April 8, 2013

Iceland to Cyprus: Make the rescue more equitable and watch out for inflation

Iceland to Cyprus: 'People should not pay for speculators'

One big difference between Cyprus and Iceland is that the Mediterranean island - as part of the eurozone - cannot devalue its currency as the Nordic island did. "Our recovery (Iceland's) is a typical case based on currency devaluation. Then the exports get more competitive on fish or aluminium sold abroad, also services and tourism got a boost as prices dropped in Iceland," the former spokesman said.

"But we can't forget who's paying for all that - it is the citizens in Iceland, because inflation doubled while salaries stayed the same. We don't pay with high unemployment, but with lower salaries," Omarsson added.

"I would not recommend Cyprus to leave the euro now, even you can wonder in hindsight if it was reasonable to join. Rather, get the capital controls lifted so domestic payments can work again properly, sit down and figure out what to do to shift the burden from locals who lost a lot in a very unfair manner to a more equitable solution," Magnusson said.

"It will be fascinating to see what comes out of the Offshore leaks," Magnusson said, in reference to a trove of leaked names of individuals and banks with offshore accounts obtained by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism. "We can only hope this leads to a reduction in these activities, which are no benefit to society. It would be better for these tax havens to find other business models that are less damaging to the countries where all these tax revenues are fleeing from," he said.

http://euobserver.com/economic/119718

April 6, 2013

In the 20th century, 40 million killed in wars, but 160 million by their own governments.

Twentieth-Century governments and their soldiers have killed perhaps forty million people in war: either soldiers (most of them unlucky enough to have been drafted into the mass armies of the twentieth century) or civilians killed in the course of what could be called military operations. But wars have caused only about a fifth of this century’s violent death toll.

Governments and their police have killed perhaps one hundred and sixty million people in time of peace: class enemies, race enemies, political enemies, economic enemies, imagined enemies. You name them, governments have killed them on a scale that could not previously have been imagined. If the twentieth century has seen the growth of material wealth on a previously-inconceivable scale, it has also seen human slaughter at a previously-unimaginable rate.

Call those political leaders whose followers and supporters have slaughtered more than ten million of their fellow humans “members of the Ten-Million Club.” All pre-twentieth century history may (but may not) have seen two members of the Ten-Million Club: Genghis Khan, ruler of the twelfth century Mongols, launcher of bloody invasions of Central Asia and China, and founder of China's Yuan Dynasty; and Hong Xiuquan, the mid-nineteenth-century Chinese intellectual whose visions convinced him that he was Jesus Christ’s younger brother and who launched the Taiping Rebellion that turned south-central China into a slaughterhouse for decades in the middle of the nineteenth century. Others do not make the list. Napoleon does not make it, and neither does Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

By contrast the twentieth century has seen five or six people join the Ten Million Club: Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kaishek, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Tojo Hideki. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao have credentials that may well make them the charter members of the Thirty Million Club as well—and perhaps the Fifty Million Club. A regime whose hands are as bloody as those of the 1965-1998 Suharto regime in Indonesia—with perhaps 450,000 communists, suspected communists, and others in the wrong place at the wrong time dead at its creation in 1965, and perhaps 150,000 inhabitants of East Timor dead since the Indonesian annexation in the mid-1970s—barely makes the twentieth century's top twenty list of civilian-massacring regimes.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/tyrannies-saturday-twentieth-century-economic-history-weblogging.html

The number for people killed in wars in the 20th century seems low to me. But even if it were doubled, it is amazing that governments have killed their own people in much higher numbers than have died at the hands of foreign armies.

April 4, 2013

There's a conspiracy to create a NWO: Very liberal: "NO - 69% to 12%", Very conservative: "YES -

45% to 26%."

Do you believe that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order, or not?
'Very Liberal' : Yes - 12%, No - 69%;
'Somewhat Liberal' : Yes - 20%, No - 51%;
'Moderate': Yes - 23%, No - 56%;
'Somewhat Conservative' : Yes - 33%, No - 38%;
'Very Conservative' : Yes - 45%, No - 26%.

