Writing 1984

The Guardian remembers the last days of Eric Blair.

Practicing your way into greatness

This David Brooks piece is very satisfying because:
a) as he puts it

Public discussion is smitten by genetics and what we’re “hard-wired” to do. And it’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior.

b) I have met an extraordinary number of brilliant people especially in the US who work hard, but are somehow reduced to defending or hiding their hard work, in the interest of looking "cool". This illusion of "effortless brilliance" behind the successful breeds more disappointment than inspiration and is, I believe, a remnant of a pre-democratic age of inherited brilliance.

Premature nostalgia for England

From the NY Times, an American reminisces about that most spectacular mixture of wit, understatement and politeness that is language at Oxbridge:

Katz continued: “After a year or so of tuning into the subtleties of the English language, something quite remarkable occurred — I began to perceive many different layers of expression in ways the British communicate. Where they are often criticized by Americans for being cold, I began to see endless expressions of warmth. Where they might be considered narrow-minded, I found instead some of the most open-minded, progressive minds I have encountered.”

English tolerance can be as uplifting as American idealism, that many-faceted and quizzical “quite” seeing U.S. “hope.

I hear you, mate. I have two months to go, but I miss 'em Brits already.

With that, I am back on the blog after the thesis sabbatical, deluding myself I discovered something profound about social democratic parties of Europe in the meantime. It turns out I am going back to the States next year for a PhD. Oh well, this kid will never stop studying as my mother used to say.

On an optimistic note

It is hard to find a decent uplifting story or op-ed these days, but for some reason this David Brooks piece cheered me up. I want to live in a big city in the next few years of my life, no question about that. Yet, there is something post-suburban about these "frontier" places that is reminiscent of the Tocquevillian small town, which is very enchanting. These places are probably a figment of Brooks' imagination. Yet I'd like to think they exist for when I am done with the cultural hodgepodge of the big city:

If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas — Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa — you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage — filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle.

These are places (except for Orlando) where spectacular natural scenery is visible from medium-density residential neighborhoods, where the boundary between suburb and city is hard to detect. These are places with loose social structures and relative social equality, without the Ivy League status system of the Northeast or the star structure of L.A. These places are car-dependent and spread out, but they also have strong cultural identities and pedestrian meeting places. They offer at least the promise of friendlier neighborhoods, slower lifestyles and service-sector employment. They are neither traditional urban centers nor atomized suburban sprawl. They are not, except for Seattle, especially ideological, blue or red.

They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes.

The EMU is not in danger

I have read many articles lately about how the PIGS of the Eurozone (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) plus Ireland undermine the strength of the EMU and I have detected a somewhat slightly unwarranted prejudice against the economies of the countries of the European periphery. Fiscal irresponsibility is a reality in those countries indeed, but there is no need to single them out during this crisis, as Barry Eichengreen demonstrates very powerfully:

But the more days pass, the more it becomes evident that the truly big event is the negative economic shock affecting the entire euro area. Different euro area members may have felt financial disturbances to a different extent, but they are all now experiencing the economic disturbance in the same way – they are all seeing growth collapse. Germany, which thought itself immune from the economic crisis, is now seeing its exports slump and unemployment rise. The rise in unemployment may be small so far, but it is the tip of the iceberg. And there is no longer any doubt about how much ice lies just below the surface.

This shock is symmetric – it is affecting all euro area members. In turn this means that a common monetary policy response is appropriate. There will now be mounting pressure for the ECB to cut interest rates to zero, move to quantitative easing, and allow the euro exchange rate to weaken. (This last part of the adjustment is already beginning to happen without the ECB having to do anything about it.) Now that recession and deflation loom across the euro area, this is a response on which all members should be able to agree. It can be complemented by fiscal stimulus. If countries in a relatively strong budgetary position, like Germany, are in the best position to apply it, all the better; the result will be help from outside for their more heavily indebted, cash-strapped neighbours who need it most.

Happy Valentine's day

An account of the positively cringeworthy first encounter between Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, followed by imaginary first encounters of power couples, courtesy of Guardian's Tim Dowling:

At some point in the conversation, Sarkozy raised a few potential difficulties, including the effect of the paparazzi on their relationship. "When it comes to the celebrity press, you are an amateur," said Bruni. "My encounter with Mick [Jagger] stayed secret for eight years. We passed through all the capitals of the world and no photographer ever caught us."

