Category: Current Affairs
The culture that is Japan, snow removal edition
Robot Snowplow from Japan Eats Up Snow, Poops Out Bricks.
It has a camera and GPS. Here is a further report from Japan (remarkable detail at that link):
One protective measure against snow and ice for railroads and roadways is the "slush removal system" that hydraulically transfers collected snow that has been removed from the railroad tracks or roadways and deposits it in a river. Also, there is the "sprinkler snow melting system" that melts snow by sprinkling water on the road surface.
Here is a longer study of geothermal snow melting systems. Here is a discussion of numerous other Japanese snow treatment and disposal technologies. Here is a report from Tsuruta:
In town several additional unique ways of dealing with this snow exist. A concrete-contained stream runs under downtown sidewalks, covered by hinged, lightweight metal grates. People who have access to this “river” can shovel their snow into the running water, sending it floating to the nearby Sea of Japan. Around the nicer homes in town (luckily, including mine) pipes spray a constant stream of hot water onto snow, quickly melting it.
Still, the snow can gather, breaking the delicate branches of Japan’s carefully tended trees and plants. The solution: wooden cages and bamboo teepees, odd-looking sights.
The abundance of snow in Japan spawned a bewildering variety of shovels with distinct shapes and purposes. Most are plastic. There are wide shovels for moving large quantities of snow; there are smaller shovels for weaker shovelers; there are shovels with handles and shovels without; there are shovel-sleds designed to allow the user to push a large load of snow a long distance; there are also metal shovels for breaking up hard-packed snow.
The shovels come in a selection of neon colors: green, yellow, purple, orange, and blue – some marketer’s feeble attempt to make snow-shoveling fun. Shovels cost from five to thirty dollars. Most people own at least two different types, selected by need.
I like this from Japan (ultimately) too — Bohemian Rhapsody!
The new cabinet in Chile
E. Barandiaran notes in the comments:
You may want to know about the qualification of the new cabinet of 22 secretaries. There are 6 economists with graduate studies in the best US universities: Felipe LarraÃn will the secretary of the Treasury (Felipe is well known as the co-author with J. Sachs of a macro textbook and also got his Ph.D. from Harvard), two a Ph.D. from Minnesota and three a Master from Chicago. There is only one laywer but with training in law and econ in Harvard. A few others have degrees in public policy or MBA, and most of the others are engineers, all with graduate studies abroad. Most have been related as students, professors, and deans with Universidad Católica. Thus, Sebastián Edwards knows well the six economists (they studied there in the 1970s and were my students and/or assistants). Most have already long, successful careers in private enterprises and close relations with important NGOs. Quite a cabinet.
Here is one external report.
One reason why Germany can’t play tough guy with Greece
In the first year of the German occupation of Greece, austerity and "wage cuts" were imposed on the economy; at least 300,000 Greeks died of hunger.
Here is one contemporary account of that occupation. The IMF, on the other hand, can't override EU strictures on currency policy and on fiscal policy.
Who then will play tough guy with Greece?
Derivatives are often disguised debt transactions
Felix Salmon points us to this new Der Spiegel article:
Now, though, it looks like the Greek figure jugglers have been even more brazen than was previously thought. "Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future," one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products.
Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period — to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.
Fictional Exchange Rates
Such transactions are part of normal government refinancing. Europe's governments obtain funds from investors around the world by issuing bonds in yen, dollar or Swiss francs. But they need euros to pay their daily bills. Years later the bonds are repaid in the original foreign denominations.
But in the Greek case the US bankers devised a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates. That enabled Greece to receive a far higher sum than the actual euro market value of 10 billion dollars or yen. In that way Goldman Sachs secretly arranged additional credit of up to $1 billion for the Greeks.
This credit disguised as a swap didn't show up in the Greek debt statistics. Eurostat's reporting rules don't comprehensively record transactions involving financial derivatives. "The Maastricht rules can be circumvented quite legally through swaps," says a German derivatives dealer.
From what I understand of the Maastricht standards, they are far less stringent than banking regulation, even in places where banking regulation is relatively lax. Is the premise that governments are more trustworthy and more transparent? Or is the premise that governments should be allowed to do what banks cannot?
Here is gloss on the Sophoclean chorus on debt; you may need to scroll down to the paragraph on lines 151-58.
The last words of Socrates (according to Plato)
Shortly before dying, Socrates spoke his last words to Crito saying, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt."
Here is one relevant link.
Sentence of the Day
Why raise the cigarette tax when you can just tax breathing?
So asks Andrew Samwick in an effort to explain the illogic behind replacing a tax on gas with a tax on miles driven.
