Posts of May 2012

ASEAN Way, Not Sanctions, Swayed Myanmar

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Southeast Asia at 5/31/2012 08:33:00 AM

My memory was jogged about making this post by a family friend who recently came back from Myanmar on an expedition to buy Burmese rubies. "Gotta go now that tourists are welcome again but before jewelry prices go up as more international buyers come" she offered. There's nothing wrong with commerce and tourism, I say, and Myanmar could certainly use the foreign exchange. My memory was further jogged by a Yahoo! feature from John Tures of LaGrange College offering the admittedly minority opinion that Myanmar's recent return to a semblance of normality (by international standards)--ridding itself of the dual currency system borne of the grey market among other things--is the result of successful sanctions. I'd never heard of LaGrange College before reading this feature, but I can assure you that it has little to do with mathematical concepts or whorehouses in Texas immortalized by world-famous bearded musicians sporting fuzzy guitars. Rather it's quite the opposite--LaGrange...

Aung San Suu Kyi Goes Neoliberal, Attends WEF

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Southeast Asia at 5/29/2012 04:16:00 PM

For her very first trip out of Myanmar (Burma) in 24 years, Aung San Suu Kyi has made the interesting choice of attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Thailand to be held on 30 May to June 1. While she has been in touch with the WEF organizers in the past, it was only through remote broadcast. Lest you doubt the aptness of my post title, try this for a Washington Consensus flashback c/o the Nobel laureate: Economic progress is dependent on more than the fiscal and monetary measures that have been advocated for Burma by international financial Institutions. Such measures will need to be up held by judicial and legislative reforms, which will guarantee that sound regulations and laws will be administrated justly and effectively. I am not so sure what it means that she's chosen the WEF-Thailand as the first stop on an international tour that will include her finally receiving her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. After all, alike many others including ASEAN...

It's (Sorta) Official: Poland, European Darling

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe at 5/28/2012 12:12:00 PM

I add the qualifier in the title for the reason that I wish not to jinx this country. Lest we forget, it was not so long ago that the darling of European integration was Ireland (believe it or not nowadays). I remember my time in Europe when near-accession country officials would dutifully troop to Dublin in search of ideas for prosperity akin to that experienced by the erstwhile "Celtic Tiger." My former University of Birmingham colleague Nikki Smith even wrote about "Showcasing Globalization?" for her thesis sometime ago, and the book based on her thesis remains a definitive account of its days of wine and roses. Showing...

Curt Schilling's 38 Games & Video Game Subsidies

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Entertainment at 5/27/2012 10:57:00 AM

[NOTE: This is the first part of a two-part American subsidies series. Forgive me in advance for another reference to what's obviously my favourite Eagles tune.] They came to Providence, the one in Rhode Island, where tech enclave dreams hang heavy in the air. It was supposed to be an All-Star lineup: three-time World Series champion Curt Schilling was an avid role-playing gamer who brought together Elder Scrolls III and IV lead designer Ken Rolston, illustrator Todd McFarlane of The Spawn fame for art direction, and bestselling author R.A. Salvatore for creative direction. Yet alike any number of stories conjured by these...

Obama's Deficits: The Buck Stops Nowhere in US

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Americana at 5/25/2012 10:37:00 AM

The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job - Harry Truman It was not always that American leaders--Democrats or Republicans--were such feckless deficit lovers. A measure of American decline is surely comparing the quality of leadership it had during a more prosperous era and now. Back then you had Harry Truman who owned up to what happened to his country by indicating that "The Buck Stops Here" on the Oval Office desk. Reading the umpteenth pathetic yak from Obama about how he is merely the victim of Bush-era policies (and presumably...

Overfishing Futility, PRC/Scarborough Shoal Edition

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Environment at 5/24/2012 09:10:00 AM

To be sure, what China and the Southeast Asian nations contesting various islands and reefs in the South China Sea are most interested in are the gas reserves lying beneath. That said, fishing inspires a strong, evocative reaction among nationals of the countries concerned. After all, the most recent Sino-Philippine spat started with the Philippines halting Chinese vessels allegedly carrying endangered species. Strangely enough, we now find in our favourite official publication China Daily tacit admission that the waters surrounding Scarborough Shoal or what China calls Huangyan Island and the Philippines the Panatag Shoal...

