Category: Current Affairs
What do the betting markets say?
Over at www.intrade.com, the price for Mubarak's departure from the post of President, before the end of Februrary, is currently at 73.5.
For the pointer I thank David Shor.
China “tiger mother” fact of the day?
Under a proposal submitted last Monday by the Civil Affairs Ministry to China’s State Council, adult children would be required by law to regularly visit their elderly parents. If they do not, parents can sue them.
“Before, the courts did not accept this kind of lawsuit,” Wu Ming, a deputy inspector for the ministry, told The Legal Evening News this month. “But from now on, they will have to open up a case.”
It is not obvious that the proposal is going to pass:
“The national delegates are rational enough,” Mr. Jing said.
China, by the way, has the world's third highest elderly suicide rate. The article is interesting throughout.
My favorite things Egypt
1. Novel: I like all of the Mahfouz I have read, but the Cairo Trilogy is the obvious pick. Here is a very useful list of someone's favorite Egyptian authors and novels.
2. Musical CD: The Music of Islam, vol.1: Al-Qahirah, Classical Music of Cairo, Egypt. The opening sweep of this is a stunner, and it shows both the Islamic and European influences on Egyptian music. Musicians of the Nile are a good group, there is Hamza El Din, and there is plenty of rai. What else? I can't say I actually enjoy listening to Um Kalthoum, but her voice and phrasing are impressive.
3. Non-fiction book, about: Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious. Few cities have a book this good. There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967. Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?
4. Movie, set in: Cairo Time. This recent Canadian film avoids cliche, brings modern Cairo to life, and is an alternative to many schlocky (but sometimes good) alternatives, such as The Mummy, Death on the Nile, Exodus, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so on. There is Agora. Egyptian cinema surely has masterpieces but I do not know them. If you're wondering, for books, I could not finish Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings.
5. Favorite food: I was impressed by the seafood restaurants on the promenade in Alexandria. Food in Cairo did not thrill me, though I never had a bad meal there.
6. Philosopher: Must I say Plotinus? I don't find him especially readable.
7. City: I enjoyed Alexandria, but I can't say I liked Cairo beyond the museum (much better than any Egyptian collection outside of Egypt) and the major mosques. The Sphinx bored me. The air pollution prevented me from walking for more than an hour and there was cement, cement. and more cement. The ride between Cairo and Alexandria was one of the ugliest, most uninspiring journeys of my life. The Egyptians were nice to me but I never had the sense that anything beautiful was being done with the country. Let's hope that changes.
8. Opera, about: Philip Glass, Akhnaten. But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas. And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt. Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare.
Diane Rehm is Egyptian-American but I don't know her show. The new biography of Cleopatra is smooth but the narratives made me suspicious. Was Euclid Egyptian?
Egypt facts of the day
The Market Vectors Egypt Index (EGPT) ETF is down 20% since Jan. 14 and down 2.9% today on more than six times the daily average volume. Egypt’s credit-insurance costs have also spiked. According to Markit, a data provider, a credit-default swap to insure $10 million of Egyptian sovereign debt over five years has spiked 33% to $405,000. (Update: the CDS cost has jumped to $450,000 since this post was first made.) It may surprise, given what you see on TV, but that’s still cheaper than similar insurance for Portugal, Ireland and Greece.
The article is here. And:
The Nasdaq Israel Index (ISRQ) is down 1.2% today and 3% in the past 10 days.
Solving the fiscal crisis at the state level?
Moving to dispel claims that President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, his supporters in the state's legislature have introduced a bill that would allow anyone to get a copy of his birth records for a $100 fee.
The idea behind the measure is to end skepticism over Obama's birthplace while raising a little money for a government with a projected budget deficit exceeding $800 million over the next two years.
Here is more.
Egypt
There is some chance that 2011 will be the new 1989. Cutting off the internet should signal to the populace that matters are dire and thus it may prove counterproductive. Tullock might say it means they will start shooting soon. It is difficult to put together a "Favorite Things Egyptian," at least for this American, once you get past Mahfouz and music. Intellectually and culturally, Cairo has been punching below its weight for a long time. Fortunately, there has been a resurgence in Egyptian cinema since 2007. When I visited the country in the mid-1990s, I had an overwhelming impression of a cynical populace and a lot of cement. Timur Kuran's work will rise in status and importance. "Catch-up" remains the global story of the last ten to fifteen years.
Charlie Louvin has passed away at 83
One obiturary is here. Tragic Songs of Life, by the Louvin Brothers, is one of my favorite recordings of all time, any genre. I'm often surprised how many people do not know this music.
China fact and sentence of the day
China has lent more money to other developing countries over the past two years than the World Bank, a stark indication of the scale of Beijing’s economic reach and its drive to secure natural resources.
Here is more. China, of course, is also one of the top borrowers from the World Bank. And here is a good sentence about China, from Frank Fukuyama:
Indeed, the Chinese government often overreacts to what it believes to be public opinion precisely because, as one diplomat resident in Beijing remarked, there are no institutionalised ways of gauging it, such as elections or free media.
