F1 & the Radically Inegalitarian Bernie Ecclestone

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/30/2014 01:30:00 AM
The puppet on the left is going to McLaren next year. Business magazine Campaign Asia-Pacific has an illuminating interview with Formula One impresario Bernie Ecclestone in which he voices radically inegalitarian viewpoints that you cannot imagine a CEO of a large, publicly-owned enterprise making. Fortunately for him, he definitely is not running a public enterprise even if it is vast, highly visible and internationally predominant. The modern concept of F1 is embodied by Bernie Ecclestone himself, without whom the whole show grinds to a halt. If you would ask me to identify truly global sports whose impact stretches around...
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Can Saudi Arabia Kill Off US Shale Producers?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/28/2014 01:30:00 AM
If OPEC members relied solely on energy revenues. Here is a little background to the international political economy of the ongoing OPEC meeting. As you would expect for a multi-billion dollar industry, the stakes are very, very high. What's more, with oil prices sliding as a result of slowing growth in the world economy, the showdown is becoming an n=2 fight. For OPEC, Saudi Arabia represents the "swing" producer as the largest entity and therefore the one with the most sway within the cartel. The bogeyman, of course, is the United States which has become the world's largest energy producer on the back of the shale / hydraulic...
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World Cup, Olympics & Brazilian Corruption

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/27/2014 01:30:00 AM
Flying national colors is always a risk. In normal circumstances, winning the rights to host either the World Cup or the Olympics would be cause for celebration in any country. Imagine, then, the plight of Brazil which is regretting having won both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics! The winner's curse, indeed. The global situation has not exactly been helpful: the cooling of global growth--especially that of China and demand for commodities--hit Brazil hard as a major commodity exporter. There's now even talk of Brazil losing its investment-grade sovereign rating. You can probably say that matters have not been helped...
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About Time: Rewriting College Economics Textbooks

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/26/2014 01:30:00 AM
To paraphrase anti-globalization protesters, is another kind of Econ textbook possible? I needn't rehearse the argument made by critics of the social science of economics that the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 revealed the emperor's clothes. Leftists declared economics as "bunk" that led us into disaster. Rightists on the other hand, said that economic principles were not correctly applied, leading us into disaster. (It was "moral hazard" writ large instead.) So many years on, we are no nearer "consensus" save for the general agreement that economics education should be made more applicable to real-life situations...
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The Day the World Bank (Sorta) Went on Strike

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/25/2014 01:30:00 AM
World Bank headquarters - an unlikely site for "industrial action." Being in the service of world development and an American-led institution has always presented a conflict of interest at the heart of the World Bank that lies unresolved. Insofar as the will of America is not quite the same as what's developmentally appropriate for developing country borrowers, the role of the World Bank has often been at the heart of the IPE puzzle. On the hard left, you have those believe that the World Bank together with the IMF are tools of American domination and exploitation of poor countries. Think of the "Fifty Years is Enough"...
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China Syndrome: Japan Sells Subs to Australia?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/24/2014 01:30:00 AM
Next stop for Soryu-class Japanese subs? The Land of Oz. Whoa, another security-related post after the previous one on China's fisher militia. You'd think the IPE Zone is turning into Jane's Defense Weekly, but no. Simply put, security matters affect commerce and vice-versa. A particularly interesting thing for the Asia-Pacific is the simultaneous economic outreach of China as it expands its military; the former funds the latter. This phenomenon has led to all sorts of interesting tensions. While China's neighbors have benefited from it opening up to the rest of the world and, I grudgingly admit, providing lower-cost consumer...
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Territorial Disputes & China's Fisher Militia

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,,, at 11/23/2014 01:30:00 AM
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” [Matthew 4:19] Since it's the weekend, let's try something different. By now everyone knows China has maritime disputes with nearly all its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia. Like in any other sort of social relation, you are guaranteed to offend others if you mark off vast swathes of territory as your own under dubious grounds. Recalling the biblical passage above, China is seemingly attempting to redefine it militarily. Aware of the poor "optics" in violating agreements not to deploy force in regional waters to assert one's territorial claims, the...
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Redefining 'White Elephant': N Korea's New Int'l Airport