Do you believe that global warming is a hoax or not?
'Very Liberal' : Yes - 14%, No - 79%;
'Somewhat Liberal' : Yes - 12%, No - 82%;
'Moderate': Yes - 22%, No - 67%;
'Somewhat Conservative' : Yes - 52%, No - 28%;
'Very Conservative' : Yes - 71%, No - 17%.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf

Very interesting differences in the poll results on questions about the NWO and global warming. No group believes in the existence of a NWO conspiracy other than those who are 'very conservative' and only 'conservatives' (particularly 'very conservatives') believe that global warming is a hoax.

April 4, 2013

Maddow: UN Arms Treaty creates strange bedfellows

The Arms Trade Treaty has been working its way through the United Nations, and at times, appeared to be struggling. But yesterday, with the support of the Obama administration, the ATT drew strong international backing.

Although implementation is years away and there is no specific enforcement mechanism, proponents say the treaty would for the first time force sellers to consider how their customers will use the weapons and to make that information public. The goal is to curb the sale of weapons that kill tens of thousands of people every year -- by, for example, making it harder for Russia to argue that its arms deals with Syria are legal under international law.

That said, Iran, North Korea, and Syria -- arguably the nation's three largest pariah states -- took a stand against the Arms Trade Treaty. What's interesting about that? At a certain level, nothing, given the expectations surrounding these three countries, but what I find noteworthy is that the National Rifle Association and Republican policymakers are taking the Iranian, North Korean, and Syrian side of the argument.

The ATT will go to the Senate where it will almost certainly fail in the face of overwhelming Republican opposition. The treaty would need 67 votes for ratification, and given a recent non-binding vote on an ATT resolution, it will struggle to get 50 votes. The U.S. has, I believe, entered a post-treaty phase of international diplomacy.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/04/03/17585093-arms-treaty-creates-strange-bedfellows

A post-treaty phase of American leadership

It probably wouldn't make much difference, since Senate ratification of treaties has gone from difficult to practically impossible.

After Senate Republicans killed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, Dan Drezner called the opposition "dumber than a bag of hammers," but added something that stuck in my head:

I've blogged on occasion about the development of a sovereigntist lobby that reflexively opposes all treaties because they erode U.S. sovereignty. For these people, any infringement on American sovereignty is a death blow to freedom, regardless of the benefits from joining.

That's true, but what goes generally unsaid is that this sovereigntist lobby, coupled with the radicalization of Republican politics, has created conditions in which the United States may no longer be able to ratify any treaty for any reason on any issue.

By constitutional mandate, it takes 67 Senate votes to ratify a treaty, which means any measure that has even the slightest chance would need a significant chunk of the Senate Republican conference to meet the two-thirds threshold -- and by all indications, that's no longer a realistic option.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/14/15907173-a-post-treaty-phase-of-american-leadership?lite

The sovereigntist lobby has emerged on the right and opposes US participation in international negotiations and agreements. To them the prospect of the US agreeing to act in certain ways ("regardless of the benefits&quot infringes on our 'sovereign right' to do anything we want, to whomever we want at any time we want.

March 27, 2013

AI: ‘Keep up international pressure against abuses in Syria’

Global pressure must be applied to all parties in the Syrian conflict to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, Amnesty International said as the League of Arab States gathered in Qatar for a summit and BRICS nations met at a separate event in South Africa.

“The opposition must not waver - it has both a duty and an opportunity to denounce abuses carried out by armed opposition groups and stand in line with international humanitarian law - paying lip service to it is not enough” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director.

While it is clear that the vast majority of war crimes and other gross violations continue to be committed by government forces, Amnesty International’s research points to an escalation in abuses by armed opposition groups, which have increasingly resorted to hostage taking and to the torture and summary killing of soldiers, pro-government militias and civilians.

In a recent briefing, Summary Killings and other abuses by armed opposition groups, the organization documented dozens of such cases. Amnesty International has most recently documented violations by Syrian security forces and pro-government militias in the briefing, Government bombs rain on civilians, in a long line of reports highlighting targeting of civilians, arbitrary arrest, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and other abuses since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/keep-international-pressure-against-abuses-syria-2013-03-26

March 25, 2013

Financial advisers to the legions of wealthy foreigners with bank accounts in Cyprus

are under orders to withdraw their funds any way they can.

