Conflict Minerals: Which Game Console is Most Violent?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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...
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Business as Usual: Thailand Back in Crisis Mode

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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...
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Pound or Euro? Currency of an Independent Scotland

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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,...
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Trade Deals: Ukraine Jilts EU, Returns to Russian Fold

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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,...
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After 12 Long Years, a WTO Deal in Bali?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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...
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So, Just How Urbanized is Our World?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in 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...
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The Difficulty of Improving One's "Soft Power"

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , 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...
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West Makes Afghanistan Safe...for Growing Opium

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/17/2013 11:33:00 AM
Say what you will about the original premise that the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan was to force Osama bin Laden out of hiding from his Taliban protectors, but the aftermath of all that has not been very positive. Afghanistan remains a very poor nation, and the persistence of the Taliban threat speaks volumes about the West's inability to provide a superior vision of the country's future. That is the political aspect of it. Meanwhile, the economic aspect is not promising, either: despite untold millions spent on eradicating opium over more than a decade, 2013 will be a bumper crop: Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan...
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Philippines, PRC & Geopolitics of Disaster Relief

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/13/2013 01:49:00 PM
[I wish to express my appreciation to those who have gotten in touch to check whether I have been affected by the recent storm in the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan did not really pass through the capital, Manila, where I am currently based. Nevertheless, any help you can extend to my compatriots is most welcome.] Typhoon Haiyan is one of the most powerful storms ever to hit land. While storms of its magnitude are frequent in the open ocean, it is relatively rate that one reaching over 300 kph hits populated areas. The devastation is enormous, and the UN estimates that $301 million is needed to rehabilitate affected regions over a preliminary six-month period: The United Nations today appealed for nearly a third of a billion dollars to provide humanitarian assistance to typhoon hit regions of the Philippines where aid workers are labouring around the clock to get in urgently needed survival supplies, such as food, clean water, shelter and basic medicines. UN Emergency Relief...
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The Day Venezuela is Fully Nationalized Approaches

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/12/2013 10:44:00 AM
The economic implosion of Venezuela is interesting insofar as the voters have repeatedly chosen Hugo Chavez and his anointed successor Nicolas Maduro despite them consigning the country to economic oblivion. Populist policies may have won votes as redistribution continues, but we are fast approaching a point when there is nothing left to nationalize or place under state watch. What then? Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says he plans to extend price controls to all consumer goods, if he is given powers to govern by decree. In a televised address, Mr Maduro said that he wanted to set legal limits on businesses' profit...
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The Political Economy of Int'l Beauty Pageants

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/11/2013 02:23:00 PM
OK, some qualifiers about the post title here: First, I am not quite attracted to beauty pageant contestants since I generally find them too skinny. Second, I didn't actually watch the Miss Universe 2013 finals in Russia since I didn't bother to figure out what time it was showing. Third, I am probably biased since our country's bet didn't win despite making it to the last five contestants for yet another year without actually winning. (Then again, if you are looking for unbiased commentary from blogs, you are probably looking in the wrong place.) So, with those caveats in mind, here is what the most recent event has taught...
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The Washington Consensus Lives On In Pakistan

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/10/2013 08:38:00 AM
There is a photo essay on American shopping malls that I found quite amusing on Yahoo! featuring pictures taken by an obviously obsessive chap who took lots of them during that era of high consumerism, the Eighties, entitled "Big Hair, Smoking, and Record Stores." While the IMF now styles itself as not your grandpa's IMF in being a kinder, gentler lender of last resort, I had a distinct 45 RPM retro flashback while reading its latest press release concerning its recent staff mission to Pakistan (where they are not quite fond of Yanquis). Much as the IMF would like to say otherwise, it seems we have not yet gotten away from the greatest hits of one-size-fits-all quite yet. Liberalization, privatization, deregulation...structural adjustment austerity....is there anything new? Structural adjustment: The mission was also pleased with the strong fiscal performance in the first quarter of 2013/14 and the steady implementation of the government’s...
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American Exceptionalism: Why So Few Diesel Cars?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/08/2013 06:56:00 AM
It routinely surprises insular Yanks who dare venture abroad that the rest of us are quite fond of diesel cars. In this day and age of dear fuel, improved mileage has it attractions. Americans would beg to differ: They shake! They stink! That's what trucks run on! are among the things you hear them say. Such stereotypes hold only for older generations (up to, say, Eighties vintage) of passenger vehicles. By the Nineties, consumers elsewhere embraced advances in diesel technology that have made them the fuel of choice not only on fuel saving grounds but also performance given the wider torque spread of cars running diesel....
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Are the Port of Hong Kong's Glory Days Over?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/04/2013 11:36:00 PM
How the mighty are falling. Here's another one from the Far East shipping files: Hong Kong ranks regularly among the world's top three busiest container ports in terms of twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) handled. Yet, its previously unassailable status is coming under attack due to a number of factors. First, rising labor costs in the Pearl River Delta mean it is being less used to handle shipments of manufactured goods from that part of China. Second, "industrial action" hit Hong Kong for the first time in many years earlier in 2013... Like Shenzhen, Hong Kong’s throughput has been pinched by the decline of South China...
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The Mother of Market Manipulation In Forex Trading?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/03/2013 10:32:00 AM
With their often haughty attitudes and tendency to focus on short-term profits in the (unfortunately) correct belief that they are too big too fail, banks are easy targets for regulators and critics of capitalism-slash-globalism alike. However, I believe that there are still grey areas and that banker-bashing is not a morality play. It was perhaps inevitable after going after price-fixing in reference-rate (LIBOR) setting that regulators' attention would turn from money markets to the mother of all markets--foreign exchange. This time, the dragnet is not just led by US or UK regulators. Befitting the forex market's global...
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American Stasi: Work for the NSA, Spy on the World

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/02/2013 02:32:00 PM
I've been watching the Academy Award-winning drama The Lives of Others based on the operations of the East German-era secret police, the Stasi. Vast improvements in technology have enabled gathering ever-more information on the activities of you and me, and the United States has come under massive fire from virtually every continent in the world for its surveillance activities. Even Malaysia--Malaysia! is now complaining. Under the excuse of thwarting the proliferation of terror, it appears the US is rather indiscriminate in snooping on friend and foe, netizens and "terrorists" alike. Commercial data mining usually has a...
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Come to Texas: Can Tyler Cowen Say "FM Radio"?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/01/2013 09:52:00 AM
Koch Industries of Tea Party fame-funded arch-libertarian Tyler Cowen has an interesting piece in TIME about how Texas is America's future. Having stayed there for a time, I am of somewhat more mixed opinions about its virtues and vices than he is. Read for yourselves and see what you think. Before you do so, I have two things to point out: First, he seems to have thrown his lot with the Internet-makes-our-lives-so-much-better crowd in arguing that, actually, our standards of living have improved immeasurably because of it: For Americans heading to these places, the likelihood is that they'll be facing slow-growing, stagnant...
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