Posts of May 2011

Fukushima Fallout: German Hypocrisy on Nukes?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Energy,Environment,Europe at 5/31/2011 12:01:00 AM

As someone with an interest in both the introduction of innovations and sources of energy, I have closely followed developments in the public acceptance of nuclear power. To be sure, this acceptance varies country by country. What's more, harrowing incidences alike those of the Fukushima power plant tend to elicit different responses.A few weeks ago, I probed why the French have not really questioned their reliance on nuclear power despite Fukushima reminding us all of its obvious hazards. On a crudely instrumental level, the French would be shooting themselves in the foot if they themselves expressed reservations about nuclear...

American Badass: Kraft Gordon Gekko'd Cadbury

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Marketing,Trade at 5/30/2011 12:02:00 AM

[NOTE: The candyman is often portrayed in popular culture as a sweet-talking but devious character. Here's one named...Kraft. I almost forgot about it until I witnessed the sickly sweet made-for-TV Obama visit to the UK. Unlike fawning by the uninformed over an insubstantial political figure, here's unsweetened commentary on a distinctly souring transatlantic trade relationship.This post is a follow-up to the post I made earlier regarding the Kraft takeover of the UK's largest confectioner, Cadbury. If you will recall, I was opposed to this move on degustatory and economic grounds. Others were even more adamant--see the image...

On the Record: Fukuyama On PRC's History Ending

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China at 5/28/2011 02:59:00 PM

Non revocare--I will not recant. Despite penning probably the biggest crock of them all--the end of history in which all political-economic forms were to converge on capitalist democracies--ex-neocon Francis Fukuyama remains one of the foremost commentators on the political economy scene. Which, of course, prompted me to think it doesn't matter that you're correct, but that you are first to pen a memorable idea. Although backtracking on this idea given the weight of evidence to the contrary since that bit of post-1989 triumphalism, you get the feeling that Fukuyama still clings to the end of history thesis as a normative position....

Screw Copenhagen; The Way Forward on Climate

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Environment at 5/27/2011 12:01:00 AM

Let's face hard reality here: as the ill-fated Copenhagen 2009 climate summit indicated, we are even father away from a binding, multilateral climate deal as we are from completing the WTO Doha Development Round. Too many diverging interests, too few common interests, and climate change deniers everywhere was never going to be a recipe for a deal.Just this Wednesday, I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Global Governance 2020--a group of international researchers who are trying to figure out where we go from the Copenhagen debacle. Their brief, to-the-point report is available online from their website. Alike the earlier...

On Serbian EU Accession: Ratko Mladic Caught

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Security at 5/26/2011 02:28:00 PM

A few months ago I "offered" to hasten the process of Serbian EU accession by removing one of its principle obstacles--bringing war criminal Ratko Mladic to justice. By engaging in Soldier of Fortune-inspired bounty hunting to pick up multimillion rewards for his capture, I thought it was a pretty good financial prospect as well. Nothing became of that unsurprisingly--academics are timid rather than action-ready. With Slobodan Milosevic long gone and Radovan Karazdic behind bars, Mladic was the only left at large among the triumvirate of Balkan evildoers. (I also had a previous commentary on the interesting political economy...

Read My BRICs: No New French IMF Chiefs!

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,IMF at 5/25/2011 01:54:00 PM

Coming from a developing nation, I am a long-time follower of third world solidarity movements. The Non-Aligned Movement, the G-77 and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) are to me high points of South-South cooperation even if the results of their activities have often been muted. For many posts now, I have been agitating for a non-Western IMF chief alike what has been promised by Americans and Europeans for the longest time [1, 2, 3]. Or at least prior to Dominique Strauss-Kahn's--how do I put it--questionable extra-curricular activities. Certainly, it's time for the West to let the rest of us have a say in international...

Realizing the ($134 Trillion GDP) Asian Century

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Development,India,Southeast Asia at 5/25/2011 12:02:00 AM

With all due to apologies to the late economic historian Angus Maddison (requiescat in pace), will half of world GDP be accounted for by Asia in 2050? It may seem a far-fetched notion now, but the Asian Development Bank has a new report out which suggests it's within the bounds of plausibility.The key to achieving this feat says the ADB is for populous and fast-growing China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam (two SE Asian countries, yay!) not to fall into a middle-income trap. That is, not succumbing to slowing growth rates and concomitantly stagnating income levels in the next five to ten years. If this trap is avoided, Asian...

Maybe Costly Fuel Will Doom Low Cost Airlines

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Energy,Environment at 5/24/2011 12:01:00 AM

Let me confess by that I live with the very embodiment of environmental evil. My flatmate is one of those Europeans who have taken advantage of the advent of low-cost carriers to travel around the continent affordably to see more of what it has to offer. This week Bratislava, the next Riga, maybe Prague in two weeks' time. This is so because certain environmentalists view short-hop flights as a unique form of devilry. When bus and train networks will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go, they argue, why fly Ryanair or EasyJet? Short-haul flights of the sort weekend vacationers like my flatmate take are said to be far...

