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First, a few thoughts on the wording of this question: The modern vocabulary in use is probably the most noticeable, and dangerously undiplomatic, of all. Lately, the word “threat” and off-the-cuff sounding of false alarms is used in a faux, if not disingenuous, debate. Those who cannot see the light insist on turning up the heat, quick to dispense irresponsible labels.
The question skews the interests of (for-profit) companies in the private sector. Alas, their complaint has a whiff of a desire for an easy, free rescue by the U.S. government as the industry hopes to surf the recent tides of “resource nationalism”. Surely the government can rescue Silicon Valley from its follies, since the Fed rescued Wall Street from its foolish deals. After all, both made fortunes from hype: one from irresponsible lending hype and the other from the Y2K bug. Never mind that the market value of Microsoft is now twice the value of Citigroup, the American banking giant!
The essential fact remains that such materials and the so-called intellectual property rights are privately owned, produced and sold with a fundamental “design flaw” of easy duplication that easily crosses national borders and is effortlessly duplicated on Main Street USA, in a Bangkok backstreet, or swapped over the Internet with one side being 12 time zones away from the other. These inventions have superseded the mindset of laws and international conventions enacted a long time ago, before Microsoft, Google and iPods gained currency. The IT sector has created a modern “give it away” business model, unheard of a few decades ago. These private companies operate on a worldwide basis and they, not their home governments, are best placed to challenge illegal practices in local (foreign) courts. If such jurisdictions are lucrative for their sales and marketing operations, they cannot run back to the U.S. government for cover and enforcement muscle, where those unresponsive “foreign” legal systems happen to be the source of other advantages gained by the U.S. economy. It can all be negotiated into a new legal structure, but chances are that other “shocking” findings (such as cheap or unsafe labor practices) will come up in any global rounds of fair trade negotiations. And what will be the impact on the price of goods that eventually end up at Wal-Mart, and the resulting inflation? Surely the U.S. Trade Representative knows the answer to that one.
The Current Discussion: Protests over the Olympic torch relay have led to a crackdown in Tibet. Is Tibetan independence a lost cause? If not, what should its supporters do to win it?
Mixing Olympics sports and short-term political issues is a toxic and self-defeating cocktail. Sports, especially championship events like the Olympics and the World Cup, are about contact between people of different countries on commonly agreed rules -- staying away from politics, race, religion and the short-term aims of politicians and their diktat. Sports aim for friendships, brotherhood and a decent cultural exchange of athletes with simple ambitions, long-term plans and years of training. These athletes are from small towns with modest backgrounds, with little exposure to the rest of the world or opaque political agitations in foreign lands, trade deficit frustrations, sub-prime disorders, oil and gas, NATO or Plato.
Inflation is another word for reduced purchasing power. Three elements can fuel a spiral. Increases in the cost of raw materials lead to higher prices of final products. Higher prices put pressure on wages to go up so workers can pay for what they buy -- which increases the costs of production and again leads to higher prices. Finally, as prices increase, more capital is needed to produce the same item, which also increases the cost of production and leads to higher prices -- particularly if interest rates go up at the same time.
Current imbalances ought not to be shocking or unexpected. Asset prices and raw materials have shot up, but wages and incomes remained stagnate, and we were told that all is rosy as growth is a one-way and upward trajectory with joy, and debt, for all. I raised this issue back in January, 2007 .
For the time being, there are low stocks, but not acute shortages of, food-- assuming the consumer can afford to pay. Cows are still producing the same amount of milk as two years ago, but it is more expensive to feed the cow and process, package and transport the milk. The excuse of increased demand from China and India is a tall tale. They both have vivid memories of food shortages in the 1950s and 1960s, which was overcome domestically by Chinese and Indians despite political isolation.
The easy days are behind us and the era of a tough climb up the proverbial hill of beans is ahead. Civil commotion about food prices are essentially about low incomes and reduced purchasing power. And these are not limited to developing countries. Soaring home foreclosures and depleted savings in US, a 25 percent jump in British use of credit cards for food purchases since December, and stagnate property prices in Japan are all telling signs of the same story. Blaming oil exporters for high oil prices is a worthless diversion too -- the governments of importing countries raise more cash from fuel and excise taxes (especially in Europe and Japan) than the sum paid to the original exporter of crude oil.
