The Global Perspective - Market Leading Commentary On The World Economy

What The Democrats Need To Do

Contrarian approaches don't always pay off, particularly when it comes to politics. Last night I called the midterm results completely wrong, assuming that American people would come in line behind the Republicans based on some solid recent economic fundamentals. Unfortunately, and ironically for the republicans, this vote appeared to be less about the economy and more about politics. The question now is therefore: what should the Democrats aim to achieve in their majority in the House for the first time in 12 years, and possible majority in the Senate?

A lot of policymakers are pretty chuffed right now with the election turn-out - record numbers of midterm voters made it to the ballot box yesterday to cast their decision in this overheated political climate. This is however, not necessarily the best of news. At times when political interest is at its highest, it usually means  there's a climate of political instability in the air. This has been the case for the past few years: with the war in Iraq, lots of banter about Iran and North Korea making progress on nuclear development, and terrorism fears abounding, Americans have become more and more politically minded.

This new mindset undermines the competitive advantage of the United States: it's economic prowess. For when politics becomes the cause celebre of the moment, the political instability insinuated by all the interest usually rubs off on things like high commodity prices, depressed equity valuations, and slow private investment growth as people become less risk assuming. Where the Republicans have made some unequivocal progress is in recent economic affairs like tax cuts, appointing an ex-investment banker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and encouraging private investment through a myriad of economic climatic tweaks which is now starting to pay off, and the equity markets are getting the best of it. Where the Republicans have fallen short of progressive actions is in the more traditional moral areas of debate such as abortion and stem cell research, which has undermined the scientific progress of the last twenty-so years and hence the potential capital infusions these innovative new measures normally attract.

If the Democrat party really wants to do the best possible job then it would be wise not to start with immediate and more traditionally left-wing measures such as trying to reverse tax cuts and increase state spending, but rather to reverse the general trend of politicisation the U.S. has veered towards as of late like Bill Clinton did. By opening up the channels to science and embracing recent economic growth in the market economies - steering clear of inflation-related arguments to promote political agendas for state spending - the party could end up doing a lot of constructive work. That means admitting to some degree that what the Republicans have done economically has been sensible and rational.

Most of all, the party needs to shift the current focus of concentartion away from America's place in the political world and towards it's role as a great economic ambassador. If there's less political zealousness in two years at election time, the Democrats have done their job right.

The Money Is On The Republicans

At every political election, there's always the same crowd of political 'experts', pundits and journalists who tour the nation offering up their two cents worth of 'considered opinion' on whose going to win. The chief problem with listening to such people is that they have nothing at stake should they be proved wrong - in fact, quite the opposite is often true: the camaraderie have a whole legion of articles and analysis and books to publish after having used the election campaign to trade up their brands and often end up cashing in. In essence, the experts two cents is worth just about that.

The U.S. midterms today are no different. For months, the usual crowd have been chiming in with primetime TV show appearances, book launches and fancy after-dinner speeches with nothing much more to offer than a self-serving call to applaud and confuse.

It often pays therefore to look at people who do have a stake in the outcome, and who have nothing to gain and everything to lose should they be proved wrong; those people, in other words, with cold cash riding on the outcome. 

I've been arguing recently that with the growth in the economy at the apex of its current upward-looking tipping point, people are probably more likely to go with the Republicans full-hog than anything else: after all, it's only another two years and if the tipping point doesn't crest just how people want it to, then they can always change their minds at that point. That's logical enough, and sensible thinking; after all, it was the Republicans who appointed the new Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and he's done a commendable job so far in garnering support at both the private and public levels of the economy, and the tax cuts have released a lot of much-needed liquidity into the economy. (The fact that this liquidity took some time to take effect is only natural by the way, and it was poor economic thinking on the Democrats' part to start pointing the finger to tax cuts not working barely a year after they had been made). In other words, why spoil the party when it's just getting started?

This is why today's New York Times article on the Dow (via Iowa Voice) is particularly cringeworthy:

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 119.51 points, or 1 percent, to 12,105.55, snapping a losing streak that followed a record high on Oct. 26. Speculation that Democrats may take control of the House of Representatives and the Senate from Republicans in elections today aided the rebound.

Well, I'd love it if someone could tell me the last time the markets rose on the back of an expected Democrat victory. Ask yourself this question if you are unsure: why would the Dow, which has rallied to an all-time high under a Republican House and Senate, rally on the expectation that a rival party proposing to reverse tax cuts is going to get in? In fact, the markets are saying exactly the opposite of what the New York Times would like to think it would.

Markets tend to squeeze hubris towards the final hours, and indeed, this is what the markets seem to be implying today. The numbers in the stock market  say more than any journalist can write now - with a greater degree of accuracy.

Risk Return

You can find quite a good round-up of globalisation and U.S. market forces over at Immodest Proposals, linking to some of my commentary this week (there are some links to other good posts too there):

At The Global Perspective, Daniel Harrison has a series of posts that celebrate the economy and take the fools who talk it down to task. First, Greed is Good, then a lengthy post explaining the core strength of the current market run-up, finally, a post showing how ridiculous Daniel Gross is being in Slate.

... Things could be better, but the way to greater prosperity isn't greater government control and isolation. Cutting bureaucracy and encouraging global trade will continue to fuel both prosperity, and an increasing quality in the goods available.

Imagine how crappy cars would be if our markets had been "protected" from non GM/Ford/DaimlerChrysler vehicles for the past 30 years (as many wanted to do in the late 70s)? I shudder at the thought of that world.

The globalization of production, and the increasingly direct communication between suppliers and demanders has improved the quality of life for everyone.

Our economy is far from perfect, but it's still the least protected, most global market in the developed world.

Some would claim that our prosperity and dynamism are unrelated to the relative lack of protectionism and isolation (compared to Europe or Japan anyway), but those folks are fools.

This is how I, and many rational business people the world over, think about the American spirit of embracing economic changes in the face of political risk. It's heartening to see. Growth in the economy has to start from the grass-roots level, and that means putting aside innacurate journalistic political bias and vote-hungry one-liners which instill false fear into the general population, and instead carry out a meaningful analysis of the potential returns. There's a good explanation of that up over at Fredd Kambo's blog:

So how do people, industries, and economies become productive? They do so by competing. When someone is out to have your lunch, there is an incentive to do things better, faster and cheaper. It was ever thus ... It is a counterintuitive truth (at least to those of us who are non-economists), but to prosper, it appears that we have to open ourselves up to threats.

Otherwise known as risk-return.

Senator George J. Mitchell in Oslo

It's not often America's powerful world leaders come trecking across the Atlantic to visit the Nordic region, but yesterday morning I had the privilege to attend a talk by Senator George J. Mitchell.

