Posts of 2013

Commercialism & Christmas in Non-Christian Societies

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Middle East,Southeast Asia at 12/24/2013 02:04:00 PM

Thailand features Christmas elephants, f'rinstance Your Asian correspondent--obviously Catholic with a name like "Emmanuel"--has always found it curious that some of the most extravagant Christmas pageantry can be found in predominantly non-Christian societies. With the exception of the Philippines and (tiny) Timor-Leste, that's practically everyone else in Asia--Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore...you name it. Spending your Christmas holidays in these metropoles and indeed pretty much elsewhere nowadays, you wouldn't even be able to tell that you weren't in a Christian country given the amount of Christmas decorations lining...

Aid (Not Death) from Above: Drones for Disaster Relief

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Development at 12/20/2013 09:46:00 AM

Some of these things don't come with missiles but with goodwill The American habit of using drones on supposed "terrorist" targets that frequently results in killing civilians instead--"collateral damage"--has outraged a significant part of the civilized world. Former US President Jimmy Carter criticizes their use as a gross human rights violation. Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly only yesterday passed a resolution aimed at limiting their use as erstwhile American allies in the global war on terror alike Afghanistan and Pakistan have sought to limit myriad incursions in their airspace for the purpose of raining death...

Russia's Price for Buying Off Ukraine: $15B

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,IMF,Russia at 12/17/2013 07:13:00 PM

Put 'er there, Vlad, my country's yours for $15 billion Let us update this strange tale of Ukraine. Having told his opponents to in effect get lost since they didn't win any elections or succeed in gaining a vote of no-confidence, President Viktor Yanukovych headed to the Kremlin to speak to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. What is the price of fealty to Russia? Gulf Cooperation Council bigwigs bought off Egypt for $9.9 billion (so far)--$5B from the Saudis and $4.9B from the Emiratis to wean it off the upstart Qataris. Meanwhile, Yanukovych was able to wangle a $15B bailout from Russia to buy that much worth of...

Boxers-Turned-Politicians: Pacquiao vs Klitschko

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Russia,Sports,Trade at 12/16/2013 09:17:00 AM

Fighting Russkies, Striking a Blow for the EU If this were an actual fight, it would be a grossly unfair one since Manny Pacquiao stands 1.69m tall and weighs 65kg whereas Vitali Klitschko--older brother of fellow heavyweight champion Wladimir of Hayden-Panettiere-is-my-girl fame--is 2.01m tall and weighs 110kg. However, this comparison is grossly unfair in other respects of political consequence. In terms of celebrity, the Filipino boxer is far better known competing in the welterweight division where the glamor, money and attention in prizefighting is now concentrated, whereas the heavyweight division lacks compelling...

World's Smallest Currency Union: Caribbean Challenges

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Caribbean,Currencies at 12/15/2013 03:16:00 PM

Yes, Virginia, these dollars bear Queen Elizabeth II's image The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) is the world's smallest currency union among the four existing worldwide. The European Monetary Union (EMU) is known by all, whereas the other two are in Africa. What makes the ECCU doubly interesting is that it is pegged to the US dollar. In fact, it predates the EMU by half a century, although it changed the currency it is being pegged to from GBP to USD halfway through: The OECS members share a common currency, the Eastern Caribbean dollar, which has been pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1976 at EC$2.70=US$1, and...

World's #2: Yuan Overtakes Euro in Trade Finance

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in China,Currencies at 12/12/2013 05:15:00 PM

Trade finance is a somewhat arcane area despite its obvious importance to keeping world trade afloat. To make a long story short, a loan taken out by a trading firm for an international transaction is known as a "letter of credit." [LC] In effect, the lending bank's creditworthiness substitutes for the debtor's, allowing the counterparty to be assuaged regarding credit risk. In recent times, the Chinese yuan or renminbi has come on like gangbusters as more and more of these instruments are denominated in RMB. Reflecting China's emergence as the world's largest trading nation in merchandise, a significant minority of the...

I Wanna Riot...In Singapore [?!]

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Southeast Asia at 12/10/2013 08:37:00 AM

@#$% the Police, Singapore Edition Singapore has acquired a reputation for being squeaky-clean to the point of being antiseptic. It is particularly famous for two things in this respect: banning bubble gum in public that can litter surroundings and caning juvenile delinquents alike the Yankee brat kid Michael Fay [whappack!] In reality, though, there are tensions bubbling under the carefully stage-managed facade. There were race riots between ethnic Chinese and Malays in 1964 and 1969 whose records time has not erased. In their wake, Singapore has been at pains to level the playing field for all three major ethnic groups...