"How could you have stayed eight years with a man who has such ridiculous calves?" said Sarkozy. Who thinks the most ridiculous thing about Mick Jagger is his calves?

Protectionism a la carte

From the Financial Times, an excellent report of the many temptations of European politicians to revert to protectionism.

We see things like: capital controls of various kinds, repatriation of international capital, "buy Spanish/Swedish/French etc" pleas, a devaluation war of sorts (between the pound and the Euro), a competition among national governments for the biggest stimulus plan, attempts to bribe companies to continue operations within national boundaries and not shed off jobs and, finally, money siphoned off to non-competitive companies on the basis of nationality.

Things are not that gloomy, I hope. Even the French and the Italians seem to see the benefits of free trade. We cannot go back to the pre-Single European Act situation. Capital controls and Keynesian stimuli are hardly the equivalent of tariffs. However, the current chaos in financial markets is very unhealthy and unsustainable. Seriously, there would be no bigger disaster if the frantic government activity of national governments that blatantly protects the financial sector spills over into other domains of the economy creating huge disincentives for economic integration of the EU. This is not about salvaging neo-liberalism - it is about saving European unity in order to be able to face crises in the future in an effective way. Then again if you tell Central and Eastern Europeans about European unity these days, they will laugh at you, having seen all their euro and pound reserves evaporate in a matter of months.

Funny informercial of the week

I wanna hang out / with the History of Art crowd

Below is the average weekly budget and the average parental income of the undergraduates at the University of Cambridge, based on their major of study. The survey was conducted by the student newspaper and reproduced for the Times:

By Subject:

Average weekly budget/Average Parental Income

History of Art £182, £118k
Management £171, £67,500
Architecture £155, £83,100
Land Economy £153, £74,000
Geography £148, £104k
Classics £137, £84,600
Economics £137, £117k
Maths £134, £78,000
Philosophy £129, £57,700
Computer Science £127, £50,900
Oriental Studies £125, £87,800
English £122, £61,200
SPS £119, £77,600
Law £112, £80,000
Music £107, £80,000
MML £106, £62,200
History £106, £74,800
ASNaC £104, £63,300
Theology £103, £74,900
Engineering £92, £68,100
Natural Sciences £90, £64,600
Arch & Anth £89, £52,200
Medicine £86, £62,300
Education £78, £46,500
Vet. Medicine £76, £64,600

My initial reaction: I pity the poor management guys who really stretch the family budget to buy expensive cocktails for the History of Art girls. Then again, the strange dynamics eventually come back to haunt the poor History of Art girls as this highly alarming NYT article reveals:

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

What about us?

From Newsweek a chilling collection of photos from America in Recession. Check it out, it is seriously haunting, and almost as telling as the images from New Orleans from a few years ago. Encapsulating the stubborn, irrational(?) pride of the American people unfolds the following story, which struck me as the stuff of timeless literature:

Wall Street specialized in slicing mortgages into complex derivatives, a process that made it easy to forget that real people lay at the end of the chain. When Carlene Balderrama failed to make payments on the home (shown above) where she and her husband and their 24-year-old son lived, the bank foreclosed. The house was set to be auctioned on July 23, 2008, but just hours before the auction began, 53-year-old Balerrama killed herself with her husband's rifle. She faxed a letter to her mortgage company first, telling them that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today" she'd be dead. She wrote a suicide letter to her family, asking that they "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house".

Apparently, given the way Mrs Balderrama died, her family did not receive any insurance money.

PS. Yes, I couldn't resist not posting. See, blogging is as addictive as smoking...

Off to the deep waters

I am going off blogging for a week or two, because dissertation requires, alas, my undivided attention. Late January always sucks.