***

"If you let people go hungry and leave them with nothing, they get angry." Rune Bjørkevik, one of just a hundred guests to attend this morning's intimate conference with the Senator is expressing his view on global policy to the general agreement of the table. "The key is to try and figure out how to create something for everyone," he says.

"But it's not as easy as that," Lynn Kvamme, another guest interjets. "What do you do when one culture's way of doing business is different from your own? If you just create one global policy for an organisation you may miss out on the market altogether by setting standards not applicable in the host country in which you're doing business."

"I think the answer is you have to form your own moral code: as long as you never to do something which you wouldn't be happy to have represented on the front page of the Financial Times then that seems a pretty safe rule-of-thumb," I offer. The comment doesn't go down with too much effect.

"No - it's about hard skills and soft skills, and finding out how to use them with some kind of purpose," someone counters bemusingly from the other end of the table, switching the conversation language into Norwegian.

Held amidst the spenetic visage of the Grand Hotel in the heart of the Norwegian capital, just a stone's throw from Stortinget, the national parliament, the atmosphere at the conference is a peculiar hybrid between the compassionate global politics of one the world's first social-democracies and the hard capitalist opportunism inherent in the companies the guests represent. Present are delegates from Microsoft, Telenor, Fast Search and Transfer - Norway's notorious cocktail party, Champagne-swigging camaraderie of first class minds with just a little self confidence to go with - Xerox, Citigroup, and of course DLA Piper, the senator's own law firm, which is holding the event in conjunction with the American Chamber of Commerce.

The peculiar paradox of this warm left-leaning approach to cold corporate ambition could not make for a more perfect preclude to the Senator's own very eloquently delivered adress, "Global Challenges in the 21st Century".

***

 

***

“Senator Mitchell is a man who has dedicated his life to making the world a better place. The United States Senate would be better off with a hundred George Mitchells today.” So said Benson K. Whitney, the highly respected US ambassador in Norway when introducing his good friend to the stage.

It’s easy to see how Senator Mitchell became such an influential figure in US politics. He is a complex mixture between quite opposite qualities – softly-spoken but equally determined, relaxed but purposeful, eloquent but colloquial, business-like and at the same time very much the people’s man – but whereas these contradictions usually translate to hypocracy in many of his colleagues, on the Senator they gel together well. He’s a man for whom politics is more than just legislation – it’s the bedrock of life itself. Politics comes naturally to him, that much is clear, though he claims this wasn’t always the case.

“I have to confess I’m a little intimidated talking to this room on corporate globalisation, because most of the attendees here know a great deal more about it than I do” he starts out modestly. “But when I was thinking about this (before giving this speech), I thought back to my introduction to the Senate. I was just a federal judge at the time in Maine, and it didn’t occur to me that I would be asked to be Senator, so like everyone else, I turned off my TV and went to bed on Sunday night at eleven, wondering who they were going to announce as Senator the next day.”

Half an hour or so later he received a phone call from the Governor, asking him if he would report downtown so that he could be announced as the new senator. 

“Can I have some time to think about it at least?” he asked.

He was told – you have an hour. After discouraging words from his two brothers – who are famous state athletes – he was suddenly driven, he said, by this “insecurity complex” brought about by the sibling rivalry. Still, this is said in good humour – it is evident the family are close. 

Here’s a piece of trivia – senator Mitchell was the shortest-reigning senator to ever cast a vote – two minutes after having been sworn in. “That the first of many informed policy decisions I made as Senator,” he cracked.

And on his first night on the job he was asked to give a key-note speech to 3000 chartered accountants on “the tax code”, after all the others chosen to give the speech had cancelled at the last minute. “They kind of figured you would be free to do it,” he was told. When he protested that he knew nothing about the tax code, the response came: “well, you’re not going to get very far in politics with that attitude.” 

And so, a young Senator Mitchell delivered a speech on a subject he knew nothing about to some of the sharpest and most well-informed minds on it in the country – and that’s politics. And here he claims he is doing the same thing, talking about globalisation, but unaided by any notes, and as one of the global champions of many of the world’s most wide-ranging policies affecting globalisation, it’s clear this is modesty. In his final act as senator in 1994, the WTO’s last trade agreements were formed.

“But the vast majority of dislocation that happens to markets is not because of trade agreements but because of innovation,” he asserted. “The word (globalisation) has become a pejorative in itself in many respects. Expanded trade, too, does produce dislocation. While the advantages of globalisation are global, the disadvantages are local. 

“In Europe there were three major land wars with France and Germany as the main protagonists (in the twentieth century) – but in the past success of the Atlantic Alliance” this is now no longer a real possibility. “But today it’s  a nuclear  threat, and the number of terrorist organisations has expanded regularly, we face a growing competition for energy security,” he said.

“There is no act or policy which can deal with these issues at once – and just as we face new challenges that alliance has been under threat in the last years.

“That means we must be able to co-operate on military issues, but we must also be able to co-operate on non-military issues.” 

There are, he explained, different principles and circumstances that are relative to all – different religions and ideologies for example – but underpinning them all “there are economic problems.

“Without economic growth and the creation of opportunity there is no solution. The same is true in the middle east. Business leaders can be peace makers. There is nothing more important than opportunity in people’s lives.” 

It’s a point he is amply qualified to deliver, given his large corporate concerns at Disney, DLA Piper, and numerous other conglomerates. “You are not in business just for the profit of your shareholders – think instead of your role in creating jobs.”

 

Jobs

But what, I ask him, about all the blue-collar jobs going overseas? What kind of trade-off must a politician or business leader be prepared and willing to make at the expense of their own country to the betterment of other poorer ones? 

“We have to realistically recognise the enormous benefits while dealing with the disadvantages. We have to make it clear that it doesn’t mean turning back the clock and that this is not a unique situation – it’s not representative of trade agreements. We have to create skills and education to find employment that is more knowledge-based” and on a higher level. He concedes that this may mean less job security – but this is the global trend.

“Every society is filled with stories of people who achieve the pinnacle of success with no education – that will be rare in the 21^st century.” 

In every society, including our own, we have to see every benefit and disadvantage and weigh them up and within that, finding the opportunity, goes his argument.

“That’s the answer to the loss of jobs.” 

He gave an example, from Maine, his home state, where his mother worked in a textile mill all her life. At the time, there were 24, but now today there are none. Her children, he argues, were able to get into higher and more advantaged jobs through the education they received and the increasing growth of the economy in the US On balance, however, he doesn’t think this programme of education and transfer of skills has been done so effectively in the USA.

“The question is do we have the leadership, vision and determination to do it the right way. 

“The same is true in (drafting) economic policy – free-market economies require constant change; business agility is now essential to success. For someone of my age it’s almost unthinkable that GM could be close to collapse – but what works today might not be the right policy.”