Numbers Don't Lie: Catholicism is Growing

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Religion at 12/10/2013 07:57:00 AM

It remains remarkable how a non-negligible portion of the world population can be classified under a single church with a single leader and a single history: the Catholic Church. I've been performing religion-related research and came across a 2013 Pew Research poll describing the extent of this faith. To be sure, there is fragmentation among Christian denominations: born-agains, charismatics and so on have mixed in with Anglicans and even Catholics. However, as fads in Christianity come and go, one thing remains fairly stable in terms of global proportion and growing in terms of absolute numbers--St. Paul's brand: Over...

Is Europe Overrepresented at World Cup? Nope

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Sports at 12/08/2013 09:47:00 AM

It's the weekend and it's time we had another feature dealing with international sport. Perhaps inevitably, let's talk about football. Some are lamenting that the ranks of World Cup participants for next year's event is in Brazil are filled with European teams. Why does Europe get represented by 13 teams--over 40% of the participants? Don't Europeans represent only slightly over 10% of the world population? Certainly this is an unfair remnant of a bygone, Eurocentric world? With the group draws done and dusted, it's time to have a closer look at the matter. The easiest way to go about our task is to look at the number...

WTO Welcomes Its 160th Member, Yemen

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,Middle East,Trade at 12/08/2013 08:57:00 AM

Yemen, there's no need to feel down I said Yemen, pick yourself off the ground... A little neglected in the hullabaloo surrounding the conclusion of the "Bali package" at WTO negotiations in the eponymous Indonesian resort location has been the organization's acceptance of its 160th member. A stop on the Silk Route of centuries past, to say Yemen has fallen under hard times due to religious extremists and assorted nutcases taking up their various dubious causes is an understatement. However, it now joins the growing ranks of least-developed country members: Immediately after the heads of delegations’ meeting, members formally accepted Yemen as a new WTO member — its “accession” to the WTO. At a ceremony to celebrate the decision, Mr Azevêdo congratulated the Yemen government for the domestic reforms it is undertaking after 13 years to finally become a WTO member. “We celebrate accessions both because of what it means for the individual country, but also because...

Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution is Dead, Long Live F1!

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Latin America,Socialism,Sports at 12/06/2013 02:11:00 PM

Sorry 21st century socialist sympathizers, but the economic and moral bankruptcy of Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution is becoming more apparent with each passing day as his successor finishes off the job. Even rose-tinted glasses cannot obscure the damage done. First, "oil diplomacy" is sagging as the US ups its domestic production of petroleum care of fracking and a slower world economy has limited Venezuela's ability to fund (costly) PR stunts: The late President Hugo Chavez's dream of leveraging Venezuela's oil wealth to spread revolution across Latin America is crumbling under the weight of an economic crisis that...

OECD 2012 Education Rankings: US, Leftists Get Dumberer

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Education at 12/04/2013 11:34:00 AM

I am annoyed with the leftist Economic Policy Institute's spin on the results for the OECD's standardized tests known as PISA. The EPI is complaining that the results portray an unfair picture of American academic performance, and that US policymakers paint an unnecessarily dire picture of US education. Another year, another batch of crappy (should I spell that "KrapPi" to make it more intelligible to certain North American audiences?) results. Ho-hum. Among other EPI complaints we have the following: There is a test score gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students in every country. Although the...

Lenin's Tomb? More Like His Louis Vuitton Trunk

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Russia at 12/03/2013 02:10:00 PM

Talk about a marketing ploy gone bad: you are looking at a giant Louis Vuitton monogram-patterned building that was supposed to house an exhibition dedicated to the famous brand in Red Square. Say what you will about Vladimir Lenin, but his mausoleum featuring his embalmed remains has been there since 1924. In a way, it continues the Russian's morbid fascination with the communist legend. Sure the ultra-nationalists and old-style communists will of course venerate him, but even those who believe times have moved on retain affection for the human who put Russia on the course of being a superpower--at least for a handful of...

Last Chance Saloon: WTO's Fate & This Week's Bali Meet

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,India,Trade at 12/01/2013 03:55:00 PM

I just wanted to share the ICTSD's useful primer on the upcoming WTO meetings in Bali, Indonesia where the organization's fate as a credible negotiating forum hangs in the balance. The full report is available as a PDF file; below is the introduction to this crucial event: Trade ministers are set to meet in the Indonesian island province of Bali from 3-6 December for the WTO’s Ninth Ministerial Conference, in a meeting that has been touted - for better or worse - as a turning point for the 159-member organisation. Yet on the eve of the conference, what will actually be on the agenda in Bali remains fluid. Geneva-based...

American Idiocy: Dying for Shopping on Black Friday

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Americana,Nonsense at 12/01/2013 09:04:00 AM

There are few things more pathetic than a consumerist automaton who lives to shop. This American disease has spread around the globe under the guise of various euphemisms--"economic efficiency," "free trade," "globalization," and so forth--but its symptoms are unmistakable. Today's Exhibit A is the phenomenon of "Black Friday," or the day after Thanksgiving when US retailers supposedly break even for the year and offer mega-deals to entice the American shopping classes. Which would all be well and good if these mega-deals weren't as fake as the American Dream: to engineer "40% off," most retailers work backwards to come...

