Referee Selection Politics: Germany v Argentina

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 7/12/2014 05:55:00 PM
"The Malvinas [Falklands] are Argentine": players fight for a (lost) cause predating them.
This is a quick post on an interesting and potentially important facet concerning the politics of a Germany versus Argentina World Cup final in South America. Referees are supposed to be impartial; the best are those which usually attract the least attention and let the game flow for as long as there are no egregious violations. (In which case they need to be firm yet fair to maintain order.) Yes, there are North-South aspects to this contest as there have been in the two previous finals matchups between these two countries in 1986 (when Argentina won) and 1990 (when Germany won). Italian Nicola Rizzoli's selection to referee the final raised some eyebrows since many expected the referee chosen to be neither Western European or South American:
With a European and South American team playing, many had expected FIFA to appoint an Asian referee for Sunday's game. But Rizzoli got the call to work his third Argentina match at this year's World Cup.
Why not, for instance, have an Asian referee?
Ravshan Irmatov, from Uzbekistan, had been viewed as one of the favourites for the final as he is from neither Europe nor South America, but he does not have a team of assistants who work all the time with him.
Countering suggestions of favoritism towards Europeans, the Belgian team coach has even complained that Rizzoli made far more decisions in favor of Argentina during their match:
Rizzoli was the target of criticism from Belgium's Marc Wilmots after the 1-0 quarter-final defeat by Argentina last Saturday.

Wilmots claimed: "I don't want to be a cry baby, but I noticed the referee never gives fouls against Argentina. "Every time something happens with Messi the referee gives him a free-kick. I notice he [Messi] made three fouls and no yellow card, we made one foul and one yellow card."
Somebody who was definitely not in the running for refereeing this World Cup final was English referee Howard Webb who had the honor of watching over the 2010 final between Spain and the Netherlands. The 1982 Falklands War remains a bitter dispute between Argentina and the UK, and having a British referee would have rubbed more salt into a wound that stretches onto the football pitch. "Hand of God" goal and all that:
England's Howard Webb was never in contention to referee the final - he was in charge of the 2010 showpiece and FIFA has never before appointed an official to referee two World Cup finals. It was also felt that it would be too sensitive to have Webb referee a match in which Argentina are involved - the team are still going through a FIFA disciplinary process for displaying a banner claiming the Falkland Islands should belong to their country.

Furthermore, Argentina's FIFA senior vice-president Julio Grondona has never hidden his disdain for England. In 2011 he called the English "liars" at the FIFA Congress and in an interview with the German press agency DPA referred to the English as "pirates".
So yes, football politics extend even to referee selection since the Argentinians are finicky about such things.
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Improving Governance, Secularizing Vatican Finances

♠ Posted by Emmanuel at 7/11/2014 01:30:00 AM
Nowadays, the Pope appoints merchants to run the show instead of Christ running them out.
"Take these things out of here; do not make my father's house into a marketplace!" - John 2:16. The trend worldwide as far as state-owned banks are concerned has been privatization and, if not, improved governance (read: transparency). Apparently, modernity has now caught up with the months ago as its supposedly sanctified finances were revealed as a hotbed of corruption, money-laundering and other decidedly unholy acts:
On June 28 [2013], Italian police arrested a silver-haired priest, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, in Rome. The cleric, nicknamed Monsignor Cinquecento after the €500 bills he habitually carried around with him, was charged with fraud and corruption, together with a former secret service agent and a ­financial broker. All three were suspected of attempting to smuggle €20m by private plane across the border from Switzerland.

Prosecutors alleged that the priest, a former banker, was using the Institute for Religious Works – the formal name for the Vatican’s bank – to move money for businessmen based in the Naples region, widely regarded in Italy as a haven of organised crime. Worse still, Scarano (who, together with the other men, has denied any wrongdoing) had until only a month earlier been head of the accounting department at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, the treasury of the Vatican.
Part of the reason why Pope Francis' predecessor Benedict XVI had a tumultuous reign was due to money matters. How does the Vatican clean up shop? The same options faced by state-owned banks were on the menu: Privatization made limited sense since these small-sized entities could hardly operate on an independent basis in the city-state. The Vatican bank (IOR) had assets worth EUR 5 billion--not a lot in the wider (European) scheme of things. However, further secularization has been the path taken from those available. With clerics routinely abusing their status in financial matters, it was time to resort to professional management:
It follows an initial clean-up of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the official name of the Vatican bank, last year that saw the closure of 3,000 customer accounts under pressure from international anti-money laundering regulators concerned about its use as a tax haven. The latest shake up has a wider scope, encompassing the Vatican’s long secretive central bank, its media operations and all its assets – from real estate to stocks and bonds.