In the next five to ten years, we must have “the willingness to accept and embrace change,” he said. He outlined the paradox between politics and business. “Political leaders are risk adverse … often it takes business leaders to make those changes.” 

Environment

How about, asked another member of the audience, environmental changes?

“It’s a profound issue affecting not just the quality of life but the issue of life itself,” he responded. 

“The reality for almost everyone in life” – in marriage, in raising children – “is we make the most important decisions based on less than scientific certainity.

“Is anyone here scientifically sure they married the right person? 

“Policy is made on less than scientific certainty – we have to be prepared to act on less than scientific certainty.”

For example, “we all know that at some point in history oil will be replaced by a new energy source – you can argue whether that’s in 50 - 500 years, but human ingenuity will have to find an answer. 

“The public in the U.S.is very hard to move – we have to arrive at a democratic consensus that the problem exists and then a democratic consensus on what has to be done.”

When senator Mitchell appealed to draft legislation dealing with oil and the environment, for nine years, the proposal was rejected; he couldn’t even get a hearing in congress. The President was against it, indeed, he said, everyone was against such legislation no matter how much he requested, pleased or begged. After a massive Exxon oil spill, within 90 days, the legislation was drafted and signed. 

“So it takes a significant and dramatic event” to draft this kind of legislation. “”The difficulty with global warming is that it’s slow”. Although it may not be scientifically certain, it’s pretty damn certain that the world is heating up due to polluting effects – and this should be enough to act now, he feels.

On energy security “the first thing we have to do is change our wasteful habit of consumption – one in eight barrels of oil is consumed on U.S. highways and we can’t continue like this. 

“We clearly can, must and will increase the fuel efficient standards of our vehicles. The Russians have plenty of gas and they will use that to pursue a number of objectives,” he added. “There are a number of long-range projects under research” – but first and foremost, there has to be the economic incentive for those in every type of business to seek alternatives.

And that point very well summarises Senator Mitchell’s point about policy – it is driven by economics, and without economic incentive, there is little sense in the policy. For a democrat, that's one hell of a statement.

Sound of Silence

One wonders just how neutral British media is upon glancing at the 'corrections and clarifications'  column in the Guardian last Friday:

In a Comment piece headed A storming send-off - but the silences show why he had to go, page 29, September 27, we said that Tony Blair's statement that a withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan would be "a craven act of surrender" was received by conference delegates in silence. That was not the case. As our "clapometer" recorded on page 6 of the same issue, the statement drew 11.44 seconds of applause.

As blog Harry's Place notes (via Instapundit):

Even if Freedland's (the journalist covering the event) hearing aid had malfunctioned for a full twelve seconds one might expect the reporter to have witnessed the massed palms of the delegates' left and right hands being brought together in the universal physical gesture of agreement and approval for the same amount of time.

Doing so, however, would have meant admitting that the view common among metropolitan journalists that Labour foreign policy is hugely unpopular with Party members isn't supported by the facts though.

Absolutely. It's almost an insult to the integrity of the paper to have this kind of 'oversight' under a corrections and clarifications byline. This is not just sloppy journalism, it betrays the fundamental law of news reporting - reporting the facts.

It is unfathomable that you could construe a twelve second round of applause into dead silence at such a key point in the speech without having some kind of agenda at play. And if something like that does happen to be a genuine error, then it doesn't say much for your reporting credentials.

All The News That's Fit To Debate

Another debate between the blogosphere and the main stream media (MSM) seems to be surging up again. These altercations centrally concern the validity of news put out by what the bloggers perceive as biased and sloppy press corps, acting on their own political agendas rather than with a geunine desire to report the facts.

It's a good thing for the press to have critics, just as it's a good thing for everyone to have them - after all, it is through criticism that we principally polish and progress our skills in whatever we do.  But when criticism becomes both argumentative and personal in nature, it often misses the point and ends up confusing an already complex issue rather than clarifying the issues which need to be addressed. It is with this in mind that we should approach this latest squabble.

Yesterday, Michelle Malkin reported that the Associated Press is now covering - five months later - the capture and detaining of press photographer Bilal Hussein by the U.S. military, whose work, she claimed in an August 12 post on her blog, has "raised serious, persistent questions about his relationship with terrorists in Iraq and whether his photos were/are staged in collusion with the enemy." It's quite a long and complex story so I'll boil it down: the allegation is that Hussein was working alongside terrorists in order to grab exclusive photos for Associated Press. Michelle Malkin's response to September 19's AP release on the story was that "it's spin time. The Associated (With Terrorists) Press is now waging a p.r. campaign against what it calls the "so-called blogosphere" over detained photographer Bilal Hussein." She went on; "After five months of stonewalling, the "so-called reporters" at AP finally reported what this blog reported on April 12--that Hussein had indeed been captured by the US military in a Ramadi apartment building where bomb-making materials were found...along with an alleged al Qaeda leader. Hussein reportedly tested positive for traces of explosives." Her big problem with AP was two-fold: why so late, and why the continued insinuous defence of their photographer rather than the acceptance that they got it wrong?

Then there's Brendan Nyhan. Mr. Nyhan was asked by American Prospect to write a column criticising the media. As he notes in yesterday's  homily, the idea struck him as rather odd given the U.S. media's bias towards the left and the fact that "the Prospect is a liberal magazine ... but I assumed they knew who they were hiring.  I was wrong." As he goes on to explain, he "slammed two liberal blogs for using an airline employee's suicide after 9/11 to take a cheap shot at President Bush." The piece he found question with, which appeared on the popular left wing blog Atrios, commented that "The American Airlines ticket agent who checked in Mohammed Atta on 9/11 later committed suicide - unlike the man in charge who, being briefed on the potential threat, told his briefer, "Okay, you’ve covered your ass." Mr. Nyhan's point was that this was the loss of a human life, and that the post was "politicizing a suicide". Regardless, pressure from left wing bloggers and letters of complaint to American Prospect prompted the editor to order the columnist to stick to criticising only right wing blogs, an offer Mr. Nyhan declined along with handing in his resignation.

These are two quite different, but nevertheless prescient examples of the emotions so prevalent in the debate over the blogosphere vs. the media. One concerns the reporting of hard facts, the other is about 'opinion journalism'. Nevertheless, both show a disappointing flavour of personal - rather than objective - attack which only undoes the real goal.

