Posts of June 2013

Ecuador's Eco-Econ Gimmick: Pay Us NOT to Drill

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Environment,Latin America at 6/30/2013 06:25:00 PM

Ah, Ecuador, home of central bankers with fake degrees and would-be destination of Edward "And the Truth Shall Set You Free" Snowden. Regardless of its harrumphing and chest-thumping, there's no getting away from the fact that Ecuador is a really, really hard-up nation. Just a few days ago, some faction of the Ecuadorian government claimed that it would unilaterally walk away from trade preferences given to it by the United States. More recently, though, Rafael Correa has implied that no such thing will happen and that Edward Snowden is not being granted asylum in Ecuador. Can't afford to upset the flower growers who provide...

Snowden Files: Ecuador Cuts US Trade Benefits + More

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Internet Governance,Latin America at 6/28/2013 02:16:00 PM

It's probably not the wisest thing to do, but at least Ecuador may be accepting the consequences of putting its foot in its mouth. Famously harbouring WikiLeaks' Julian Assange in its London embassy, it appears ready to up the stakes in testing America's (quite frankly idiotic) "Internet Freedom" concept by also harbouring former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He famously leaked documents showing massive data gathering on Internet users on behalf of the US government and is under a global interdict from US authorities. While this erstwhile hero to the nerdcore set has been sitting around in a Moscow airport waiting for a flight to Ecuador, a US senator threatened to remove American trade preferences granted to Andean nations: The head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday he would seek to end preferential treatment for Ecuadorean goods if the South American nation offers political asylum to fugitive former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. Senator...

Is the IMF Beating Colleges at Online Learning?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Education,IMF at 6/24/2013 03:43:00 PM

There is a big debate raging in academia about the relevance of university education as we know it today: First, it is becoming increasingly expensive as salaries remain stagnant or even decline as in the US and other Western nations. Second, do what universities offer have relevant course content, or are they becoming increasingly isolated in ivory towers without much practical application? Third, doesn't a higher education degree become obsolete far more quickly nowadays with the rate of advancement in all fields of human endeavour? More and more educators believe that today's university paradigm is outmoded--and I am...

2013=1997? Volatile Asian Markets + SE Asia Haze

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Environment,Southeast Asia at 6/21/2013 02:54:00 PM

There is something about Asia that seemingly brings on the confluence of cataclysmic financial and environmental events . In 1997, the Asian financial crisis devastated wide swathes of the region in a credit crunch of epic proportions. To further the doomsday mood, the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore area was blanketed with suffocating smog emanating from Indonesia's recurrent forest fires. So, not only did market plunges in the values of stocks and bonds take your breath away, but so did inhaling the thick smog. More recently, some family friends working in Singapore were scheduled to leave for Manila but ran into delays...

FATCA, Tax Havens & the New American Imperialism

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Americana,Credit Crisis,Development at 6/19/2013 12:58:00 PM

Once upon a time there was an offshore, where we'd hide a multimillion dollar account or two... The wheels of financial history are spinning once more. Whereas offshore financial centres were all the rage just a few years ago, the world's most powerful countries are now causing them much discomfort as they seek to recover "lost" tax revenues. Interestingly enough, it was not always like this. Consider: Many G-8 nations were complicit in the creation of these offshore banking centres in the first place since they did not raise much of a fuss about their banks setting up shop in paradis fiscaux all those years ago; However,...

Crackpot Conspiracies: Bilderberg Group Circa 2013

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Nonsense at 6/17/2013 03:15:00 PM

I think it's Hollywood's fault: In any number of action/spy/suspense/thriller movies, there is a good chance that they will depict some kind of shadowy secret organization that really runs the world--usually to fulfil nefarious ends. (You can't sell movies if they were a bunch of do-gooders, can you?) One version of this storyline is that little-known but powerful masterminds get together to plot the global future to suit their purposes. Another version is that well-known public figures in politics and business are ultimately networked to an organization that decides the fate of the world that put them in places of power. During...