It also brings a cadre of lay advisers and finance professionals into the Vatican’s closed hierarchy, including prominent figures such as Lord Patten, the former BBC Trust chairman, and Clemens Boersig, former head of finance at Deutsche Bank and chairman of the German bank’s foundation. On the board of the scandal-ridden Vatican bank, lay advisers will now outnumber clergy...
Management of the IOR’s €4bn in assets and the billions of euros of real estate held by APSA will be handed to external, specialist asset managers focused on “ethical investment”.
The irony should not be lost on the rest of us. Many blamed the global financial crisis on a lack of religiosity among bankers and their ilk. However, it turns out that the world's largest religious organization was hardly free from the ills plaguing money managers elsewhere. So, to clean up shop, Pope Francis is making the Vatican bank's board more secular to look more like regular banks without a religious charter.

At this rate it will be nothing more remarkable than a fairly small regional bank whose funds are largely managed by ethical fund investors. From both ethical and financial standpoints, this may be a good thing given the Vatican bank's rather checkered recehistory.
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When EU Membership's a Bust: Bulgarian Bank Run

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/10/2014 01:30:00 AM
A doo-run-run in Bulgaria.
The comparison that is usually made with regard to how bad Ukraine has had it due to choosing closer ties to Russia instead of the EU is Poland. However, this comparison is open to the criticism of cherry-picking examples: did all former Soviet satellites that joined the EU do as well as Poland? The answer, of course, is no. There are any number of other Eastern European countries that joined the EU and have had mixed fortunes.

Perhaps the bottom-performing one has been Bulgaria. In a number of ways it resembles Ukraine: high levels of graft and corruption and precious few signs of development. These were underscored by Bulgaria encountering that old-fashioned sign of financial crisis in the last week--the bank run--as the government was forced into a bailout:
Seven years after entering, Bulgaria has had three governments, remains the poorest of the bloc’s 28 nations and is repeatedly told by the EU to cut graft and corruption. In January, the EU said corruption “poses a significant challenge for the Bulgarian authorities.”

The general weaknesses of the system were highlighted last week when two banks suffered runs. One was brought on by an “organized attack” of “criminal actions,” according to the central bank. The other was sparked by what media reports described as a feud between the majority shareholder and a large depositor, who is also a member of parliament. The two men exchanged death threats, according to Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov.

Bulgaria’s worst financial crisis in 17 years forced the ruling Socialists to extend a 3.3 billion-lev ($2.3 billion) credit line to First Investment Bank AD and Corporate Commercial Bank AD, the country’s third- and fourth-largest lenders by assets. 
The parallels to Ukraine are obvious: just as the EU is now placing Ukraine on a seeming "fast-track" to membership, so did it do so with Bulgaria. This despite warning signs that governance in Bulgaria was not yet up to snuff with EU standards and would not be for quite some time:
The EU pushed Bulgaria’s candidacy even as it warned about the country’s organized-crime levels, bribery in public office and the failure to achieve convictions of those charged. Former Defense Minister Nikolai Tsonev, a member of then-Prime Minister’s Sergei Stanishev’s cabinet in 2008-2009, was arrested in 2010 and charged with bribery, abuse of office in procurement orders. Two years later he was acquitted on all charges.

Bulgaria ranked 77th of 175 countries, second-to-last in the EU after Greece, in 2013, according to Transparency International. Countries ranked higher and thus perceived as less corrupt: Ghana, Rwanda and Romania. In 2007 Bulgaria was 64th of 179, the second-worst in the bloc after Romania. “The EU is not only about economic support, it is a lot more: supremacy of the law, democratic values, security, prosperity -- all the reasons the EU was created for,” Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Zinaida Zlatanova said in a written response to questions. Zlatanova also is justice minister. 
This hasn't stopped Bulgarian officials from characterizing the bank runs as unrepresentative of Bulgaria's macroeconomic fundamentals, resorting to the time-tested excuse of unnamed shadowy forces working to undermine the country:
Bulgarians’ lack of faith in institutions sparked runs on two banks and triggered the worst financial crisis in 17 years, the nation’s president said. “Let me make this very clear: there is no banking crisis in my country, but there is a crisis of confidence,” Rosen Plevneliev said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

With low trust in institutions, rumors, attempts at destabilization and speculative attacks can “create a panic,” the president said in his office in the capital, Sofia. The government has extended a 3.3 billion-lev ($2.3 billion) credit line to First Investment Bank AD and Corporate Commercial Bank AD, the country’s third- and fourth-largest lenders by assets, after deposits were withdrawn. The crisis prompted Plevneliev to call early elections, a year after Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski came to power following anti-austerity protests.