It's worth bearing in mind here first what the real goal in journalism is all about, be it opinion or fact: an honest and upfront package of news-delivery, in a format everyone can understand. On the first count then, Michelle Malkin has good reason to be angry: cooperating with terrorists in order to get an exclusive - and a staged exclusive at that - is at its best, ethically conspicuous. But due to her personalisation of the attack, her partisans are incentivised to go one further; they would have journalists make no ethical judgement calls at all. This is just counter-intuitive. Every profession which serves a crucial role to society, be it banking, medicine, law or journalism, involves at times making judgement calls based on a limited knowledge of the facts and which may turn out to
be for the worst, and by which by fat the bulk of which the professional has to go by is his or her own ethical assesment of the situation and the inherent trade-offs. It's not that Michelle Malkin is wrong to lambast AP for this fiasco (which admittedly they've dug themselves into) - her fine reporting skills do a justice to clarifying the facts in a complex situation, for sure. But by making her attacks so personal, and by bringing the blogosphere vs. media debate into the fray, she undoes much of the constructive work she has set out to achieve by beginning a whole new - and arguably less worthwhile - polemic.

And there's a vague sense of hypocracy in Michelle Malkin's criticism of the main stream media, too, for it was exactly there that she learned all the skills which have equiped her with the means to attack this story on her blog.

Wall Street Columnist and author Jeremy Wagstaff today writes on his blog, loose wire, "Media companies (itself shorthand for mass media) are no longer about content, and all about the medium. For the past 80 years the mass media has been about leveraging the technologies available to deliver standardized content over as large an area/population as possible. Now it’s about using the technologies available to enable as large a population as possible to swap their own content." This is disappointing to hear from a seasoned columnist, indeed. For, to continue with the example above, it is not the fact that Ms Malkin is writing this report on her blog that is the most important thing here, it is the fact that she is a good reporter with a strong sense for when something does not add up, and has the ability to deliver on it. Whether she publishes on her blog, in The New York Times, or in a fanzine is irrelevant - in other words, quite the contrary to what Mr. Wagstaff is saying, it is misleading to get side-tracked into a debate on medium, when content is what it's about.

The medium is changing, but this is nothing new. One hundred years ago most newspapers did not have pictures; now they do. So what? The act of news reporting and delivery is what the economics of journalism is about.

Here, Mr Nyhan's story is particularly disheartening news, for both the main stream press and for the blogosphere. For the media set, it is sad to see a logically valid and justifiable attack affect their strategy to criticise and seek the truth. What Mr. Nyhan was saying was completely defendable, after all: remark about how the flight attendant who let the terrorist responsible for one of the 9/11 attacks onboard committed suicide whereas President Bush did not is, whatever your view, politicising a suicide (i.e. making an inherently political point by using the example of a suicide). Atrios and left wing bloggers' criticism of the piece should have been water off a duck's back to the chiefs at American Prospect, but instead, they chose to withdraw and alter their original, admirable and truth-seeking strategy.

But it's also bad news for the blogosphere, more than anything because it shows one pivotal fault with bloggers: they are often unable to accept forms of criticism constructively or lightly. One of the strengths which news reporters are forced and trained to aquire early on is to accept and digest criticism in a way which can continue to improve their work, largely through having to re-work countless versions of the same piece until their editor is content (which in itself is rare). Those that do not acquire this skill don't stick around for long; it's usually as simple as that. If bloggers intend to become a widely-received outlet for news reporting, criticism and humility are qualities they mjust learn, and this story is a classic example of that. You can't always get it right - not as a trader, not as a doctor, not as a judge, and not as a journalist. Because of the intensely personality-driven nature of blogging, many bloggers become emotional about criticism that would be best received thoughtfully.

It is unclear exactly what the aim of bloggers who denounce the media is, too. Would they have us a society with multiple 'citizen journalists', all running around with their cell phone cameras and writing from their laptops in wireless internet cafes as and when they are on-site? I don't mean this derogatorally; after all, I write a blog, and I sometimes use it to report events which I think are interesting to others. But a world without newspapers, without magazines, without television would derive us of much of the rich cultural and linguistic development we have today and have had for centuries, for all these mediums provide one unified platform for their expression.

Certainly, the world is changing, and technology is bringing with it an empowering force to the individual. But the individual can still monitor, criticise and scrutinise the corporation and live in harmony with it. That's what the media, science, politics, the courts, and the democracy we have fought for are all about. Let that be the case, not the more violent alternative.

Where Media is More Trusted Than Government ...

Editor's Weblog reports on a poll conducted by Globescan, the BBC, Reuters and The Media Center which apparently "reveals that people around the world trust the media more than they trust their governments":

A recent international poll reveals that people around the world trust the media more than they trust their governments ... On average 61% said they trusted the media, compared to 52% who believed their government's explanations ... Trust in journalists was highest in Nigeria (88%, with 34% trusting the government), Indonesia (86% v 71%), India (82% v 66%) and Egypt (74%; government question not asked) ... Only in three countries did governments score higher than the media. In the US, 67% said they trusted the government compared with 59% prepared to put their trust in the media ... In the UK 51% trusted their government (media 47%) and in Germany 48% trusted officials (media 43%) ... The three other countries surveyed were Russia, South Korea and Brazil, where just 30% said they trusted the government version of events.

Upon closer analysis, it's difficult to see why Editor's Weblog are shouting so loudly about this one. Journalists usually love this kind of poll since it gives them perceived credibility where usually they only encounter ethical conspicuity, but look at the data of the poll closely and it reads almost like a satire. For a start, Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Egypt are hardly world centres of compassionate governence; indeed it would probably be hard in all these countries to find anyone more unpopular than the national government, since the populations have suffered decades of restrictions and supressions on issues of basic human rights or extremely corrupt and haphazard governence at the very least. The poll even admits that "the government question" was exempt in the case of Egypt.

Russia, South Korea and Brasil again are extremely dubious polling choices: democratic governments there are either only effective in an official capacity (in the case of Brasil) or relatively recently established (South Korea and Russia). So: in countries where most of the population has suffered or is still suffering the effects of brutal repression and corruption, journalists are more trusted than government ministers? On the other hand, in places where democracy has flourished to the prosperity of many, such as in the U.S.A. and the U.K., the reverse is true.

What does this say about the media?

May Day In Norway (in pictures)

A-list bloggers Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin and Bill Quick have been breathless in coverage today over protests by immigrants in the United States to coincide with the internationally celebrated (with varying degrees) May Day. CNN has a pretty good account of the extent of the strikes, which have made immigration once again the big issue in the Untied States:

The immigration debate has split Republicans as midterm elections approach. President Bush, taking pains to woo Latino voters to the GOP, has called for a guest-worker program and a way to legalize the status of people in the United States illegally. A bipartisan measure backed by Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, would include the proposals Bush has advanced. Critics have denounced any legalization plan as "amnesty" and vowed to oppose it.