Vaclav Klaus: Climate Concern = Communism

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Environment,Europe at 5/24/2011 12:00:00 AM

Something makes me rather certain that Czech President Vaclav Klaus would have made it big in America. Given that one of its major political parties doesn't even believe climate change exists, there is a lack of an American consensus that there is a problem at all. How can you then have global consensus when the world's second largest carbon emitter doesn't even recognize the existence of these life-threatening hazards? While similarly palaeolithic reasoning is familiar from deficit deniers--these pathologies tend to go together--climate change denial is IMHO more deleterious given its globe-spanning and life-endangering implications.Today, it is my great displeasure to bring you further ramblings from Vaclav Klaus, Czech primitivist par excellence. Aside from providing a treasure trove of references from obscure climate change deniers, he now makes a stunning claim: Alike central planners of the Communist era that he so abhors, he believes that those advocating for controls...

PRC Still Idolizes Singapore, Warts & All

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Development,Southeast Asia at 5/23/2011 12:02:00 AM

While pointed commentaries in official Chinese publications on perceived slights by Westerners (particularly Americans) against China are common, you often don't see these publications going out of their way to defend others being the subject of foreign defamation. The target in question here is Singapore. A few days ago I commented on various opposition parties gaining a 40% share of the popular vote in Singapore--a one-party state since its inception under Harry Lee Kuan Yew's People's Action Party (PAP). These opposition parties would have gained a larger share of the legislature had a proportional representation (PR) system...

Throwing a Shoe at China's Great Firewall Creator

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Internet Governance at 5/23/2011 12:01:00 AM

[NOTE: This is the first of two China and authoritarian development posts.] In case you missed it, you should really get a hold of this. For some time, I've been fascinated with shoe throwing as a form of political protest [1, 2] and the lengths the PRC leadership goes through to maintain the Great Firewall of China (GFW)[1, 2]. So, it was inevitable that I would be most interested in the news that Fang Binxing--recognized as the architect of the aforementioned Internet censorship infrastructure--was pelted with eggs and shoes by a yet-unidentified protester:Police in China say they are seeking a man who allegedly threw an...

Rumour Mill: Lord Mandelson, Next WTO Chief?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,Europe,Trade at 5/21/2011 12:02:00 AM

I would advise you to take this latest report with a grain of salt. For, in the last few hours, Gordon Brown's statements championing a greater role for less-developed countries at the IMF which had been interpreted as his bid to become its next managing director have been pooh-poohed--by Brown himself.That said, we have yet another New Labour stalwart waiting in the wings to fill posts in prominent international economic organizations. While British Prime Minister David Cameron scoffed at the idea of recommending Brown to become the next IMF chief, this new Guardian article suggests Cameron is keener on Peter Mandelson. Unlike...

Guns or Butter? UK's Defence v Foreign Aid Debate

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Cheneynomics,Development,Europe at 5/20/2011 12:02:00 AM

OK, so this is not strictly an application of the economic textbook guns-or-butter question of whether a nation should devote its resources to military or civilian priorities given a production possibility frontier. After all, the recipients of the "butter" ain't her majesty's subjects. Given that the UK is not as free-spending as the US is--over there Cheneynomic free lunch ideology has been ascendant for at least a decade now--it's a meaningful tradeoff with implications for foreign policy. PM David Cameron says he's of the "Live Aid" generation in justifying the preservation of aid spending, but let's say right-leaning...

LDCs Strike Back: The Coloured Man's IMF Burden

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Bretton Woods Twins,IMF at 5/19/2011 11:02:00 AM

Before getting to the topic at hand, let me point out Desmond Lachman of the AEI and his scathing indictment of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's performance as IMF managing-director--but without offering an alternative. From my vantage focusing on global governance, this much is clear: the "mistake" of Dominique Strauss-Kahn was favouritism toward Europe by granting Greece, Ireland, and now Portugal access to IMF funds meant for balance of payments troubles for what were, in essence, fiscal woes. Is this prudent lending? You first have to consider if the IMF should have lent to these countries at all. Latvia, Ukraine, Hungary, Iceland,...

US-Pakistan Ties Through the Lens of Pax Britannia

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic History,Hegemony,South Asia at 5/18/2011 12:01:00 AM

Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend?All you need to do is follow the worms[NOTE: With ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters currently playing the London leg of his globetrotting revival of The Wall, I guess this post is apropos. There are reasons why I've included a clip of Sir Bob Geldof in imperial mode from the film version of The Wall.]It isn't news that already shaky US-Pakistan ties are under further pressure with the extrajudicial and extraterritorial elimination of Usama bin Laden. While you can certainly debate whether the intrusion was justified, this much is clear: Pakistan greatly resents the United States despite being quite dependent on it for aid, the IMF bailout, security cooperation and the rest. While we can debate American hegemony till the cows come home, there is little doubt that its economic and military heft is being felt by the Pakistanis. And, as many American commentators note, there has not really been all that much gratitude for US "largesse."...

The White Man's IMF Burden (Merkel Edition)

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Bretton Woods Twins,Development,IMF at 5/17/2011 12:01:00 AM

As expected, jockeying for the appointment of the next IMF managing director has begun. In an odd twist on the American deficit lubber's argument that medium-term fiscal consolidation is a desirable objective but not one in the near term since the US is just recovering from a deep recession, we have Europeans offering the same. Here, Europeans who still hold voting rights out of proportion with their share of the world economy claim that while medium-term diversity among heads of Bretton Woods institutions is a desirable goal, it shouldn't happen immediately given the pressing woes of peripheral European economies Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.Again, I must point out my longstanding objection that the IMF is primarily meant to handle balance-of-payments crises, not fiscal ones alike those being experienced by the troubled trio. What is more, I am not alone in sensing fairly blatant favouritism that is hampering IMF reform to reflect the changing global balance of economic activity...