From my Inbox
Dear Friend of the Tocqueville Forum,
I regret to inform you that we will postpone the "Are the Suburbs a Mistake" lecture and the Great Encounter with Philip Bess to a later date due to adverse weather conditions. Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. We are eager to host Professor Bess and are working to reschedule his visit for a later date.
All the best,
Dr. Brust
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
In an interview in Ta Nea newspaper, Papaconstantinou also insisted that middle- and low-income earners would pay less tax.
The full article is here. Is that a sign they're not so serious? There was a recent poll:
…most Greeks back Prime Minister George Papandreou's plans to freeze civil servants' wages and cut their bonuses. But the majority of respondents also opposed a hike in the fuel tax and the introduction of new taxes.
Yet another Haitian worry
Most of the sanatorium’s several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment, experts say.
There is a tuberculosis clinic in Port-au-Prince, but of the 20 doctors and 50 nurses who worked there, only one nurse is showing up for work. The others have either died, are injured, are dealing with family problems, fear the collapse of the building, or they fear the heavy work burden and the chance of infection. The full story is here.
Supply and Demand
The sex ratio on many U.S. campuses is around 60/40 and rising. The NYTimes has an excellent piece on the predictable consequences for dating.
North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges…Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority – that I know of.”
Only at the IVYs and universities with engineering schools does the sex ratio tend to even out (no doubt for obvious, albeit politically incorrect reasons), which in itself will have consequences for future sexual mores. A number of universities would like to institute affirmative action for males.
*On the Brink*
The subtitle is Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System and the author is (?) Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
I don't consider myself a member of the anti-Paulson brigade but this book is a boring whitewash. At least up through p.100, everyone is brilliant, charming, etc.
He explains that as a Christian Scientist he is comfortable relying on prayer rather than formal medicine. I guess that doesn't hold for the banking system.
So far the best line is had by Nixon, who on p.29 eviscerates the idea of a VAT. Everyone else sounds like a cliche. There may be revelations in the later chapters, but I probably won't get to them.
Rebuilding Haiti
Here is a new and very worthwhile short piece from Progressive Fix, authored by Jim Arkedis and Mike Derham. I am more skeptical of the UN than are the authors, but I agree with many of the recommendations and perhaps the UN is the only option anyway. Here is one excerpt:
Once order is established, the UN mission will essentially become a national police force in the absence of a Haitian alternative. To transfer power back to the local government, the UN mission should be tasked with building an effective security force and justice system. That means in addition to cops, the UN may solicit prosecutors and judges in a proxy judiciary. It’s a tall order, but it may be the only way that allows the remaining Haitian government to fully concentrate on reconstruction.
Here is a truly excellent article from the NYT, on the previous lack of Haitian openness and the need to mobilize Haitian expat expertise. Excerpt:
On an economic and political level, the Haitian diaspora could be threatening, said Harry Casimir, 30, a Haitian-born businessman who opened an information technology business there just before the earthquake. “Once the elites have money and power,” Mr. Casimir said, “they’re scared of people like me, the younger generation and so on. Because we travel around the world and see how other governments function, and obviously most countries are not corrupt like Haiti.”
Voodoo bathing ritual
The source article, by Wade Davis on voodoo (I don't agree with everything in it), is here.
Obligatory budget post
I keep on hearing about a "pivot," but where is it? Via Greg Mankiw and Arnold Kling, here is Keith Hennessey:
We can draw five important conclusions from this graph:
- At 8.3% of GDP, the proposed budget deficit for 2011 is still extremely high.
- President Obama is proposing larger budget deficits than he did last year.
- For 2011, the most relevant year of this proposal, the President is proposing a budget deficit that is 2.3 percentage points higher than he did last year (8.3% vs. 6.0%).
- Using his own numbers, the President’s proposed budget deficits will cause debt as a share of the economy to increase.
- Under the President’s proposal, budget deficits begin to increase as a share of the economy beginning in 2018.
Adding further detail to (4), the President’s own figures show deficits averaging 5.1% of GDP over the next 5 years, and 4.5% of GDP over the next ten years. They further show debt held by the public increasing from 63.6% of GDP this year to 77.2% of GDP ten years from now. I think it’s a safe assumption that CBO’s rescore of the President’s budget will be even worse.
Addendum: Brad DeLong objects.
Another idea for Haiti
Haitians in Canada proposed another excellent idea: government-paid leaves of absence to allow expatriates (employed in government or the private sector) to return and rebuild civil society in their place of birth.
There is more here. I am less sure about this one, largely for reasons of maintenance:
Instead of waiting for someone to build an expensive, centralized power grid, donors could think more flexibly on a smaller scale, using solar panels and LEDs to provide electricity and light cheaply, portably and quickly.