The demonstrations have impacted organisations all over the country, most notably Tyson, which was forced to shut operations today as a result. Via Instapundit, this report  over at Pajamas Media exemplifies the extent of the strikes in L.A., which is always a point of contention:

With large crowds of illegal immigrants gathering at two locations in Los Angeles, extensive backroom planning to avoid offending U.S. citizens appeared to have failed: crowds are carrying about 60% Mexican flags, just 40% U.S. or other flags. KABC TalkRadio reported “there’s not a sign out there saying they want a ‘guest worker’ program — they all say they want full amnesty.”

Indeed, there is so much going on it's easy to forget May Day in other parts of the world! So what was happening elsewhere? Here in Oslo, Norway, the world capital of social democracies, demonstrations were startlingly socialist, even by U.K. and U.S. left-wing standards. What is more, the demonstrations here are a cultural thing: almost the entire city seemed to be involved in one way or another. What follows is a photographic account of today's parades in the city centre.

The European Merger

Santiago Iñiguez, dean of the Instituto de Empresa and blogger over at BizDeansTalk raises an interesting point this week about the potential marketing strategy for business schools in Europe as they face the challenge of competing against aggresive competition from American and Australian institutions:

In order to enhance the visibility of European higher education and to attract more foreign students there may be two alternative strategies. The first one is investing in the promotion of the generic brand, i.e. “Europe”. The second one is to promote the best brands in European education, i.e. those universities or business schools with worldwide recognition, in order to position European education with premium brands and high quality and hence support the generic brand. The latest Financial Times MBA Ranking, listing the leading b-schools in Europe, has done more for European management education than many other marketing campaigns promoting European management. Given the fragmentation of European higher education I would recommend the second strategy to EU marketing officers.

The situation described above is one that many institutions in Europe face, from tourism to real estate to financial services, and is inherent in the problem of combining the many disparate micro-climates  which constitute the continent's one brand: "Europe". Indeed, the current situation is not unlike that of a post-merger scenario, where many different dominant brands, all posessing their own unique cultures and alliances and loyalties, scramble to promote themselves and their superior benefits over one another's at the expense of the organisation as a whole.

Professor Iñiguez is right, of course: it makes more sense to pick six or seven of the largest, most prestigious business schools in Europe and actively promote them as Europe's point of call for business education, making the assumption that the other institutions will benefit from the increase in applicants to the region, but in order for that to happen, it requires that those institutions which do not make the list don't try and 'undercut' the system and aggresively promote themselves around the status quo. For the first scenario, that of "investing in the promotion of (the) generic brand ... Europe" is the only viable option which European legislators have found available today by default of lack of cooperation between countries and institutions within the  EU: most European business schools, for example,  have an open statement of intent to become "Europe's largest/biggest/most powerful b-school".

Such aggresive self-promotion on the part of the individual brands leaves potential customers confused as to what actually is "the best", and instead the brightest candidates (in many cases even those whose initial preference was to live and study on the European continent), in the case of business schools, end up going to Harvard or Stamford: at least there they are assured of quality. What Professor Iñiguez proposes - that Europe concentrate its marketing of business schools to focus around a favoured few - requires those that are less than brilliant right now to take a back seat and cooperate. This is much easier said than done in a climate where ultimately, you are talking about sixteen countries which don't even share the same common language.

The answer, I suspect, lies where many Europeans are now scared to tread; in the re-formation of empirical elitist governing bodies such as the Ivy League institution in the United States. The concept is painfully familiar in European history but contrary to the mission of left-wing Brussels politicos , for more than anything else Brussels is bent on equality. Equality, however, comes at an ironic price, as most Europeans have found in demise of the quality of everything from the food they now purchase in supermarkets (tailored to specific sizes and colours at the expense of taste) to living standards (real estate has appreciated phenomenally in most major European cities and towns with the introduction of a single currency forcing many once comfortable Europeans to adopt a culturally deplete suburban lifestyle where one was previously not required). 

If EU legislators, participant institutions and organisations are to make the most of the single brand, there's going to have to be more give-and-take from those that are not really where they claim to be right now, and that means, in come cases, putting political ideals and personal aspirations on hold for while.

Changeover in the Ukraine

The end of the controversial Yushchenko? From the Financial Times:

Ukraine’s president Viktor Yushchenko looked set for a humiliating defeat after Sunday’s parliamentary elections ... exit polls suggested Yulia Tymoshenko, his former ally in the Orange Revolution, and Viktor Yanukovich, his opponent in the disputed 2004 presidential poll had beaten Mr Yushchenko into third place.

A Tymoshenko leadership would be a great thing for the Ukraine, and a great thing for Eastern European democracy.

More Information From Iraq

From Right Voices:

So, the MSM is slowly picking up on the historic release of thousands of documents from Saddam Hussein’s archives. But not without making a concerted effort to downplay and undermine the story.

Read the whole thing here.

Agendas in Iraq

So Sadam was storing WMD and plans for global warfare:

The War On Terror: The government is finally getting around to unloading some of Saddam Hussein's secret documents. A look at just a few pages already leads to some blockbuster revelations.

In the early stages of the war that began three years ago, the U.S. captured thousands of documents from Saddam and his spy agency, the Mukhabarat. It's been widely thought the documents could shed light on why Saddam behaved as he did and how much of a threat his evil regime represented.

Yet, until this week, the documents lay molding in boxes in a government warehouse. Now the first batch is out, and though few in number, they're loaded with information.

Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters.

... but as Glenn Reynolds reports, do not expect to see this written up in the main stream media any time soon: agendas, after all, run higher on a scale of importance than facts. Part of the problem is now that big media and global goverance have invested so much in the claims that the war on Iraq was declared on bogus information,  any indications to the contrary can hardly be reported and debated accurately without making them seem hypocritical, or at worst, downright wrong in their initial assumptions. Just to make matters worse, those who have been claiming that there only agenda is the truth, have by and large been clothing an anti-war stance.

What is needed now is classicly, not a pro-war agenda, and not an anti-war agenda: the war in Iraq has happened, after all: we need someone in a position of influence and power with no agenda at all.

China: The Socio-Political Melting Pot

From Foreign Policy, a curious but relevant piece about the growing disproportion of males in China:

Back in 1990, Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen was one of the first to call attention to the phenomenon of an estimated 100 million “missing women” in Asia. Nearly everywhere else, women outnumber men, in Europe by 7 percent, and in North America by 3.4 percent. Concern now is shifting to the boys for whom these missing females might have provided mates as they reach the age that Shakespeare described as nothing but stealing and fighting and “getting of wenches with child.”

Now there are too few wenches. Thanks in large part to the introduction of the ultrasound machine, Mother Nature’s usual preference for about 105 males to 100 females has grown to around 120 male births for every 100 female births in China. The imbalance is even higher in some locales—136 males to 100 females on the island of Hainan, an increasingly prosperous tourist resort, and 135 males to 100 females in central China’s Hubei Province.

This is not the only way in which China is unique from a geopolitical standpoint: in other prescient forms too, the country is perhaps the largest scale social experiment in human history.