Professionals who have built livelihoods out of the country's offshore banking boom predicted that whatever the outcome of last-ditch rescue talks in Brussels, the Cypriot economic model is broken.

"Ninety-nine per cent of my clients are saying 'find a way to get my money out', in any way," said Petros Valko, a financial consultant who manages funds worth about €100m. "No matter what [the government] does now, the Cypriot economy is over. Trust is our main commodity, and it's gone."

"The damage is done," said Demos Antoniou, CEO of Compass, a Limassol-based consultancy with a roster of foreign clients. "Now we have to see what we can save, work hard for the next few years and try to reverse this situation." He said the proposal of a deposit levy had caused serious damage to the island's reputation. "From the day they announced the possibility of a haircut, that was it," he said. However, the government could still find a way to lure foreign investors. He said: "They need to give them incentives to make them stay here. Yes, we need the Russians – but they also need us. In what other European country can they get a 10% tax rate, 0% tax on profit, plus interest on deposits. They need more incentives now. The government doesn't have a plan for this – that's the problem."

Wealthy foreign investors, mainly Russians, have flocked to Cyprus to take advantage of its low taxes and lack of scrutiny over the origin of funds. The crisis has thrown up accusations that Russians were able to launder huge amounts of money through transactions based on the island.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/24/cyprus-economic-model-broken-advisers

Krugman has referred to this as Iceland II. Iceland's banking sector was even bigger compared to the rest of its economy than is that of Cyprus. It was able to bounce back after cutting back the role of its banks. Hopefully, Cyprus can come back with a more balanced economy just as Iceland has.

March 24, 2013

UK Guardian: Why UKIP, the Tea Party and Beppe Grillo pose a threat to the mainstream

These populists are asking the right questions, but they don't have the answers. Mainstream parties must revitalise and respond

The rise of populism across western Europe and the US – especially in its radical right form – poses more fundamental questions for democrats than has been acknowledged. Whether we are talking about UKIP, Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement or the Tea Party, populists of all kinds are exposing old and hidden fault lines in democracy, and mainstream democrats need a greater alertness to the nature of the threat.

Populists pose a basic question: why is democracy not run as the true expression of a morally pure "will of the people" against a self-serving and corrupt political, bureaucratic, plutocratic or legal elite? This is a forceful question as old as democracy itself and it reveals what has become liberal democracy's unspoken compromise – democracy is bounded by institutions, laws and constitutional limits. It is democracy through pluralism and compromise; "minorities rule" as the American democratic theorist, Robert Dahl, described it.

Mainstream democrats take their cue from American republican democracy with its checks and balances and self-restraint. This is an impediment to the true democracy for populists. They wish to sweep away any barrier to their desired ends – whether of the left or the right.

So the Tea Party proposes a radical reduction of the role of the federal government in the US political system. The FPÖ challenged the authority of Austrian courts with respect to upholding minority rights. UKIP demands a UK withdrawal from the EU. The Front National drives an anti-Islamic and anti-Gypsy agenda in France. Geert Wilders' PVV – following in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn – also confronts fears over the growth of Islam and its purported incompatibility with Dutch values. Viktor Orbán's Fidesz rewrote the Hungarian constitution to give the executive more authority over the courts and to safeguard "traditional family values".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/24/ukip-tea-party-beppe-grillo-threat

March 20, 2013

It is human nature that people do not like living under repressive kings/dictators.

I wouldn't like it. You wouldn't like. 'They' don't like it. The French didn't like it in the 1780's. The Russians didn't like it in 1917. Not surprisingly - Arabs being people too - they don't like it either.

Usually there is little that anyone can do about one's government - particularly so if a government uses the military, police and security services to maintain control of society and preserve their rule. Just because people are not constantly demonstrating or actively rebelling (resulting in being jailed, tortured and killed) against a repressive government does not mean that they are happy about their situation.

I'm sure the French king, the Russian tsar and every other king/dictator, when faced with a revolution, thought "Where did this come from? The peasants all seemed to be happy last year. Who's causing this unrest? Must be some foreigner! My people love me."