Protecting the economy from the banks*

I was wondering a few days ago in my discussion of Obama's inauguration speech what could possibly become of the banks in Obama's brave new world. Tight regulation, capitalization and perhaps insurance for the banking conglomerates that will survive the crisis was what I had in mind. Yet I read today in the New York Times that the new administration is seriously considering nationalizing banks. I am astonished. Besides the fact that this shatters an ideological consensus of more than 25 years, it also spells out extreme government intervention in a sector that was really the pinnacle of free market capitalism. And it is happening really really fast. But again we are living in unusual times. In a sense, it has already happened in Britain with the de facto nationalization of RBS and Lloyd's. And it has happened before in the US in 1983, when Reagan and Bush Sr., of all people, nationalized the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust company. It is also the logical conclusion of the steep decline in trust that has plagued the banking sector and that has naturally put in the brightest spot the ultimate creditor, the national government. Nationalization is, however, extremely costly and means that the taxpayers will take up all the costs and the governments all the risks. It also sets in motion the wheel of interaction between politics and economics that spells out inefficiency and corruption. Of course, at this point none of these tradeoffs seems worse than sticking to the financial panic of the last 3 months. On the other hand, I am wondering if cartelization might not be a better option.

*The quote is taken from a recent report by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England.

Inauguration speech ctd.

Timothy Garton Ash comes up with pretty solid analysis for the Guardian:

The key passage was this: "And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more." Wonderful stuff; but the catch comes at the end. America may be ready to lead "once more" but what if the world is no longer ready to follow? What if it believes America has forfeited much of its moral right to lead over the last eight years, no longer has the power that it used to, and that anyway we are moving towards a global multipolar system, as Washington's own National Intelligence Council predicts?

Hoorah Maggie Thatcher!

From the Financial Times:

The pound is a currency with no underpinning and should fall against the dollar and the euro, says Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings and co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros.

He says his view reflects the UK’s dire economic situation: “It’s simple, the UK has nothing to sell.”

Inauguration speech

Yesterday's speech was, as I read somewhere, essentially a nationally televised locker-room speech. The coach, pissed off at the team's performance, calls for the qualities that have brought the team top of the league in the hope that the best half is yet to come. Compared to the other Obama speeches I have seen, it was a sober, stern and, yes, conservative one. Its structure contained elements of classical ancient rhetoric as well as rhetoric of older American grandeur: invocation of the glorious ancestors, description of the recent "fall" from grace, call for return to the "old but true" virtues, anticipation of victory and re-invocation of the glorious past in a virtuous circle. In what it praised (hard work, humility, sobriety, spiritual reawakening), it almost had an austere Protestant feel. And despite the hopes of many, it lacked a unifying theme (hope and virtue are too general) and an one-liner to produce one billion search results on Google ten years down the road. This is, how should I put it, disappointing stuff from a man on whom everyone seems to be resting their hopes for the next four years. Seriously, the "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off" part sounded like it was written by Michelle.

On the other hand, the man is the Head of the United States during a serious economic crisis, not the young Democratic Senator from Chicago. Call me biased, but I think that the speech was great, even by Obama's high standards (the criteria are not the same as before after all), and had quite a few good lines. I judge them by their conciseness, literary merit, and what I deem to be political far-sightedness. Here they are:

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West -- know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

These quotes signal the transformation heralded (hopefully) by Obama's Presidency: it will substitute communitarianism and moderation for the individualism/sectarianism and ideological divisions of the previous 50 years (1960-2009). The enemies are now the unfettered pirates of the global economy and radical terrorism. A post-racial America is also well-situated to work with the rise of foreign powers. By what he is and what he said yesterday, the man might have captured the zeitgeist.

In terms of real US politics I expect this to mean: investment in primary research and public works, universal health care and major school reform, a recognition of the rise of China and India in international institutions, a careful detente with the Arab world and rapprochement with Cuba. I have no clue how the teetering banking system can fit into the picture but it might mean government regulation of the few banking conglomerates that will survive this crisis.

One more thing: as a European I often cringe at the tendency of American orators to appeal to patriotism and a pristine past with a straight face, given the moral compromises required by their half-century status as a superpower. However, I cannot but recognize that America remains a young, innovative, dynamic and pro-active country that holds the ability to re-invent itself. This is partly the legacy of its founding fathers. I wish I could say the same things about Europe (and, yes, I mean the Union), even if I had to lose some of that much cherished European self-reflexivity and stiff upper lip.