Conflict Minerals: Which Game Console is Most Violent?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in CSR,Entertainment at 11/28/2013 07:52:00 AM

With the holiday season upon us and one semi-new (Nintendo) and two completely new (Microsoft and Sony) video game consoles on the market, consumer interest is . While you may be thinking of blasting away virtual opponents playing Call of Duty 107 or whatever version they have nowadays, pause for a moment and think of the more than 5 million persons estimated to have died in the Congo in various conflicts. For, many elements you find in consumer electronics--including video game consoles--are sourced from mineral-rich mines there: tantalum, tin and tungsten. Instead of Call of Duty 107, Congo is home to true-to-life civil...

Business as Usual: Thailand Back in Crisis Mode

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Agriculture,Southeast Asia at 11/27/2013 11:50:00 AM

There is an anarchic quality to Thai politics that has to be seen to be believed. At regular intervals, mass protests, military coups and other forms of upheaval toss out leaders whether they are democratically elected or otherwise. Since the turn of the century, media mogul Thaksin Shinawatra--sort of an Asian Silvio Berlusconi--has dominated the political scene, being PM from 2001 to 2006, when he was ousted in a military coup. Since 2006, he has lived largely outside the country to avoid criminal prosecution. However, his allies have held office most of the time, including his sister Yingluck Shinawatra who was elected...

Pound or Euro? Currency of an Independent Scotland

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Currencies,Europe at 11/24/2013 02:22:00 PM

The next few years are literally going to be make-or-break for the United Kingdom. First of all, the ruling Tories have promised a referendum on its membership in the European Union that, if it is held and voters decide against it, will mean the UK leaving the EU. It's a scary thought we can explore in another post; I myself don't see how the EU will lose much given how it has been very aloof. Next, we also have another referendum scheduled in Scotland voting on staying in the United Kingdom. While it seems just desserts to me that the UK with its breakaway tendencies from the EU would be subject to similar domestic pressures,...

Trade Deals: Ukraine Jilts EU, Returns to Russian Fold

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,Europe at 11/22/2013 08:07:00 AM

When we last talked about Ukraine, it had elected a pro-Russian leader in Viktor Yanukovych--the same Russia-aligned "bad guy" the so-called Orange Revolution supposedly got rid of. Hard economic times (brought on by the global financial crisis) soured the partnership of his opponents Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko. in their place he offered, well, "change." Ukraine is a rather divided nation with its Eastern Russian-speaking portion favoring closer ties with Russia (and thus Yanukovych) and its Western portion which is warier of the giant neighbor's residual influence post-Soviet Union. It was thus interesting to note that Yanukovych remained keen on concluding a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the EU that his ostensibly more Western-leaning predecessors had initiated negotiations on. In recent weeks, the EU had been pressing Ukraine to finally get this FTA done, but it wanted Yulia Tymoshenko released from prison. Jailed over corruption charges,...

After 12 Long Years, a WTO Deal in Bali?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,Trade at 11/22/2013 04:42:00 AM

For obvious reasons--nothing much happening in Geneva--I have devoted very little attention to the conclusion of the WTO Doha Round, having given it up for lost. For all intents and purposes, the Doha Development Agenda as it is officially referred to is still on the back burner. But, there was activity stirring a week ago causing its new Brazilian Director-General Roberto Azevedo to remark "We are too close to success to accept failure but it is all or nothing now." Latin brio aside, they have taken some more "salable" items on the negotiating table to hopefully use in demonstrating that WTO negotiations are not yet dead by concluding a smaller multilateral deal during end-of-year gatherings of its members in Bali (3-6 December). What exactly is inside this "Bali package," then? Supposedly there are three pillars: (1) trade facilitation to reduce red tape among international customs authorities; (2) development in better operationalizing what kinds of special and differential...

So, Just How Urbanized is Our World?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Demography at 11/21/2013 11:46:00 AM

To be exact, it is 52.1% urbanized in terms of persons living in cities according to the latest 2011 figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). Having turned the corner in 2007, the pace is accelerating for better or worse as more people choose to live in cities. Also above is a map [click to enlarge] depicting global trends in urbanization according to each nation's percentage of city dwellers. It's interesting stuff, especially from an urban planning point of vi...

The Difficulty of Improving One's "Soft Power"

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Soft Power at 11/19/2013 04:50:00 AM

The notion of soft power, defined by Joseph Nye as the ability of a nation to get its way through attraction rather than coercion, is an archetypally wooly concept. How do you measure it? What sort of indicators would you use in comparing different nations according to it? Yet, the lack of hard indicators of soft power or a blueprint for achieving it has not stopped nations from trying to improve their global reputations. Recently, the lifestyle publication Monocle previewed its most recent edition of its annual soft power rankings showing Germany topping the global league tables after the UK and the US did the last two...