If, hypothetically, Obama had come up with a strategy to replace Mubarak and Assad with fundamentalist Islamic governments then the tea partiers would congratulate themselves. He would have proven that he is a Muslim fundamentalist bent on installing Sharia law in the US. Their train of thought (if you can give them this much credit):

Obama started the Arab Spring in Tunisia rather than in Egypt or Syria, because he wanted to try it out in a small country that has nothing that we are really interested in. He saw how well it worked in Tunisia - how easy it is to fool people that their lives will be better without a dictator; they still believe that 'human dignity' stuff just like the French and Russians did long ago!

Having seen how well the Arab Spring game worked in Tunisia, Obama then took his show on the road to Libya, Egypt then Syria because he hates 'secular' dictators (even those that have done the US' bidding for decades) and really wants fundamentalist dictators. It worked in Egypt when the US-supported military largely refused to shoot civilians in large numbers; it worked in Libya when the military did shoot back, but NATO bombed them; it may or may not work in Syria where the military shot back and no one bombed them.

Once a fundamentalist dictator is safely installed in Syria, Obama will go after Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and every other 'secular' government. Once that is accomplished Obama will have to decide whether to go after Europe first (where the far-right already worries that Muslim influence is ruining the continent) or go straight for Sharia law in the US and an Obama socialist/Islamic dictatorship).

End of tea party 'train of thought'.

We have come to expect that kind of lunatic 'thought' from the far-right in the US.

I suspect most on the left who have qualms about what is happening in the Arab Spring prefer secular dictators to unpredictable democratic governments that have to deal with the frustrations and contradictions created by decades of repressive rule. Muslim fundamentalists were often the only even semi-effective opposition to entrenched dictators, so when the dictators were removed they got much credit. Secular dictators may have been able to enforce some decent policies but, since they ruled through repression, their policies were discredited and created a backlash that surfaced when society opens up.

Just as the French and Russian revolutions did not 'succeed' in creating stable, progressive governments in the short run, Arab democracies have struggled. One can only hope that things improve over time and that the backlashes, frustrations and contradictions created by repressive rule will be replaced with progress as people learn to deal with their societies' problems.

March 18, 2013

We don't have to wall of the world's poor in order to have a strong middle class.

Every other developed country trades more than the US yet has a stronger middle class. The reason: they have more progressive taxes, strong unions and stronger middle classes.

Waving the $2/day foreign worker bogeyman as the cause of our economic problems is using semi-logic like republicans do when they argue that raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment - "When you raise the price of something, you get less of it." It sounds logical except that real-world experience shows that raising the minimum wage actually increases employment for a variety of reasons.

Similarly progressive countries are not afraid of that scary $2/day worker from "Dark Africa". In fact the EU has one-way free trade with the poorest countries in the world so that they can export their products to Europe without import tariffs. In spite of (because of?) this Europe has the best distribution of income in the world and much stronger unions and middle class than the US has. They seem to know that the African worker is not their enemy.

Europeans tax themselves heavily and progressively, support strong unions and safety net and trade with the rest of the world much more than we do. Too many Americans seem to prefer low/regressive taxes, weak unions and a shredded safety net, then blame our problems on African workers. With low/regressive taxes, weak unions and a shredded safety net we could eliminate every import from every poor country in the world (kind of a walled-off society) and we would still have the same problems.

republicans raised tariffs in 1921 and 1924 which dramatically reduce trade, and guess what happened? By 1929 we had the worst inequality of income that we had ever had in the US - not surpassed until the 'bush tax cuts' destroyed any progressivity in our tax system. Tariffs don't make a strong middle class. If we ignore history and evidence of what works, we mimic what republicans like to do - appeal to emotion and use semi-logic to scare people.

March 15, 2013

Great news! In the West the health of the middle class is more a function of income distribution

and how equitable/inequitable it is. For instance per capita income in the US is $49,600. With an equitable distribution of income we would have a strong middle class and little poverty. In that scenario few would complain that 'the global south' is catching up to something approaching our level of prosperity.

Instead we have by far the most inequitable income distribution of any developed country - thanks largely to our own regressive tax system and weak labor laws - which motivates some to view the improvement of life in the 'global south' with some envy and a sense that 'your prosperity is coming at our expense'.

This is great news. 95% of the world's population lives outside the US. I am sure that we all wish them the best. Here at home, we need to make our tax system more progressive, strengthen our labor laws and make many other changes so that our middle class can prosper as it does in other developed countries.