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/21/2014 01:30:00 AM
Hoping for a less lonely planet than this, they're building a new international airport. The term "white elephant denotes massive investment into something which ultimately has little or no practical value. In the developing world, these usually refer to infrastructure projects. Think of Greece hosting the Summer Olympics in 2004. Not only was the country saddled with massive debts for the Olympian spending spree on new stadiums and the like, but these sports facilities are mostly unused nowadays. However, even the Greek tragedy has no answer to what promises to be a tragicomedy of massive proportions as the hermit kingdom...
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.so Appropriate: Kickass Torrents Takes Somalia Domain

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/20/2014 01:30:00 AM
Psst...got the latest episode of Doctor Who? One of the more curious things that software copyright holders have to deal with is the global public's willingness to "steal" intellectual property despite being quite averse to stealing tangible (read: manufactured) goods. Why do folks show little guilt about the former but more with the latter? Are punishments for physical theft worse, is there a social taboo to such acts, or both? That such attitudes are widespread in the largest of consumer markets in the developing world may not be all that encouraging to software firms. As a scholar of Internet governance and intellectual...
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Dive Contest: Russian Ruble v Ukrainian Hryvnia

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/19/2014 01:30:00 AM
Only the bravest would take a position on the RUB/UAH exchange rate. In the Summer Olympics, they have a popular and quite watchable event called "synchronized diving." I am reminded of the sport when I observe the situation of two of the fastest-falling currencies worldwide, the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia. Synchronized by geography, conflict and tragedy, both these countries' currencies are in dire straits. Russia's economy is a one-trick pony dependent on high global prices for energy to sustain itself. Ukraine's economy, meanwhile, lurches from one crisis to another without any end in sight. Fighting each...
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Construction Time: The Shopping Mall-ization of Mecca?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 11/18/2014 01:30:00 AM
In real-estate parlance, modern Mecca is a "mixed-use development." Our Muslim brethren ("brethren" is actually a gender-neutral term since the corresponding "sistren" is now archaic) are obliged to go on the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca if their health and finances permit at least once during their lifetimes. There being over one and a half billion Muslims worldwide, think of the numbers of people Mecca must accommodate as this important religion continues to expand. It is not easy to cater to hundreds of millions making literally a journey of a lifetime who expect much of their visit. A captive market of 1.5+ billion!...
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Three Kinds of Nations Embracing the Chinese Yuan

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/17/2014 01:30:00 AM
It's no big secret that the US dollar has been on something of a roll lately. With economic growth Stateside powering ahead of the likes of Japanese, European and even South American economies, the expectations are for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the near future to stave off possible inflation. I for one don't think inflationary pressures are strong in the US with falling energy costs, non-existent wage growth and so on, but currency market movers and shakers apparently think otherwise. That said, countries around the world are not waiting around and sticking with the US dollar en masse. Those hedging...
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Truth or Slander? China's Stingy Philanthropy

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/15/2014 01:30:00 AM
China's rich learn to give a little. One of the recurrent media tropes that gets rehearsed when disasters and catastrophes strike around the world is that the Chinese cheap out on helping their fellowmen. This accusation stings since China likes to portray itself as a champion of third world solidarity and is ostensibly a communist nation besides which should concern itself with the fate of a global working-class proletariat. We got a flavor of this about this same time last year when Typhoon Haiyan leveled large parts of the Philippines. Because of its ongoing territorial squabbles with the Philippines, the Chinese originally...
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Celebrity Activism & 'African' Ebola, Band Aid 30 Edition

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/14/2014 01:30:00 AM
It was the holiday season thirty years ago when Band Aid penned the now-ubiquitous "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to draw attention to the ongoing famine in Ethiopia. Celebrity activism over Africa has elicited both praise and controversy: On the praise side, Queen Elizabeth knighted Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof--he who doesn't like Mondays--for this well-meaning effort. Two decades later, U2 frontman Bono was also knighted for his humanitarian work. All the same, controversy has dogged these celebrity-led efforts for not only being superficial but also stereotyping Africans as helpless folks reliant on aid from Westerners....
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