The central bank blames an “organized attack” of “criminal actions” for the run on First Investment Bank. Corporate Commercial Bank lost deposits because of a dispute between a majority shareholder and a large depositor, Capital newspaper reported June 18, citing unidentified people. The yield on Bulgaria’s Eurobond due 2017 fell one basis point today to 1.636 percent, the lowest level since the central bank’s decision to bail out Corporate Commercial Bank, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
So there you are: EU membership is not a development panacea. Institutional reform is required as a precursor to making the best of EU membership instead of viewing membership as a guaranteed ticket to success. As the warning goes, "results may vary" for former Eastern bloc nations joining the EU. 
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Antitrust Biggies: Rockefeller 1911, Carlos Slim 2014

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/09/2014 04:45:00 PM
You don't get Carlos Slim-like wealth with @#$% for brains.
Monopoly is a great board game; the sales charts speak for themselves. In real life, monopoly (small m) is more generally frowned upon by governments. "Monopolies distort competition and in so doing reduce consumer welfare" is the familiar refrain. The landmark case in the history of antitrust proceedings remains the breakup of Standard Oil way back in 1911 when Nelson Rockefeller dominated the (American) energy industry like no one else has since. Even today, the world's largest energy firm, Exxon-Mobil, is a recombination of two Standard Oil offshoots (those of New Jersey and New York).

Outside the United States, the world's poster boy for unimaginable wealth in the post-Rockefeller era is Mexican multibillionaire Carlos Slim. Worth a cool $71.5 billion last I checked, he didn't amass such wealth by being insensitive to changing political currents. When he caught wind of the Mexican government's upcoming legislation to break up his telecoms monopoly--the largest in Mexico--he did the authorities one better. Instead of waiting for the order to be handed down as it was for Standard Oil in 1911 or for AT&T in 1982, he is busy breaking it down into smaller-sized chunks in anticipation. Don't want to lose more market share or control than necessary, see...
Billionaire Carlos Slim is bowing to imminent antitrust legislation by planning a breakup of America Movil SAB (AMXL)’s phone operations in Mexico rather than risk profit-crushing restrictions if his company did nothing to curb its dominance.

America Movil, the Americas’ largest operator with 272 million wireless subscribers, decided to divest some assets to an independent company, reducing its market share in Mexican landlines and mobile phones to below 50 percent to appease regulators, America Movil said yesterday in a filing. Slim’s carrier will also separate its wireless towers from the rest of the business and will renounce its rights to acquire control of satellite-TV provider Dish Mexico. Slim and his family hold 57 percent of America Movil.

Slim, the world’s second-richest man and the son of a Lebanese immigrant to Mexico, had been weighing options for America Movil as Congress considered a bill that would impose the harshest penalties the company has ever encountered, as long as its subscribers represent more than half of the Mexican market. The carrier currently has 70 percent of Mexico’s mobile-phone subscribers and about 80 percent of landlines. America Movil has lost about $17 billion in market value since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in 2012 on promises to spark more competition to boost the Mexican economy.

I think it's a smart ploy. Even a Slim-med down business is better than none. Despite what they America Movil says, it's also a good opportunity to ditch less attractive operations since the pie is still big enough for more to participate:
“The message is clear: They’re reacting to the regulatory pressure,” said Julio Zetina, an analyst at Vector Casa de Bolsa SA in Mexico City. “I’m surprised they have made a decision like this, and so quickly...”

In a radio interview today, America Movil Vice President Arturo Elias said the company won’t just sell rural, money-losing phone lines. America Movil is still analyzing which assets to sell and prefers a single buyer to create a strong competitor, he said. He also said that the assets for sale will “require much investment...”