Iranian consumers are not different, as all juggle inflation and low incomes. Like Russians, Turks and others in Eastern Europe, pensioners and retired people here are especially squeezed by reduced purchasing power. Economic pains of transformation, from a state-planned system to a market-managed economy, are expected to repeat events seen elsewhere.
The situation in Zimbabwe is not a new development. It is a festering matter put on the low or no priority list of international debate. The actions of the President Mugabe are a mere repeat of playbooks of strongmen in the same league -- Pakistan under President Musharraf, Serbia run by Mr. Milosevic, and the early days of the Ugandan Idi Amin come to mind.
Most powerful countries have tried to encourage change on the cheap. This exercise to isolate Zimbabwe has produced talk and hollow posturing, but hardly any tangible help for ordinary people there. The economic implosion of Zimbabwe -- once known for its humming agricultural and mining sectors, a respectable education system, and hard working people -- is the net product of disengagement. For the time being, local institutions are in the spotlight to see if the intended functions and independence of state bodies are effective. Election commissions, demands for recount, and courts are running the course.
The Current Discussion: Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that Hamas is doing all it can to torpedo the Mideast peace process -- but Ephraim Halevy, former head of Mossad, thinks it's time to include the Islamist group in peace talks. Who's right?
The question leads to an obvious answer and a few observations to ponder upon. Is it possible to exclude a political party that won a majority in the last election of Palestinians?
The Current Discussion:The global economy is quaking. Are we heading toward a global recession? Who's to blame?
The chain reaction in progress can be best described as a “deleveraging” of American finances. It is a uniquely Anglo-American development, not a global problem, and is likely to continue for two or three years before fundamental stability and realistic valuations fall in place. Alas, recession is a rusty description, originally coined for industrial economies. It is a misnomer for today’s American finances and post-industrial economy, isolated into a unique set of presumptions: rampant consumerism, service-based revenues, presumed constants in long-term forecasts (say, price of commodities or consumer demand), and herd behavior (mislabeled as competition); all glued together with liberal amounts of debt and stitched up with hype.
The Current Discussion: New York State governor Eliot Spitzer admits he hired a prostitute. Should people care, and why?
The election process is about public trust as well as law and order. The public invests its trust in a legally defined bond with that person to carry out the duties spelled out in the law and compliance with it. The case of Mr. Spitzer and his suspected involvement in aiding the interstate sex industry, a crime under American laws, is a stark reminder of limits that test the abuse of trust. Unlike Bill Clinton, it seems that Mr. Spitzer did in fact inhale!
The Current Discussion: With the Israeli re-invasion of Gaza, it's clear that the "Annapolis Peace Process" is collapsing. Does it matter? Who's to blame?
The Annapolis Peace Process was dead at birth. It was conceived as an American project for internal politics. The cause of death is the obvious defective design of a hasty and illogical desire to decouple from the past. It might be a flashback to 1947, when Britain withdrew from the Mandate of Palestine and announced that it could not reach a solution acceptable to both Arabs and Jews. Thereafter the young U.N. General Assembly resolved to create two countries alongside each other, with Jerusalem as a specially designated city of equal access. Nevertheless, Israel declared independence and the complicated problem remains alive some sixty years later. (Didn’t we see a re-run of this show in Kosovo a mere two weeks ago?)
The Current Discussion: All four Oscars for best acting went to non-Americans. Is Hollywood's cultural hegemony finally breaking up? Or are we Hollywoodizing foreign talents like Javier Bardem and Marion Cotillard?
It is easy to elevate the importance of Hollywood to fictional heights and then reach a positive, but superficial, answer to both questions, and then shrug it all off by saying, Who cares? The question carries a presumption of an American monopoly over the art of cinema, although India is the top producer of films. The annual awards ceremony of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is essentially a domestic affair and a celebration in America’s production centre of its top export.
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