Did US Ask Philippines to Kill KAT.ph?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Southeast Asia,Underground Economy at 6/14/2013 03:38:00 PM

News site Torrent Freak, "[t]he place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide" believes so, at least. Coming from the Philippines, I've always wondered whether to be proud or ashamed that the world's top torrent sites have had .ph top-level domains [TLDs] at one time or another. I recall the now-defunct private tracker site Demonoid being "located" in the Philippines. Sometime later, the world's second largest torrent site, Kick Ass Torrents also "moved" to the Philippines [KAT.ph]. As someone with--ahem--professional interest in the operation of torrent sites as working examples of the underground economy,...

Will France's "Culture" Concerns Delay US-EU FTA?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Economic Diplomacy,Europe,Trade at 6/14/2013 10:21:00 AM

I have already dubbed the proposed " Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership" AKA the US-EU FTA a non-event on the grounds that (a) the counterparties are slow-growing economies (b) which already have few barriers on each other's products [around 2% tariff rates on average]. Also, (c) they face several obstacles to further liberalization on products with tariff peaks that will at best result in a watered-down agreement --especially in agriculture. While this FTA bores me already, I have nonetheless found France's intransigence somewhat intriguing given the run-ins they've had with the United States over various issues....

Come to Where the Energy Is: Myanmar Country

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Energy,Southeast Asia at 6/12/2013 12:40:00 PM

With apologies to the Philip Morris Co.'s iconic figure, let's draw some analogies here: Both Marlboro and Myanmar are not exactly the most politically correct of figures, one representing the hazards of cigarette smoking and the other decades of political oppression. That said, both are irresistible draws in certain, undeniable respects. Marlboro is instantly recognizable worldwide for its cowboy, go-it-alone romantic imagery of the "American West." Myanmar, meanwhile, epitomizes the exoticism of the "Far East" to many Westerners. Despite their less-than-perfect reputations, they remain top-drawer economic attractions....

World Economic Forum in Myanmar: Isolated No More

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Southeast Asia at 6/09/2013 02:02:00 PM

In the retail space, there are certain token signs of global integration: McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks. In the realm of economic summitry, there too are certain "franchises" one can have: Think of hosting IMF/World Bank meetings...or, in this case, a World Economic Forum event. What brought Myanmar to mind is the country hosting that most neoliberal of talk shops, the World Economic Forum, from 5-7 June. If you had told me as late as 2010 that this nation would soon be hosting Klaus Schwab's schmooze-a-thon of global movers and shakers, I'd have probably chuckled heartily in dismissing it. Klaus Schwab and Thein Sein sharing...

Why World Bank Doesn't Get 'Doing Business'

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Development at 6/09/2013 12:11:00 PM

The World Bank's Doing Business report has garnered much attention in purportedly comparing the ease of doing business in different countries. That is, how is easy is it to start up or close a business? Oftentimes, it's not only how easy it is to set up a business that determines entrepreneurship but also closing one down if it proves unviable. Seen from this perspective, the likes of Hong Kong and Singapore which are recognized as incubators of entrepreneurship may not really have a concentration of business geniuses but instead make possible trial-and-error until a satisfactory proposition is found. That said, the Doing...

IMF Agrees w/Cheney: Deficits Don't Matter for US

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Cheneynomics,IMF at 6/05/2013 12:52:00 PM

Here we go again: for everyone else--especially the likes of Egypt, Pakistan and so forth, deficits do matter. But for the United States which (they say) has little funding its current account deficit, it's not really a problem. In essence it's the IMF approving of American deficits as per Dick Cheney's famous dictum that "deficits don't matter." To be exact, there's always the qualified economistic wording about how short-term fiscal consolidation is not required but rather stimulative policies to get the economy unstuck or suchlike. Instead, the real fiscal challenge for the United States is in the medium- to long-term when it must deal with its health care and pensions unfunded liabilities as baby boomers retire en masse: Here is the IMF head honcho on the subject matter: The U.S. economy would be faring much better were it not for the "self-inflicted" wound of tighter fiscal policy, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. "The U.S. is not doing as...