America Movil may fetch about $8.6 billion by selling assets and will need to divest about 21 million wireless users and 4 million landlines to reduce its market share below 50 percent, Martin Lara, an analyst with Corp. Actinver SAB, estimated in a note today. Grupo Televisa SAB (TLEVICPO) may be a potential buyer for some of the assets, Lara wrote. 
Less wily people fight these kinds of legal challenges tooth and nail. I strongly suspect that Slim does not see much of a business case in fighting to the bitter end. Given them what they want--less than 50% market share--by getting rid of less profitable operations. It's rationalization of the kind America Movil would have probably done in the near future anyway; here it serves to appease polcymakers too.
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Tech Frontliners: Bangladesh's Traveling Infoladies

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/08/2014 01:30:00 AM
Screening instructional videos is one of their tasks.
Your feelgood story of the day comes courtesy of Bangladesh's social entrepreneurs known as the "infoladies." Like vast swathes of the developing world, many parts of Bangladesh do not have Internet connections or other things many in the developed world take for granted. However, this does not mean that ICT are not helpful for purposes such as viewing world prices of crops on world markets when deciding what to plant, talking to relatives working abroad as migrant workers, accessing medical information and so forth. What are the needs technologically met by the infoladies? Businessweek has a neat photo essay on this matter:
Only 5 million of Bangladesh’s 152 million citizens have regular Internet access. Three-quarters live in rural villages. The Infoladies, a group of about 50 women in their early 20s, travel through the countryside equipped with a laptop computer, a tablet, a smartphone, a digital camera, and a glucometer ministering to the technologically impoverished.
The traveling infoladies have become more plentiful from their start as participants in a social entrepreneurship program. Nowadays they move around via bicycle in rural Bangladesh after ICT training to help those who do not have regular telecoms access:
They receive specialised training and necessary equipment, and then travel to remote areas by bicycle to personally connect villagers to information and resources the underprivileged need. As many as 24 such info ladies are now working in different villages of Gaibandha, Noakhali and Satkhira districts.

The info lady solution evolved from the original 'Mobile Lady' concept developed by D.Net (Development Research Network) Bangladesh, a non-profit research organisation that champions the use of ICT for the economic development of Bangladesh. Mobile ladies were providing services through cellphones.
The original "mobile lady" concept has since been expanded to a gamut of ICT-related services. The traveling person becomes a "telecenter" in one:
From the key learning from the mobile lady idea, D.Net found some limitations of mobile phone-based services. The technological innovations, like laptop device, helped D.Net find that if a bundle of services are integrated with the mobile lady, she will become a “telecentre” herself. Any one can become an info person, but women are encouraged as they enjoy more privilege than men for entering a house.

Manusher Jonno Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation, has funded the D.Net's Info Lady project. The foundation is an initiative to promote human rights and good governance in Bangladesh. The village information workers, 'mobile ladies', were renamed 'info ladies'. An info lady possesses a laptop or classmate computer, internet modem, headphone, webcam, digital camera, photo printer and a mobile phone for giving the entire livelihood information services at a cheaper rate, and fast.
Help line service, commercial phone service, photography service, livelihood information and knowledge service, international and local voice call service, video and animation service, and internet-based information service are among the services provided by an info lady.
As a practical sort, I wonder why science fiction-inspired schemes by Facebook and Google to use balloons or drones to beam Internet connections gain so much press attention when (a) they do not yet exist and (b) lack realism. Instead of fantasizing about all sorts of gee-whiz ways to connect the world, the traveling infoladies are a much better example to study since (a) they have successfully plied their trade for a number of years now and (b) they would not have been successful if they did not offer services others find useful at a reasonable cost. The transport solution is nothing fancier than a bicycle, but it's proven effective so far.

Attention Facebook and Google: instead of keeping your heads in the cloud (servers?), keep yourselves firmly planted on the ground where the real information dissemination will happen. Bangladesh's infoladies certainly do.
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Does Gazprom Fund European Anti-Fracking Activists?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 7/07/2014 01:30:00 AM
Paid for by Gazprom?
As far as conspiracy theories involving Russia go, this one takes the cake. Unlike the United States which has experienced a renaissance in energy production through the use of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" in common parlance, Europe has not warmed to the technology. Many of the objections come from environmentalists who express concern over water usage, water pollution, earthquakes and so on. A few weeks ago, however, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Russia was working to sabotage European energy independence from its oil and gas by undermining support for fracking. The alleged preferred means? Covert Russian funding for environmental groups:
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House thinktank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin’s government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports.

Rasmussen said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.” He declined to give details of those operations, saying: “That is my interpretation.”
For obvious reasons, NATO is at pains to point out that Rasmussen is expressing an opinion and not the position of the organization. That said, he explicitly identifies unusual Russian "concern" about the hazards of shale gas:
I would put it to you, though, that the real question, or the real power and the real leverage Russia has is its position as a key gas supplier to Europe. And indeed I would have to respectfully put it to you that a far better use of resources by Europe, and particularly the European Union, would be to invest heavily in shale gas production.