Many recent credible psychological research reports today imply that both lack of siblings and disproportionate amounts of capital availability create a degree of narcissism and self-absorbtion unseen in the traditional post-war era style families where there was little to feed many. Indeed, exactly these two factors are also believed to account for the explosion in popularity of psychiatry, self-help, and other such personally-oriented treatments and practices.

When one takes into consideration the single-child policy that has spawned millions of children without siblings, alongside the fact that the country has received an enormous injection of capital over such a short period in time (and hence Generation Y children and below who are disproportionately wealthier than any of their ancestors have ever been), China looks like no less than a whole socio-political hot-pot of unknown consequences waiting to spring up and surprise the world.

More Of The Lowest Punditry

Reading Daily Pundit is sort of like reading The National Enquirer - addictive if only for the unbelievably, shockingly sloppy reasoning behind gross political outbursts.

Here’s one such example from today. Quote:

The US Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, warned that China’s steady military and economic expansion may ultimately lead to Beijing attaining superpower status on a par with the United States.

"Globalization is causing a shift of momentum and energy to greater Asia, where China has steadily expanding reach and may become a peer competitor to the United States at some point,” Negroponte said at a hearing of the US Senate Armed Services Committee on global security threats."

The Daily Pundit opines in response to this:

As long as it is a communist tyranny, China will never attain true superpower status. The old USSR never did. At base, the soviet commies were a third world country bankrupting itself to pay for a nuclear arsenal and a huge army.

There are several things I find odd about this.

First, I wonder: has the author ever even been to China? This is not a rhetorical question, neither is it one designed to provoke, but it strikes me as somewhat naive to assume one can declare a country that has given the world much of the cultural richness we enjoy today (not to mention many of the heavily discounted goods and hence savings we also enjoy) as a “communist tyranny” if one has never seen it for oneself.

Secondly, stating that a country cannot become a “superpower” because it adheres to a particular political model smacks of an ignorance of macroeconomic understanding: superpower staus is achieved in large part by the level of currency reserves a particular country’s economy has - seeing as many of China’s are currently propping up the gross U.S. deficit, it is a slighly bizzare statement.

A Republican Apology For Iraq

RJ Elliot from Blog Critics offers an apology over Iraq:

"Bush, and his supporters (myself included), had the best of intentions. We were going to topple a cruel dictator and bring democracy and freedom to a land and a people that had been brutalized and oppressed for decades. We were going to help the Iraqi people, by golly, and all we asked for in terms of repayment was their gratitude.

"What to do from here? I don't know. All I know is this: It Didn't Work.

"Sorry..."

I sympathise. If only more people in politics were demonstrating such humility right now, some credibility might be restored back at the White House. You don't have to go as far as saying you're wrong, but saying sorry never hurts: something the political PR have still to learn.

Jersulam's Verdict On Foreign Affairs

The Jerusalem Post on modern International Relations:

"If the US wants to deal effectively with anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world, for instance, the question of political boundaries is less significant than that of regional and cultural ones. More important, placing the dialogue between America and the world in the hands of the leaders now seems to be an archaic practice that lacks effectiveness. In dealing with the Arab world, it makes much more sense for American diplomats - whether in Riyadh, Cairo or Baghdad - to talk directly to the people, not to their leaders or politicians."

For the strength of relationship that the United States and the U.K. have with Israel, she is not called upon nearly enough for council when it comes to solving the problems of the Middle East. Israel is perfectly placed - geographically, culturally, and politically - perhaps not to communicate the message of the west to the Arab world, but at least to understand the region's potential reaction to it and advise accordingly out of that.

The Admirable Stance of Los Angeles

The L.A. Times today on the ownership of American ports by Dubai Ports World, a U.A.E.-based company:

"WHEN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TAKE homeland security seriously, it's a welcome development. Unfortunately, Tuesday's bipartisan hissy fit over the Bush administration's approval of a Dubai company's $6.8-billion deal to manage six important U.S. ports is neither serious nor welcome.

"... The problem is that blocking the Dubai deal wouldn't do a thing to change any of that. It only provides members of Congress an opportunity to talk tough and pander to the terrorism-rattled xenophobe in us all."

This is the first and only really sensible, imformed opinion piece I have yet read coming out of the United States on the Dubai Ports issue. Most of them, typically enough, show little understanding of the region and the economies of the U.A.E. like this one.

Bureaucratic Demands

Google's response to the U. S. Department of Justice demanding disclosure of two full months’ worth of search queries that the company received from its users, as well as all the URLs in Google’s index:

"Google is, of course, concerned about the availability of materials harmful to minors on the Internet, but that shared concern does not render the Government's request acceptable or relevant. In truth, the data demanded tells the Government absolutely nothing about either filters or the effectiveness of laws. Nor will the data tell the Government whether a given search would return any particular URL. Nor will the URL returned, by its name alone, tell the Government whether that URL was a site that contained material harmful to minors.

"But, the Government's request would tell the world much about Google's trade secrets and proprietary systems."

This response exemlifies all the types of things government departments get wrong when they issue subpoenas towards institutions that operate in technical niche industries. By being so general in stating the reasons why they need the subpoena, government ministers play into the hands of the employees who spend twenty hour days and six day weeks operating the intricacies of the industry.

The same thing has happened a number of time in obscure areas of the financial markets: bureaucratic departments bark out demands which highly-paid quantitive employees of the banks cooly refute, phrase by phrase, until it is legally irrefutable that any of those demands be met.

High On Punditry, Low On Accuracy

The Daily Pundit on David Irving in Austria:

"... the fact that one can be jailed in Europe for speaking or writing unpopular or even incorrect information only goes to demonstrate how far Europe has fallen from once-lofty ideals of liberty, and what a sinkhole of politically correct depravity it has become today.

"It's a truism because it is true: if unpopular views enjoy no rights to free expression, no views do. The right does not exist, or, rather, it exists, but is ignored."

This shows such enormous cultural, political and historical naivty it is amazing to think it was written by Bill T. Quick, the Publisher and Editor of one of the America's most popular weblogs.

Europe has never claimed to have posessed "lofty ideals of liberty": she has a predominantly social democratic ideology but this is something quite separate. Ideals of liberty are on the other hand very American obsessions, primarily due to the fact that they are imperative in a nation that is so racially diverse - and thus implicitly politically divided - and which posesses a written constitution.

Political correctness has come to Europe, and continues to do so, via the United States, and is  distinctly un-European. The reason Austria has a law forbidding holocaust denail is not because of any kind of potential political impropriety - it is because the country has suffered from repeated denials of this very kind since 1945 by a not inconsiderable contingency of neo-Nazis: the law is in place to stop a repetition of the dreadful events that led to the Auschwitz and mass-persecution of its people and the Jews. In addition to this, only eight of the twenty-five EU member states have a law in place pertaining to holocaust denial. One is by all means welcome to speculate on the severity of Irving's punishment, but all this hardly makes Europe a "sinkhole of politically correct depravity" given the context.