Article IV, or What's Wrong With China by the IMF

♠ Posted by Emmanuel at 5/22/2012 09:08:00 AM

I am rather tardy on this but it's nonetheless a bit of international political-economic history. It is not exactly a mystery that China's leadership is rather thin-skinned to public criticism. From its...how do I put this...vast censorship apparatus to its tin ear for economic advice, let's just say there are other countries more willing to entertain alternate viewpoints. And so it has been with the IMF and China. In theory, the IMF should conduct yearly consultations with China as a major developing country on its conduct of economic policy. However, given its growing clout and refusal to listen, Article IV consultations were skipped altogether in both 2007 and 2008. A slight improvement was made in 2009 insofar as surveillance was conducted but China did not authorize public release of the resulting report. However, I guess China felt the heat in 2010 and finally decided to both be subject to Article IV and release the subsequent report. Nevertheless, China had excised...

Princelings: PRC's Rise, US Decline & Sociology

♠ Posted by Emmanuel at 5/20/2012 10:15:00 AM

The rich are different from you and me - (mis)attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald I have been absolutely gobsmacked by the amount of Western press coverage the fallout from the Bo Xilai scandal has received. Once more demonstrating this blog's commitment to Highbrow Content, until today I've made no posts whatsoever on his recent entanglements. Ironically, I made a bevy of them while he was China's minister of commerce when most of the world outside of trade circles had no idea who he was. Dealing with his EU counterpart during the so-called bra wars was as racy as things got in the realm of international trade which is...

Ex-Im Bank Lives and Trade Finance Isn't a Subsidy

♠ Posted by Emmanuel at 5/18/2012 01:15:00 PM

I welcomed the news that the United States' Ex-Im Bank which provides trade finance to buyers of American exports was able to secure not only continued but increased funding. While re-authorization used to be automatic, this year it was subject to some controversy over allegedly providing "corporate welfare" according to some Tea Party wingnuts. (See an earlier post.) Delta Airlines--that cash-hemorrhaging American carrier--even joined in the action over allegedly privileging foreign buyers of US aircraft alike Boeing jets. Let me get to the point here: the re-authorization easily passed since the notion that Ex-Im Bank "subsidizes" US industries is patently false. For instance, our favourite climate change deniers at the Cato Institute invoke a canard that because Ex-Im funded some Norwegian purchases of now-defunct Solyndra's solar equipment, it was somehow encouraging corporate welfare. (Doubtful.) Matthew Yglesias also throws around the word "subsidy" while speaking of the...

Small is Beautiful: Anti-Growth in a 6 Minute Video

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Environment at 5/16/2012 10:55:00 AM

After reading the news that last month was reportedly the fifth warmest April on record and the 326th consecutive month when temperatures were above the 20th century average, I came across the video clip above which neatly encapsulates environmental concerns about unlimited growth. Tacitly underpinned as it is on limitless resource use, it is, in a word, impossible. These thoughts are certainly not new. Classic books appeared during the seventies with the publication of the Club of Rome's 1972 book Limits to Growth. However, what captured the public imagination more was E.E. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful which came out a year after. Aside from reiterating the unsustainability of much of modern life, he also champions downscaling resource use and obviously the modern preoccupation with "bigger is better" which often encourages wanton exploitation of finite resources. Although the presentation style of the short clip above from the Post Carbon Institute may not be to everyone's...

Is Being Fat Related to Being Dumb? The US Case

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Agriculture,Americana,Education,Health at 5/16/2012 10:35:00 AM

Being apart from the Anglo-Saxon blogging crowd allows me to probe questions they are generally uncomfortable with but need to be asked. Yesterday we considered the general unresponsiveness of Anglophone academia to reforming higher education despite producing so many unemployed and unemployable graduates. Today I consider the unpalatable combination of being overweight and intellectual underachievement. Is there a link between the two? Once more, let us consider the United States which exemplifies much of both. It is not exactly a secret that the performance of the United States' education system is middling at best compared...

Higher Ed in Existential Crisis: Jobless in US, UK

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Education at 5/15/2012 02:30:00 PM

Is is not particularly surprising to me that Anglophone bloggers in academia don't cover the topic much, but make no mistake--higher education is in crisis. Despite a lot of them being especially fond of rational choice theory, I suppose it's slightly discomforting to find themselves being criticized as rent-seekers instead of them criticizing various government personnel as such. The crux of the matter is this: How can you justify relatively cushy academic wages when college graduates can't find remunerative employment? While it's especially true of British higher education where major universities are uniformly funded by...