And indeed I would suggest to you that it would be far easier to sell that notion, especially, let's face it, the shale revolution is a technology and a triumph of innovation. To spend money on that would be… produce a far higher return than defence expenditure. Just a final footnote. Mr. Putin on one occasion actually lectured Germany about the environmental hazards of shale. So he’s well aware of the strategic value of the shale revolution.
What is especially odd is how Putin becomes an environmentalist all of a sudden when Europe has the technology within its grasp to wean itself off Russian energy. In the context of climate change, for instance, it couldn't care less about the environment. Let's just say it is self-interested in raising environmental concerns for this particular issue that can hurt its core economic interests. For them, it's every which way but lose. Meanwhile, the "Russian collaborator" taunt is being leveled against all sorts of European environmental protesters:
[Romanian protester] Munteanu says she has been accused of taking bribes from Russian companies to participate in the demonstrations. She says that she suspects the local authorities, interested in dividends from the shale gas drilling, were spreading such rumours. "They are welcome to come to my home and check that I haven't been taking money," she says.

Munteanu and her neighbours are not the only anti-fracking protesters accused of taking money from Russia to campaign against shale gas. Anti-fracking protests across Europe have come under fire in local and international media. Most recently, the secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen was quoted as saying that Russia has engaged with environmental organisations working against shale gas in its efforts to keep Europe dependent on its gas exports. 
Meanwhile, Russians are being fingered behind strident anti-fracking rhetoric:
At the same time, Russia and its gas giant Gazprom have also established a strong lobby to protect their interests in Europe, including employing former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Russia has pushed for major projects to expand delivery of natural gas to Europe, including Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines. The construction of the latter was recently shelved in Bulgaria after pressure from the EU.

According to Krassen Stanchev, a Bulgarian economist and head of the Institute for Market Economics, the influence of Russia and Gazprom in Bulgaria surfaced during parliamentary debates over a bill to ban shale gas exploration, which was passed in 2012. "The whole procedure and arguments are obvious evidence of corruption in the Parliament, [under the form of] serving the interests of Gazprom by all parliamentary factions," he said. 
Interesting stuff. The timing of the emergence of environmental movements--i.e., when Russia started to see the commercial threat--may be suspect:
But one thing has for years puzzled energy experts: Well-organized and well-funded environmental opposition to fracking in Europe sprang up suddenly in countries such as Bulgaria and Ukraine, which had shown little prior concern for the environment but which are heavily dependent on Russia for energy supplies. Similar movements have also targeted Europe's plans to build pipelines that would offer an alternative to reliance on Moscow.

"It's very concrete; it relates to both opposition to shale and also trying to block any alternative pipelines with environmental challenges," said Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert at Georgetown University. "There is a lot of evidence here; countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine being at the vanguard of the environmental movement is enough for it to be conspicuous," she said.
My opinion is that regardless of mooted Russian meddling, [real] environmental opposition is strong enough in core EU states to dissuade fracking from becoming a significant source of energy for Europe in the near future.
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Overcrowded Singapore Spills Into Indonesia, Malaysia

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/06/2014 09:51:00 AM
Move over Pearl River Delta for Sijori, the real Tri-State Area.
American readers, this being the IPE Zone, I ain't talking about New York-New Jersey-Connecticut. Asian readers, I ain't talking about China-Hong Kong-Macau (the Pearl River Delta) either since the latter two aren't "states." Instead, meet Sijori (Singapore-Johor-Riau) representing the three nation-states of Singapore-Malaysia-Indonesia at the heart of Southeast Asia.

I suppose it was inevitable that Singapore would get full up sooner or later. It is the world's second most densely populated country after the principality of Monaco (all 2 sq. km. of it). Sure they've been able to fiddle with this fact at the margins--over 20% of it is now built on reclaimed land, and most people already live in skyscrapers. However, there comes a point when people will no longer put up with ever-increasing costs for ever-shrinking residences. In other words, Singapore may already have hit its limit.

