Category: Current Affairs
Sentences to ponder
More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.
The full and outrageous story is here. Their "crime," by the way, is not having proper visas. Some were pulled from the rubble of the earthquake and none have criminal histories.
Haiti fact of the day
Nearly 17 percent of Haiti's civil servants died in the disaster, including many senior managers…
Most likely these were the people most likely to be inside of relatively substantial buildings. It's also a reflection of how much Haitian government was concentrated in Port-au-Prince. Did you know that the U.S. occupation of 1915-1934 encouraged this centralization, if only to make the country easier to rule? The full story is here.
A Census ad on a Metro bus, socialist calculation debate edition
Chug relates to me that he saw the following, plastered on the side of a Metro bus:
If we don't know how many people there are
How will we know how many buses we need?
If you have a photo, please send it along.
Headlines to ponder
NASA to investigate cause of Toyota problems
The story is here. For the pointer I thank Steve Silberman.
China diabetes fact of the day
It's not surprising to see China as "number one" in so many things, but I was surprised by the magnitude of this development:
According to the report, more than 92 million adults in China have diabetes, and nearly 150 million more are well on their way to developing it. The disease is more common in people with large waistlines and in those who live in cities, the report indicates.
"For every person in the world with HIV there are three people in China with diabetes," said David Whiting, an epidemiologist with the International Diabetes Federation, who was not involved in the research.
The Federation projected last year that some 435 million people would have diabetes by 2030. "With this new study, we're going to have to rerun our estimate," Whiting told Reuters Health.
The full story is here.
The Haitian gourde
Mr. Dobrianskiy, the casino entrepreneur, said he was pleased that Haiti’s currency, the gourde, had recently strengthened against the dollar to a value higher than before the quake, in part because of the influx of money from abroad.
The article is interesting throughout.
Does Uruguay have multiple currencies? — hail Heinrich Rittershausen!
I'm holding back my post on mandates and penalties until comments are back up again. In the meantime, I have read the following:
Back in June of 2009, Uruguay embarked on a nationwide experiment with complementary currencies – a plan that evolved from a number of local trials of the alternative currency system in that country. The name of the currency is officially the ‘liquidity network”, but is known locally as the “charrua“.
Does that not sound like something out of a Borges story? The summary is this:
The system allows small- and mid-sized businesses to lend to each other, with debts being backed by the production value and assets of the lender.
The important fact is this:
…the charrua will be accepted for all debts, public and private. This means that taxes will be payable in both pesos and charrua (and I believe in US dollars, as well).
You'll find another description here. As I understand it, the system treats some corporate debt assets as money-like in a number of relevant ways, possibly to stimulate aggregate demand. Can it be that Uruguay has a version of Hayek's competitive currencies proposal, albeit without complete free entry? If you know more about this, do please email me. Googling "uruguay charrua moneda" doesn't yield much.
Here is a short article on Heinrich von Rittershausen.
For the hat tip I thank CheapSeatsEcon. Here is their graphic art for MR.
Addendum: Eapen Thampy sends me more.
Theory of optimal punishment, as applied to Haitian dominoes
Craig Stroup sends along the following photo:
That's one way to address the zero lower bound problem. Many other excellent photos can be found here.
*The Future History of the Arctic*
I loved this book, which is written by Charles Emmerson. Here is one short bit:
Despite the prominence of the colors of Norway on Svalbard — and the firm insistence from any government representative that Svalbard is an integral part of the kingdom of Norway — there are reminders that the archipelago is both something more and something less than that. Russians and Ukrainians live here, some in Longyearbyen, though most are at the Russian settlement at Barentsburg. The girls at the supermarket checkout counter speak Thai. Somewhere in town is an Iranian who came here six years ago and, under the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, was able to settle here. If he were to return south to the Norwegian mainland, he would almost definitely be forced to leave the country, his asylum claims having been refused. Import duties are nonexistent on Svalbard: Cuban cigars cost less in Longyearbyen, at 78 degrees North, than they do in Oslo, three hours' flight to the south.