Talking of rights is all very well too, but it wasn't as if Irving was'nt aware of his rights when he gave the talk in Austria in 1989. Analysis like Quick's is just plain misleading and misinformative.

Superpower Whining

Here is an interesting piece about an editor in China taking advantage of the internet, picked up this morning from the Washington Post by Hugh Hewitt and Instapundit.

Hewitt's claim that "The Party ought to require every member read "An Army of David's" (Reynolds of Instapundit's new book) is just childish however. America - even left wing America - has been on nothing short of a rampage over Beijing since Google decided to self-censor in entering the market: they ought to read this article that appeared on The Global Perspective this week instead and think again.

Constant bickering won't change the Chinese political landscape, but some initial co-operation might well do.

More European Resolutions

The EU has a habit of passing knee-jerk legislative orders as a reaction to crises. The European Parliament have this week adopted a resolution stating that "freedom of expression should always be excercised with responsibility and with respect for human rights, religious feelings and beliefs", according to an announcement on Editors Weblog.

This is another classic European resolution: well-meaning, but almost impossible to effectively legislate as is so heavily contingent upon the perception of the party interpreting how far "with respect for" is actually taken. Jilliandsposten, for example, would have presumably contravened that resolution by European standards in the strictest sense by the publication of the recent offending cartoons, yet the likelihood of the newspaper being prosecuted in an official European trial is negligable. The new resolution also gives the misleading impression that the outrage expressed by Moslems the world over and the subsequent pro-Danish campaigns that stemmed out of them was created as a result of lack of respect for another party's spiritual and political feelings, when in effect it was more down to the lack of understanding on either side's part of the issues being presented.

Passing resolutions pertaining to people's rights is all very well, but one can't help but feel that more time spent by members of the European Parliament working on ways to implement cultural education on a wider scale in the continent might not be a rather more productive use of time.

Smoking Can Kill But Non Smoking Policies Can Kill Business

Pundit David Aaronovitch speculates today on the smoking ban in the U.K.; "The smoking decision has the same kind of feeling about it as the hunting business," he writes on his Times Online weblog. "Despite the obvious and predictable stuff about nanny governments (ironic, since this wasn't a decision that the government originally wanted), it is something else - another consequence of social change."

Aaronovitch hits the nail on the head in pointing to "social change" as the momentum behind the bn on smoking in public places, though with that in mind it's not difficult to see another E.U. debate coming on.

Since social trends develop as a result of the cultures that embody them, one of the central difficulties with implementing standardised policy over the region for European policymakers so far has been reconciling political consensus in what ultimately amount to vastly different cultures with equally opposing ideas on what is worthwhile and what is not. Smoking is, at its deepest level, a cultural phenomenon, embraced more by some than by others. What makes Britain's ban so interesting is that - unlike Greece or Sweden (two European countries with vastly different but ultimately crystal clear perceptions over the benefits of the habit) and so much of Europe - there is no clear national consensus on what should have been done. One half of the culture is preoccupied by government intervention over what even non-smokers perceive as a basic human right (as Aaronovitch puts it, over the 'nanny state governments'), while the other has firmly made up its mind that smoking is an antisocial and insinuating form of drug abuse.

A good friend of mine who owns a bar in the south of Spain recently told me on a visit here to Oslo how refreshing it was to walk into a bar and not breathe in any passive smoke, while complaining about the health hazard of his profession back home (smoking indoors in public places in Norway has been strictly forbidden for some time now). He went on to explain to that even though the town had passed a mandate permitting the owner of the establishment to choose whether he or she permitted smoking or not, the law was in effect pointless, since if you didn't let people smoke inside your bar you wouldn't get any customers, either.

European legislators face even tougher calls of this kind with the host of new countries - and as a result, cultures - scheduled to join the Union over the next decade. Not for the first time it appears that a crucial factor in the long term viability of the E.U. will be in its ability to peacefully transit what on the surface of it seem like superficial social trends, but in reality effect consumer behaviour and economic prosperity of real business models.

More on China

This article by John Louis Swaine (of the notorious Swaine family in Hong Kong) is probably the best summary I have so far found of the problems Beijing is facing with Hong Kong in trying to manage the two very opposite political ideologies.

In short:

"Universal Suffrage is a basic human right.

"Why are China so intransigent on this matter? It’s because they have no other choice.

"If they had let Patten’s political reforms continue in Hong Kong post 1997 they would have probably been able to salvage the 1 country 2 systems principle. Hong Kong would have probably been democratically sound by now and China could at least stem the proliferation of Democracy. They could point to Hong Kong and say, ‘they’re different, that’s why they’re treated different’.

"But they didn’t. They treated Hong Kong like another provincial township and basically put it in the same basket as every soiled, downtrodden, urban Chinese city. The message has been clear - You’re a part of China, you’re the same as every other province in the People’s Republic, there’s nothing particularly special about Hong Kong which would allow it the right to Universal Suffrage.

"So when eventually Universal Suffrage does come, the mainland towns might just raise an eyebrow. China has swept any differences between Hong Kong and Shenzen under the carpet, so if Democracy is good enough for Hong Kong why isn’t it good enough for Shenzen?"

Trading Weapons Is Just Like Trading Corn

Omar, a writer at the controversial war-scenario weblog “Iraq the model” today picks up on an article written by Abid Battat in Azzaman titled “Weapons smuggling booms in southern Qurna”, about a contraband trade mafia working in arms dealing in the small town, seventy-four kilometres northwest of the city of Basra.

“I've been to Qurna many times during my internship in the northern suburbs of Bsara and I heard a lot from the locals about the huge weapon business in the area”, notes Omar. “Those weapons are certainly remnants of the Iraq-Iran war. Says who? Says the dealers themselves … (except) some former military personnel think that's not the case.” Omar concludes: “So the question is, if those were weapons sent by Iran to the militias to help them carry out attacks on coalition forces like many of us already think, why would the militias sell the weapons? The only explanation I can find is that Iran is sending enough weapons and munitions to the extent that the militias can feel well armed and at the same time make some good bucks. (sic)”

Wherever the weapons are coming from, the Unites States can expect much more of this type of headache in the process of rebuilding of Iraq, and if she is to learn the crucial lessons from September 2001, she would be well advised to take them seriously this time round. For one of the reasons that the Taliban were able to build up such an arsenal of ideological and military power was precisely because of neglectful U.S. foreign policy to the region: coupled with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., illegal weapons trading was ironically being greatly facilitated at exactly the same time as Washington was busy popping corks and celebrating the demise of its ideological communist competitor.