Zert (aka The Joke)

This is Entropa, or the European puzzle, the work of Czech artist David Cerny (check out the website, please please), which pokes fun at national stereotypes and was commissioned by the Czech government to be placed in the middle of an EU building at the start of the Czech Presidency. It has already stirred up criticism, particularly from Bulgaria, depicted as a mosaic of Turkish toilets. Cerny said he would recruit 27 sculptors from each country, but instead created everything himself without telling the Czech government. He also came up with 27 names of artists quoted in a fake brochure (which is in all its irony part of the whole work). Here is an abstract of his official statement explaining his motivation:

Grotesque hyperbole and mystification belongs among the trademarks of Czech culture and creating false identities is one of the strategies of contemporary art. The images of individual parts of Entropa use artistic techniques often characterised by provocation. The piece thus also lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space. We believe that the environment of Brussels is capable of ironic self-reflection, we believe in the sense of humour of European nations and their representatives.

My two cents: I find Entropa really funny, and the fact that it encapsulates national stereotypes succinctly makes it good symbolic material. My favourite piece of the puzzle has Polish monks raising the gay flag a la Iwo Jima. That said, ironic self-reflection itself is not art no matter what Mr. Cerny says; it is deconstructing meta-art, which is not particularly of my taste. Or, perhaps, it is the lowest common denominator in art, oddly resembling the lowest common denominator in foreign policy reached by EU ministers in the present crisis (or in any crisis for that matter). It is the perfect artistic counterpart to the hodge-podge that is the "united Europe" and, in that sense, it is honest and nobody should be complaining about it.

Miliband: "War on Terror was Wrong"

In case anyone had any doubts whether the foreign policy of the UK is a mere copycat of State Department memos, Mr. Miliband, her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, declared "War on Terror" wrong in today's Guardian (as well as a speech at the Taj Mahal hotel, in Mumbay). This comes a day after Hillary Clinton's remark on the use of American "smart power". In other words, and as one of the comments put it, this warmer weather seems to have brought the toads out. What is depressing is that the same Labourites could have voiced this mild criticism like, what, 4-5 years ago? And not now, 5 days before the Obama inauguration and amidst the highly unpopular Israeli invasion in Gaza. The UK might have avoided complicity in illegal detention and rendition, torture, drafting of horrid terrorism laws etc. It might also have saved its soul.

Here is part of Mr. Miliband's depressingly correct analysis:

The idea of a "war on terror" gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate. Lashkar-e-Taiba has roots in Pakistan and says its cause is Kashmir. Hezbollah says it stands for resistance to occupation of the Golan Heights. The Shia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq have myriad demands. They are as diverse as the 1970s European movements of the IRA, Baader-Meinhof, and Eta. All used terrorism and sometimes they supported each other, but their causes were not unified and their cooperation was opportunistic. So it is today.

The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common. Terrorist groups need to be tackled at root, interdicting flows of weapons and finance, exposing the shallowness of their claims, channelling their followers into democratic politics.

Happy New Year! - Missile Tov!

Happy New Year! Relaxed after a much-needed break from everything and a couple of kilos heavier, I am back to Oxford and back on track with my work. Unfortunately, so is the Israeli army backed by the Israeli politicians and public opinion, all of whom are blatantly exploiting the momentary power void to reassert themselves in the Middle East. Unless we assume that Israel's leaders think that the Palestinians will flee Gaza and the West Bank altogether, the strategy is so self-defeating, so short-sighted that it might create the most callous, the most stupid humanitarian catastrophe the Middle East has seen in years. The best (or should I say self-evident) analysis I have read is from the Economist:

Taking Hamas down a peg is one thing. But even in the event of Israel “winning” in Gaza, a hundred years of war suggest that the Palestinians cannot be silenced by brute force. Hamas will survive, and with it that strain in Arab thinking which says that a Jewish state does not belong in the Middle East. To counter that view, Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also that it is willing to give up the land—the West Bank, not just Gaza—where the promised Palestinian state must stand. Unless it starts doing that convincingly, at a minimum by freezing new settlement, it is Palestine’s zealots who will flourish and its peacemakers who will fall back into silence. All of Israel’s friends, including Barack Obama, should be telling it this.

As is often the case, Jon Stewart nails it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5IHcMlBuE