Like in the aforementioned Pearl River Delta, the beneficiaries are neighbors of overbuilt areas. Johor, Malaysia everyone knows about since its sultan sold Singapore to the British all those years ago, while Riau Archipelago, Indonesia is more of a recent beneficiary. At any rate, the new trend is for homebuyers to buy in neighboring Malaysia. Like in the US Tri-State Area, people commute across state lines to get to work and come home in the evening:
Darren Chin gave up a 15-minute train journey to his office in Singapore for a two-hour drive with a stop at passport control. The reason: By commuting from Malaysia, he can afford his own two-story home and car. “It’s worth it,” said the Malaysian financial adviser, who leaves his house before 6:45 a.m. to get to his job at OCBC on time. “I’m saving on rent and I’m paying for my own house.”

Chin is part of the expansion of Southeast Asia’s richest city across its borders as residents and companies seek property, labor and amenities, often at half the cost or less. The result is a three-nation urban complex with a population bigger than London and an economy that would rank as one of the fastest-growing in the region.

“Without the regional perspective it would be a lot more difficult, if at all possible, for Singapore to maintain the role that it has as a global city,” said Milica Topalovic, an associate professor at Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore. “Most of the pressing questions that Singapore has today -- of land, of workforce, of aging -- can be solved easily in a regional perspective.”

Combine the dominant forces of the 21st-century economy -- globalization and urbanization -- and the result is a metropolis that crosses borders, cultures and currencies. Southeast Asia’s prime example is known as Sijori, an acronym derived from Singapore, the neighboring Malaysian state of Johor, and Indonesia’s Riau Islands.
The sheer expense of living and construction in Singapore is driving a lot of this movement to more affordable locales:
For an island-state at its limits, access to land and labor in neighbors that were once arch-rivals is crucial. Economic growth and soaring immigration have strained Singapore’s resources, making it one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Singapore’s population density rose to 7,540 per square kilometer in 2013, closing in on New York’s 10,425. The Ion mall in the Orchard Road shopping district descends four stories into the ground, and the government is exploring building underground storage, transport hubs and shopping areas.

The island, whose $290 billion economy is bigger than that of Nigeria, the Philippines or Greece, has seen its population surge by almost a third in the past decade to 5.4 million. Add Johor and the Riau islands, and the number was about 10.1 million in 2010, according to estimates by Aris Ananta, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. That could rise to 18 million by 2030, he said. 
What's more forecasts for the Sijori region to outperform Singapore alone--talk about spillover effects as thawing relations make closer economic ties possible:
The Sijori triangle’s economy will expand 5.7 percent annually in 2013-2020, compared with an average of 4.2 percent for Singapore, show forecasts by Toh Mun Heng, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore Business School.

Relations among the countries weren’t always cordial. Singapore and Malaysia were part of the same union for two years after independence from Britain until the city-state was ousted in 1965 by the leaders in Kuala Lumpur. Colonial bonds remained in the form of a pipeline from Malaysia that still supplies about half Singapore’s fresh water and a railway that ran across the island, but was owned by Malaysia until 2011. Those links caused decades of squabbles between the two nations as the fledgling countries competed in economic development. In 1997, former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew apologized after describing Johor as “notorious for shootings, muggings and carjackings.”
It's a pretty nice feelgood story about Southeast Asians collaborating profitably in time for our 2015 single market, but elsewhere the Sijori article points out that other matters need sorting out by the three nations involved such as border controls and transport infrastructure. Still, Singapore may transcend its main concerns--lack of space and lack of young people--by tapping those resources which its neighbors have in greater abundance.
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Modern World Systems: Miami & Latin America

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/04/2014 10:55:00 AM
Miami--a metropole to any number of Latin American satellites.
The relative vastness of the United States makes it "proximate" to any number of world regions. Think of the West Coast and Hawaii being the United States' gateways to the Asia-Pacific region. Or, think of Miami and its proximity to Latin America. Miami has, for a long time, had a "cool" image to counteract the other one of being a retirement destination for fogeys puttering about in golf carts. Think Miami Vice from the 80s. The World Cup being held in Brazil this year (and the Olympics two years afterwards in Rio de Janeiro) helps remind that, yes, Miami is America's gateway to the region.

The obvious sign of meriting gateway status is that increasing economic activity in the region you are serving as a gateway to redounds to your benefit--only perhaps more so if you are a believer in modern-world systems theory:
Therefore, the world system is not viewed as having always been composed of a single core and single periphery, but rather of an inter-linked set of center-periphery complexes, joined together in an overall ensemble...

