is that the meeting where the agreement was ironed-out was held in Paris with the French referendum campaign as a background. Still I suppose this puts the suggestions that current EU policy is being driven exclusively by the needs of obtaining a ‘yes’ vote in some sort of context.
Also, as the Economist notes there is plenty yet to do. In the first place all the details on agriculture have still to be worked out. And then there is the tricky question of services……………
The FT is running the following story about Barroso:
Jos? Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, will drop his supervision of antitrust cases affecting the shipping industry, shortly after it emerged he took a holiday on the luxury yacht of a Greek shipping tycoon….
the timing of Mr Barroso’s decision is likely to reignite the controversy over his summer holiday as a guest on a yacht belonging to Spiros Latsis, son of John Latsis, the Greek shipping magnate.
Are these people all so desparately lonely that they have nothing better to do with their time? I have simply one question: with all the money we pay our leaders, don’t they have sufficient resources to organise their own holidays?