Money Printing Plus: Japan's Other Growth Strategies

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Japan,Migration,Trade at 6/04/2013 04:08:00 PM

Everyone knows of Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's money-printing strategies for combating Japan's seemingly unconquerable deflation. However, it is but one tactic in a multi-pronged strategy to get the world's third largest economy growing again in a noticeable fashion. Tomorrow Abe unveils a raft of other initiatives for doing so. Reuters has a list of expected steps in the so-called "Third Arrow of Abenomics" compiled from various news sources (don't ask me why it's called that). Of particular interest to me are those concerning free trade agreements and migration. First, let's begin with FTAs. Belatedly keen on not losing its competitive advantage alongside those FTA-crazy South Koreans, it too is supposedly going to embark on an FTA frenzy: Hit a target of 70 percent of exports covered by free trade deals by 2018, compared with around 19 percent, by pushing the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership (TPP) and other trade deals with the European Union, China and South...

Endangered Species: SMEs in Italy, Spain

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Credit Crisis,Europe at 6/03/2013 02:56:00 PM

Make no mistake: there are giant companies in Italy and Spain. However, many of the specialist products these countries are known for are from small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which also provide the bulk of employment. Unfortunately for them, the credit crisis has made their existences rather difficult. Especially since they are not very large, they find it hard to raise capital via stock or bond issuances. In other words, their modest size makes them reliant on bank loans for finance. It's too bad that the European crisis has made many banks doubly wary of lending to these SMEs at a time when their needs for credit are the greatest. Hence the sob stories in these troubled times in troubled Latin economies. Let us begin with Italy, whose leaders haven't been especially keen on lending them a helping hand: With an estimated 5 million enterprises accounting for 80 percent of Italy's gross domestic product, SMEs have long been the main driver of Italy's export-led economy.The...

Why Eastern Europe Spanks US in Software Development

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe,Innovation,Marketing at 6/01/2013 02:31:00 PM

Last Thursday our home computer running Windows XP was infected by a fairly old autorun.inf virus. For, we accidentally brought home an infected USB thumb drive from the workplace, which has computers running unpatched versions of XP. Unfortunately for us, we were also running copies of Microsoft Security Essentials for our antivirus, which I belatedly found out to be a pincushion for viruses that detects next to no threats. It took me hours to find a solution to cleaning up our infected home computers, and one of the programmes I found most useful was Bitdefender's USB Immunizer. Seeing how well it worked, I became curious about their antivirus software and discovered that it was very highly rated. (I guess that shows you how much I knew about antivirus programmes...) So Bitdefender Free is now our antivirus programme of choice for an XP and a Vista machine we still find useful despite their age. Though I did not know it at the time, it turns out that Bitdefender is...

Too Strategic to Fail? The IMF & Pakistan (Again)

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in IMF at 6/01/2013 08:00:00 AM

With its forex reserves down to a trifling $6.4 billion, Pakistan is definitely in trouble. You know the drill: the United States will not let Pakistan descend into chaos--make that civil disorder even worse than its regular state of perma-anarchy--because it's a nuclear-armed state with a constant Taliban menace. Surely Pakistani elites have noticed this paradox: the key to securing their continued stay in power is to keep things disorderly enough to maintain foreign interest. This backdrop is probably why we (surprise!) have yet another news article touting imminent Pakistani collapse on hand. I am fascinated how this nation with next-to-no reserves has seemingly staved the inevitable for so long in the form of another IMF package. But before we get to that, let's recount the Egypt-like repeat borrowing habits of this nation: Since 1988, Pakistan has signed onto eight IMF programs that demanded structural changes in the economy. But it has never managed to resolve its...