Yet this multicentricity does not mean "equality" among the various centers or between different center-periphery complexes in the world system. This multicentricity is hierarchically structured. There is a very complex "chain" of "metropole-satellite" relations of extraction and transfer of surplus throughout the whole world system.
What Miami offers is exposure to Latin America while limiting the political risks from operating there directly. Latin Americans still wary of expropriation, inflation and so on need little persuading that parking their money in Miami is a good safety precaution against the whims and caprices of their rulers. Conversely, catering to this safety-first Latin American elite who've squirreled money away in the relative haven that is Miami--some call it "capital flight"--becomes a relatively profitable endeavor:
International traffic to the city is on the upswing, and in 2013, for the first time ever, the majority of visitors—51 percent—came from outside the US. Together they represent 70 percent of overall tourism dollars spent in Miami, according to William Talbert III, the president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Florida has been officially bilingual for two decades, but Miami has long been known as the US capital of Latin America for its cultural vibe and regional business hub status. Indeed, more than 40 percent of the population speaks Spanish at home.

Investment is flowing in from far beyond Latin America, joining Miami-headquartered US companies like Burger King and a trio of cruise companies—Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean. London-based Swire Properties is building Brickell City Centre, a $1.05 billion (77.4 billion euros) complex that will include homes, offices and shops when it opens in 2016. Britain’s Virgin Hotels moved its headquarters to Miami from New York in 2013. Spain’s Banco Santander and Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo have set up shop along Brickell Avenue, the city's business centre.
Notice the sorts of businesses setting up shop in Miami: They are in financial services, real-estate, and travel. They relate to each other in that banking services just outside the reach of nosy Latin regulators in Miami are valued by elites, real estate in Miami is seen as a good investment in a low-risk and dynamic part of the US, and Miami has a superior infrastructure to handle forays into the region in search of surplus capital extraction.

For further validation, see the Economist:
The IRS has estimated that foreign individuals have up to $400 billion in American accounts. Miami’s financial centre has the most to fear, though it has become less accommodating towards dirty money over the past decade, and a good deal of what remains is thought to have been moved out of banks and into local property.
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Social Media is a Wasteland, Corporate Edition

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 7/03/2014 11:07:00 AM
Will Facebook and Twitter "save" America? you must be joking.
You may say it's rich for someone with an online-only presence to say that "the Internet doesn't matter," but even the somewhat more qualified "...but social media does" doesn't say much. To demonstrate the futility of the Internet in generating economic growth, much less any sustained prosperity, we can always resort to that poster country for downward mobility, the United States. Having gone nowhere since the turn of the millennium, it's easy to debunk triumphalist claims that the Internet "changed everything." Ever-so-delusional Americans seem to gradually grasp the obvious that future generations will be worse off than they are as median household incomes fall year in and year out. Isn't the new economy reviving America? We can now use its laughable ineptitude to disprove the even hoarier idea that social media matters. Hype aside, how do Yanks really view it?
When many companies joined Facebook in the late 2000s, they used it as another brand website where they provided links, contact information and monitored consumer gripes. Then, they got caught up in the numbers game, trying to rack up raw masses of fans and followers, believing they were building a solid marketing channel. But that often wasn't the case. Social media are not the powerful and persuasive marketing force many companies hoped they would be," concludes Gallup Inc., which on Monday is releasing a report that examines the subject. 
How lame is social media? In their poll, Gallup [summary here] found that nearly two-thirds of consumers didn't consult social media while making purchases.
Gallup says 62% of the more than 18,000 U.S. consumers it polled said social media had no influence on their buying decisions. Another 30% said it had some influence. U.S. companies spent $5.1 billion on social-media advertising in 2013, but Gallup says "consumers are highly adept at tuning out brand-related Facebook and Twitter content." (Gallup's survey was conducted via the Web and mail from December 2012 to January 2013. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.)
The story is largely the same worldwide. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, QR codes...pretty much useless and not taken seriously:
In a study last year, Nielsen Holdings NV found that global consumers trusted ads on television, print, radio, billboards and movie trailers more than social-media ads. Gallup says brands assumed incorrectly that consumers would welcome them into their social lives. Then they delivered a hard sell that turned off many people.
To have spent so much on social media to discover that, gee, people put more stock in old media is pretty pathetic. Social media reflects its inventors, the Americans--much hype, little substance. (No wonder the  Obama likes it so much.) Don't get me wrong: the Internet in general and social media in particular is great for wasting time and writing about how globalization is subprime--which it really is. But for more serious endeavors--like raising productivity--it is seriously lacking.
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US Can Learn From Its Football Vanquisher, Belgium