For the U.S. to implement effective regional stabilisation however, global consensus from in particular international political regulators such as the United Nations and anti-war governments is going to have to be given liberally. Such bodies will also have to exercise some degree of trust and patience, and not come down on the next Commander-in-Chief every time the U.S. steps in with counter-trafficking measures.

The approach stems from seeing the situation from an economic rather than from apolitical perspective. The trading of contraband goods is much the same as trading in any legal goods – if effective regulatory bodies are not put in place to oversee market activities, all hell tends to break loose, and you end up with a few monopolising mass-ownership of market share. In artillery parlance, this means that one very small undetected corner of Iraq – such as Qurna – may end up amassing a sizeable arsenal without being detected on any radar. The irony may well end up coming undone however, as the very parties who contested a war with Iraq prevent any supervision of this kind of black market dynamic, but it wouldn’t be the first time well-meaning peacemakers have shot themselves in the foot by the failure in all their best intentions to understand market dynamics.

All The News That's Fit To Study

National American journalist turned celebrity-blogger Michelle Malkin picks up on an article in The Boston Globe about how a conservative student newspaper at Harvard has become one of the first in the mainstream media to publish the Danish cartoons.

“A conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has become one of the few media outlets in the country to show inflammatory Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, angering students on campus and prompting a forum to discuss the controversy,” she reports. “The four cartoons appeared in the Feb. 8 issues of The Harvard Salient, a conservative, biweekly newspaper, under the headline, ‘A pox (err, jihad) on free expression.’ The student editors called the cartoons, including a sketch of Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban, “relatively innocuous.””

This is not the first time Harvard or indeed any educational institution is going to face tough ethical calls over the publication of the pictures that have caused so much violent outrage. One of the central problems for Islam academics now with the Moslem reaction is that it has made what might have otherwise been a fairly trivial bit of prejudicial humour a crucial, highly photographic demonstration of Middle Eastern outrage at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and as such has inadvertently earned the debacle – and the cartoons themselves – a place in History, Political Science, Ethics and numerous other disciplines.

The consequence is that the incident is going to be taught from now on in a whole host of subjects, and that the prohibited cartoons themselves become a crucial part of that teaching. This conundrum will leave many academics once again wondering just how to reconcile political and religious correctness with the accurate pedagogical representation of their disciplines.

No Nobel for Halverson

It’s not often Norwegian politics makes international headlines, so when it does, you know it has to be a big deal. The Left Wing Coalition government’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen’s recent assertions of support for her own party’s policy of adopting a trade embargo with Israel were no exception then, but they do raise questions as to the recently elected Norwegian government’s sophistication when it comes to international political affairs.

Norway traditionally has a fine international reputation as a global peace broker – from the famed Nobel Peace Prize to one of the few examples of social democracies that actually work, the country has never been one to much disrupt the waters in the fjords of the United Nations. Indeed, Norway is usually the ‘mature child’ of the pack, sedating United States and European conflicts with admirable reason, which is why it is so bizarre to see Halvorsen touting antiquated socialist rhetoric against the official stance of her government and the subsequent role reversal of Oslo and Washington.

Until September 12th last year, Norway was governed by a Right Wing coalition headed by the controversial “spin maestro” Kjell-Magne Bondevik , who brought about some considerable economic growth in the economy. Never being ones to let political stagnation set in however, the Norwegian public rejected Right Wing policies for a coalition between parties of various leftist ideologies at the Valg (election) last year. Halvorsen, as leader of the largest party on the far left, the Sosialistisk Venstreparti (SV), cut a deal with the leader of the slightly more centre of left Arbeiderpartiet (Worker’s Party) as finance minister by forming a crucial part of the coalition to bag last year’s top spot for government.

Conflicts of Interest

Predictably enough, as with all coalitions there have been some embarrassing examples of division in government, most of which have stemmed out of the SV’s camp. Before Halvorsen’s serious slip of the tongue, the young former Socialist Youth member Audun Lysbakken declared that he would have all stock exchanges abolished in the interests of equality, failing to see the fact that not only if this was implemented as actual policy would it cut seriously into welfare budgets as the government were forced to buy back all outstanding shares, but that stock exchanges are the most ancient forms of market equality around by giving everyone the chance to speculate and hold positions in companies and commodities that would otherwise only be available to a selected few.

Still in his twenties, one can write off Lysbakken’s mistake to rookie zealousness, but Kristin Halvorsen really should know better. Tension right now in the Middle East runs high enough for something as trivial as careless western internal political rivalry to potentially ruin present progress by the airing of controversial policies that Ministers never actually intend to implement in the first place. It would have been one thing had Halvorsen actually been suggesting a trade embargo on Israel as policy she was going to implement – but the comment was a slur, which she knew would never be taken seriously by the current coalition in the first place. Halvorsen’s shot-from-the-hip has led Primeminister Jens Stoltenberg into his only possible option – to retract the statement and declare Norway as a “friend of Israel”, in turn just upsetting the precariously fought balance the last government had tried so hard to fight for after evident pro-Palestinian sentiment displayed by the public several years ago.

Halvorsen also seriously misses the point in thinking an embargo will achieve any political outcome other than even more tension on the Gaza strip, for a quick consultation at any grade-school history book will tell her that embargos almost never achieve peace in themselves. Pro-Palestinian SV party members site South Africa as a successful embargo-related result, but the situation was entirely different: for one South Africa, as much as it was divided, was a single country, for another the dispute was racial rather than religious, eliminating the belief on either side of the warring parties that their opinions were justified by the divine truth of an almighty Deity.

Ironically, as much as Halvorsen has created disturbances within her own party, all of this is like a feather in the cap to White House PR corps, who have been faced with the seemingly impossible surmounting challenge of creating positive spin out of a wildly out-of-control civil war in Iraq and numerous Intelligence blunders, for the one area the Bush administration has unequivocally made constructive process in is the area of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since his first term Bush Jr. has made it clear to his Foreign Secretaries that he won’t stand for continuous appeasement of Israel at any cost, much to the chagrin of his advisors. The hard-line policy however has slowly begun to pay dividends – the difference was, unlike Halvorsen, Bush’s policy regime has been slow and calculated, rather than extreme and outright. At any rate, Halvorsen now leaves her ideological opposite the other side of the pond looking like the broker for democratic solution as all eyes turn further West to sort out the dilemma.

Kristin Halvorsen needs to think hard about her role as Finance Minister of the homeground of the Nobel Peace Prize and the wide-reaching implications that come with such responsibility, for this time, in putting personal political frustration in economics’ place – as with not a few political denizens before her – she has ended up potentially sacrificing the very lamb she has spent her career trying to rescue from the slaughter.