Here is Wikipedia on Svalbard.
This book covers why and how Greenland might become independent, what kind of presence in the Arctic Canada can realistically expect to have, the changing historical fortunes of Vladivostock, what the Law of the Sea really means, and why Norway manages its fossil fuel revenues so well, among other matters. The Future History of the Arctic has fun and useful information on just about every page.
Law and order in the world’s newest city
Remember that tent city on the former Petitionville golf course? Here is the latest:
…an unarmed Haitian security force, composed of about 200 volunteers wearing neon yellow vests, patrols the golf course, trying to mediate disputes.
“We get a lot of cases: men beating up women, women beating up other women, people biting off other peoples’ ears,” said Romulus Renald Black, one of the volunteers. “We bring them into our security tent, judge them, and, if it’s a big case, we call in the police.”
Another patrolman said that there had been several rapes and assaults but only one killing. As to the number of ear bitings, Mr. Black said, “You’d be surprised.”
“Given the conditions, it has been remarkably calm and brotherly here,” said Clerveau Rodrigue, who has emerged as one of the camp’s leaders.
Strategies of (unintended) precommitment
Geoff Robinson writes to me and speculates:
I was thinking that Scott Brown's election was instrumental in yesterday's passage of the health care bill, in the game theory sense. The Senate managed to pass a bill, and then, with Brown's election, credibly declare that it would not be able to consider any changes to the bill. No health care legislation would make it through the body again. House Democrats, faced with this take it or leave it scenario, were forced to pass the Senate version without modification (or let it fail).
I wonder how things would have proceeded if Martha Coakley had won? The House would have had (and certainly used) the option to force changes. This would have required the Senate to hold its super-majority coalition together for one more vote. Would all 60 senators have held the line? Would the use of reconciliation have been a viable political alternative? Would we have been debating health care all summer as negotiations dragged on?
My guess is the bill still would have passed, nonetheless this is an interesting exercise in the idea of unintended consequences.
Can this be true?
Vero de Rugy sends me this link from Bloomberg:
Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market.
I am skeptical but do not have any particular counter. What do you all know about this? Is this a temporary liquidity effect? Are there other embedded rights in these securities?
The health care bill
Yes, I will have more to say about the health care bill (maybe Alex will too!). But I recall the passage from Herodotus, where he writes of a group (I can't remember which one) which debates all major policy issues both sober and drunk, both reasonably and full of irresponsible passion. That's not my personal model, nor do I wish to see it in the comments. So I'll wait just a wee bit, and let others get both their celebrating and hand-wringing out of their systems…
I worry about this
The Russians are not alone in pushing the idea that the next generation of nuclear reactors should have more in common with the small power plants on submarines than the sprawling installations of today.
And this in particular:
The promise of miniature reactors powering homes, offices and schools is still years from being realized. The first Russian design, a pontoon-mounted reactor intended to be floated into harbors in energy-hungry developing countries, is already being built. But most promoters expect small reactors to come online at the end of this decade.
And this:
Some models are tiny. One, for example, would be small enough to fit into a shipping container and would be trucked from site to site, like a diesel generator, except that it would need to be refueled only once every seven years or so.
The opening cost for these "mini-reactors" is expected to run about $100 million. The full story is here.
The Rousseauian exodus
Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved at a steady clip to Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the government, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have received little emergency assistance.
The full story is here. The article notes that in the countryside food is growing ever scarcer. Here are two final quotations:
“It’s like you become a Communist here because you never touch money,” she said. “But it’s not so bad. Even though I left 25 years ago, Fond-des-Blancs is still the place that I call home.”
And:
“These three girls were all university students, and now their future is uncertain,” she said. “They don’t know what to do with themselves here. Every morning they wake up and say, “Mama, take us back. We’d rather sleep on the street.’ ”