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 7/02/2014 03:04:00 PM
US never really had a chance...but Belgium can teach it a trick or three.
Ho-hum, another World Cup, another early US demise--this time in the first knockout round. Despite having the finest hired gun available as manager, legendary German striker-turned-SoCal-resident Jurgen Klinsmann, the US Men's National Team (USMNT) did not really do enough to overcome a Belgian side many experts believe can go all the way. Actually, the United States should study Belgium if it ever tires of getting dumped out of the World Cup with regularity. Belgium, like the United States, is hardly regarded as a footballing powerhouse. It is a tiny nation of 11 million persons, limiting its pool of "human capital," while football (what the Yanks call "soccer") is far behind football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey in terms of popularity.

What may surprise Americans is that Belgium's ascent is a relatively recent phenomenon. Like the US, it was a nobody in world football until the past few years. (The Europeans were ranked 71st in the world in the mid-2000s.) Belgium made a concentrated effort to study what made great footballing nations tick:
First, inspired by research trips to the best training centres in France, the Netherlands and Germany, every youth team in the country was told to play a fluid and flexible 4-3-3 formation favoured by the national team. Sablon made a brochure and went to clubs, schools and all youth coaches and told them how to do it. "It wasn't easy to go to people and tell them to stop doing what they'd done for years," added Sablon.

Second, youth teams were no longer to focus on results. Sablon commissioned a study into youth football that saw 1,500 matches filmed and studied. One of the key findings was that too much emphasis was being placed on winning and not enough on developing players. It was win at all costs and that was costing Belgium. Sablon even went as far as ensuring under-seven and under-eight teams did not have league tables.
Next, isolationist xenophobes should take note: many top Belgian players also trace their roots from elsewhere, which is fairly common nowadays in world football. I guess "Fortress America" in the immigration debate won't help the footballing cause:
  • Adnan Januzaj - born and schooled in Belgium, has Kosovan-Albanian parentage and a family lineage that reaches to Turkey
  • Vincent Kompany - born in Brussels, Kompany's father, Pierre, is a Congolese immigrant. His mother, Jocelyne, is Belgian
  • Romelu Lukaku - born in Antwerp but his father played up front for DR Congo when it was known as Zaire
  • Mousa Dembele - born in Belgium but his father is from Mali
  • Axel Witsel - his Martiniquais parentage made him eligible for France
  • Nacer Chadli - born in Belgium but played senior international football for Morocco, but only in a friendly
  • Marouane Fellaini - Born in Brussels to Moroccan parents from Tangier
Third, even Belgians will tell you that competition in the domestic league is not the most intense. Just as the United States is a pre-retirement destination for big-name but washed-up international stars, nobody will say that either US or Belgian leagues will subject players to the rigors of international competition at the highest level. Ironically, to help Belgium--or the US for that matter--its most promising talent needs to be sent abroad. Belgian medalists in international football are legion:
  • Spain: La Liga winners - Thibaut Courtois and Toby Alderweireld, Atletico Madrid
  • England: Premier League winner - Vincent Kompany, Manchester City
  • FA Cup winner - Thomas Vermaelen, Arsenal
  • PFA Young Player of the Year - Eden Hazard, Chelsea
  • Community Shield: Adnan Januzaj, Manchester United
  • Germany: Bundesliga and German Cup winner - Daniel van Buyten, Bayern Munich
  • Italy: Coppa Italia winner - Dries Mertens, Napoli
I am unsure if the US can really compete in a truly "international" sport like football. (Not that they do any better at baseball.) Consider the three points made above: (1) Would brokebank Yank taxpayers readily fund youth academies for a furriner's sport in the United States? Youth development would be considered "socialism" by the Ann Coulter set who unfortunately typifies a lot of American attitudes. (2) You must be joking if the United States were to adopt more progressive migration policies to improve its footballing performance alone since a lot of the countries it would need to welcome more persons from--i.e., Latin America--are the "wrong" ones given longstanding US prejudices. (3) Not knowing any better and not really understanding how US leagues are (correctly) perceived as pre-retirement destinations for big-name stars wishing to cash in on their names when their abilities are no longer at the top level, Americans will probably regard the loss of top talent as "traitors."

It's a formidable list of obstacles to the US becoming more than an also-ran in football, and it goes far beyond sport to include other things such as migration policy. But if the Yanks ever get serious about doing better in football, well, there's Belgium to study for starters.
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