Duvalier returns to Haiti
Duvalier's years of living in a chateau outside Paris and a luxury Riviera villa ended in costly divorce and tax disputes, leaving him near broke.In recent years journalists tracked him down to a small, sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment in a far from chic arrondissement. The modest rent of a few hundred euros a month was paid by supporters, including Haitian taxi-drivers and waiters living in France who propped up Duvalier morally, physically and financially.
At one point the former president was so desperate he took university classes to improve his "leadership skills" and placed an advertisement seeking work in a local paper in the south of France. [TC: which of those two acts is more desperate? You could think about that question for a while.]
He has not been arrested in Haiti. Haiti is demographically a young country, and many Haitians do not remember, or never lived through, the tyrannies of his regime, which ended in 1986. For those who do remember, the standard of living then probably was higher. Furthermore, it is not obvious that anyone is currently in charge of Haiti, so who is to make the decision to arrest?
Is Duvalier shrewd enough to understand that, or is this simply desperation and the desire for an approving audience? Years ago, when you went to a Michelle Martelly (Sweet Mickey) concert, the audience was full of Duvalierists, and now he is in the run-off to lead the country. Richard Morse is covering Duvalier's visit on Twitter.
The silent bank run continues
Ireland’s central bank increased its provision of emergency liquidity support to its domestic banking system in December, as the country’s financial crisis intensified and bank deposit withdrawals rose.
Irish banks have become increasingly dependent on central bank support to fund their balance sheets, as they lose business and retail deposits and are unable to refinance maturing bank borrowings.
The article is here. This is one reason why the status quo cannot last forever, unless you think Ireland has the political will to transition to not having its own banking system. If you're a business or even Irish upper middle class, why put most of your money in an Irish bank?
What Belarus is really like
A hunter in Belarus was shot in the leg by a fox that he had wounded and was trying to kill.
The man was trying to finish the animal off with the butt of his rifle, but as the pair struggled the fox got its paw on the trigger of the gun and fired a shot.
Prosecutors from the Grodno region said the unnamed hunter ended up in hospital with a leg wound.
"The animal fiercely resisted and in the struggle accidentally pulled the trigger with its paw," the Telegraph quoted one prosecutor as saying.
The link is here, other versions of the story are here. It is said that the fox got away.
Liberal Compromise and Conservative Power
Paul Krugman has complained bitterly that Obama has compromised the progressive agenda. A new Gallup poll shows that such compromise may be an almost inevitable result of conservative and liberal ideologies.
Gallup recently polled a sample of Americans on whether it was more important for politicians to stick with their beliefs, even if little is accomplished, or compromise and get something done. Very conservative Americans were markedly more in favor of politicians sticking with their beliefs while very liberal Americans voted for compromise.
Importantly, this tells us not just about the beliefs of conservatives and liberals but about the incentives of conservative and liberal politicians. Conservative politicians face a high price of compromise and liberal politicians face a low price. Moreover, everyone knows this so conservative politicians can credibly commit that they will not compromise while liberal politicians cannot. As a result, liberals compromise more than conservatives.
If you can pull it off, credibly commiting not to compromise is a neat trick because you can get more of what you want even without an increase in basic aspects of political power such as votes. But where does the credibility originate? Is it inherent to the respective ideologies? The term conservative certainly suggests an unwillingness to change let alone compromise. Or, to turn full circle, perhaps conservative politicians are better at using apocalyptic rhetoric to instill anti-compromise feeling in their constitutients which in turn gives conservative politicians greater power.
Hat tip to L. Indyk.
Why all the dead animals?
Here's a list of the major cases. Here is a Google Map. From National Geographic, here is a responsible account. Loud noises, fireworks, crashes, and an availability cascade seem to be the major hypotheses under consideration. Cold weather and poisoning and hypoxia have been cited as well. Don't forget the dead fishes and crabs; the world seems slightly more sub-Malthusian than before.
Here is Twitter on #deadbirds. In Germany and Schweiz they are talking about "Vogelsterben" and fog; Schweiz had some previous cases over the last few years. Here is a 2009 report from Western Australia, no one seemed to pay heed at the time. There was talk of poison pesticides. Here are many other reports of group animal deaths.
This guy thinks it is all a strategy to scare people.
I'll chalk it up to two or three different causes, combined with coincidental clustering. Is there betting on how many more cases will surface?
One way to cut health care spending
Total national health spending grew by 4 percent in 2009, the slowest rate of increase in 50 years, as people lost their jobs, lost health insurance and deferred medical care, the federal government reported on Wednesday.
Here is more. This was also striking:
“Federal Medicaid spending increased 22 percent in 2009, the highest rate of growth since 1991,” Ms. Martin said, while “state spending decreased 9.8 percent, the largest decline in the program’s history.”
Retail spending on prescription drugs, however, continued to rise at a rapid rate, higher than in 2008.
The January test for the eurozone
Portugal was on Wednesday forced to pay big interest rate premiums to borrow from the markets in the country’s first test of sentiment of the new year.
Lisbon had to pay 3.68 per cent in yields for six-month loans, a jump from 2.04 per cent compared with a similar sale in September and 0.59 per cent a year ago.
One strategist said: “This is ominous. Portugal is heading towards a bail-out as the country’s borrowing costs are continuing to rise. This is unsustainable.”
The article is here, there is more to come in what will be an active month for European bond issues.