Proletarianizing F1: Hugo Chavez's Pilot Wins Race

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Energy,Latin America,Sports at 5/14/2012 07:58:00 AM

Face it: there are certain sports which have an uppity image. Golf. Equestrian sports alike polo and dressage. Rugby even. And, of course, there's F1 which tries to build an image of glamour with various Eurotrash and wannabe Eurotrash sporting perma-tans, big Rolexes, big yachts and attractive young women in tight-fitting clothing (but not much of it). This marketing ploy has done wonders given the rude health of F1 despite the automobile industry having seen better times. A few months ago I talked about Hugo Chavez's sponsorship of the venerable F1 team Williams. Despite its illustrious history, it's fallen on hard times...

Railroaded: Today's Depressing Greece Factoid

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Credit Crisis,Europe at 5/13/2012 09:36:00 AM

Wasteful public projects are a staple of rational choice theory: what better way is there to milk the public purse, profit off contractors and milk the public than a nice, big public project? Although you will find no shortage of metaphors for Greek prodigality nowadays, its railroad system is a particularly egregious example of a highly subsidized sinkhole. Some even argue that travelling by taxi intercity is cheaper than going by train (even if the latter is a heavily subsidized money loser). Although it has been the subject of domestic criticism for the longest time, the crisis has brought renewed attention abroad. In particular, Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame wrote about it in his most recent book about developed nations that have fallen under hard times. In a recent BBC article, the journalists ask cabdrivers for their fares and calculate that sharing a cab with another is the threshold of making the cab ride the, ah, rational choice: In 2007, the last year we have figures...

Catholic Melinda Gates vs Church on Contraception

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Development,Gender Equality,Religion at 5/10/2012 10:27:00 AM

For reasons you are doubtlessly aware of, the emphasis on population control of most in the development mainstream has long attracted criticism from the Roman Catholic Church. What we have here is a new twist on an old story: as cash-strapped Western nations have become warier about providing development aid, other actors have stepped up--especially wealthy private interests alike the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In theory, these foundations combine the best of both worlds by avoiding electoral politics--witness tied aid--and applying a business-like sophistication to social problems. But some things never change. It was perhaps inevitable that the Gates Foundation would bump up against the Church when it came to matters dealing with contraception. While there has been a change of emphasis on the rationale for it--instead of allaying fears of large Malthusian population increases in the postwar period, it is now on female empowerment concerning reproductive health decisions--the...

Maybe the Renminbi Won't Rule the World After All

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Currencies at 5/09/2012 12:24:00 PM

Here's a neat riposte from Eswar Prasad and Lei Ye to the idea that the RMB will surpass the dollar as the world's most important currency over the next decade or two. That point of view has been famously espoused by Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute of International Economics and, for you trivia buffs out there, occasional co-author of Dr. Prasad. Anyway, I found the Prasad/Ye commentary in the current issue of IMF Finance & Development which we receive copies of here at the office. It's often an interesting, easy to read publication that keeps you up to date on things that are on the minds of IMF staffers. First,...

Pricing Luxury: LVMH in 'Old' Europe, 'New' China

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Europe,Travel at 5/08/2012 10:32:00 AM

Having several friends and relatives working in the industry--female and male, mind you--I've taken a keen interest in luxury goods as an exemplar of globalization's dynamics. Not only do leading luxury firms have global reach and name recognition, but they also have to deal with variations in culture, custom and differences in various nations' economic performance (among other things). Thus I found Dana Thomas' book-long rant about the commodification of luxury products fascinating even if it was more a lament concerning how most luxury goods were no longer handcrafted in traditional fashion hotbeds alike France and Italy...

Hopeless, Jobless America? Go East, Young Yank

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Education,Migration at 5/07/2012 09:21:00 AM

There are two interesting features in TIME on dealing with the generally jobless state of modern America. The first is a Job-like (biblical) lament about how unpaid internships are common Stateside when they should not be. As you'd expect, the article is accompanied by sob stories about young Americans enduring a string of unpaid internships. Fed up, a generation that is growing up during the Occupy movement is supposedly petitioning the US Department of Labor to stop these abusive practices. Among other things, laws forbidding unpaid internships are being proposed. However, you have to wonder whether excessively strict regulation...