Category: Uncategorised

There’s much to be said for Johann Hari, whatever [uncertainties](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Johann_Hari#Challenges_to_his_credibility.2C_and_Hari.27s_responses) you may have about his reliability. He’s one of the few reliably left-liberal voices in the British media, and he’s an excellent writer. His long [piece on Dubai](http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html) in last week’s Independent deservedly ruffled a lot of feathers. In it, he describes the life of the labourers imported to build Dubai’s skyscrapers, kept without chance of escape in what amounts to slavery:

>Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

>Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

The reaction was immense, and consisted of that odd mix of “you’re making it up” and “that’s old news” which is generally a sure sign that you’ve hit a nerve.

But in the interests of not relying on Hari alone, here’s a somewhat similar [account of Dubai](http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2635), by [Planet of Slums](http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Slums-Mike-Davis/dp/1844671607/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239803062&sr=8-1) author Mike Davis:

>Dubai, like its neighbours, flouts ILO labour regulations and refuses to adopt the international Migrant Workers Convention. Human Rights Watch in 2003 accused the Emirates of building prosperity on ‘forced labour’. Indeed, as the Independent recently emphasized, ‘the labour market closely resembles the old indentured labour system brought to Dubai by its former colonial master, the British.’ ‘Like their impoverished forefathers’, the London paper continued, ‘today’s Asian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery for years when they arrive in the United Arab Emirates. Their rights disappear at the airport where recruitment agents confiscate their passports and visas to control them.’

Back to Hari for the last word:

>Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

In Georgia, the [protests](http://ohuiginn.net/mt/2009/04/georgia_protests_friday.html) continue: [small rallies](http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11123&Itemid=133), alongside attempts to blockade the streets outside parliament and other official buildings. Day in, day out, there are still several thousand people involved in the protests, an impressive show of strength.

The problem is the leadership; as [Paul Rimple](http://tbilisiblues.blogspot.com/2009/04/salome-ii-pure-genius.html) writes:

>I’d really like to sympathize with the opposition, but these people must understand what a grave responsibility they bear when talking to thousands of tired and angry people. If you are a leader, people depend on you to guide them. If you don’t know what you are leading them towards you have no reason to be sitting in the chair.

They have genuine grievances. Problem is, they won’t allow any avenue to resolve them, short of toppling the government. They’ve rejected out of hand suggestions of directly elected mayors, and of a coalition government. They aren’t putting forward demands of their own, except for the unachievable one of complete power.

And if, somehow, they did manage to oust Saakashvili? The new president would instantly be beseiged by the same crowd of disaffected politicos, and there’s no reason to expect any better behaviour from the protest leaders than from Saakashvili. My instinct is usually to support protesters, but in this debacle I don’t see much to admire anywhere.

By the way, [here](http://kosmyryk.typepad.com/) are [some](http://caucasusreports.wordpress.com/) [blogs](http://tbilisiblues.blogspot.com/) following the protests.


ETA

: Judging by the [Global Voices roundup](http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/04/14/concerns-emerge-over-protest/), more or less every other blog has the same view. Doesn’t mean we’re right, of course.

[warning: a mainly-for-my-own-benefit big-list-of-links post]

Despite the left’s [general](http://ohuiginn.net/mt/2009/04/german_left.html) [crapness](http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/07/what-is-the-lefts-approach-to-the-financial-crisis/) in responding to the economic crisis, they must have _some_ ideas, somewhere. I just can’t find them. The obvious solution – ploughing through a big pile of documents, and hoping to find something insightful buried within it. Here’s the pile – makeshift, incomplete, and poorly-arranged, likely to grow and mutate over time, but (hopefully) containing something worthwhile. My [delicious](http://delicious.com/perspectivelute/gfc) has even less-sorted links. Categories are very vague.

From the left

* [Mat Taibbi](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print) in _Rolling Stone_

* [The crash – a view from the left](http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/crash.html), a collection of articles co-edited by Jon Cruddas. [Direct link to pdf](http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/crash.html)

* [Rowenna Davis’ LC post](http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/07/what-is-the-lefts-approach-to-the-financial-crisis/#comments) bemoaning the lack of action on the left

* Fabians: [pamphlet on green economics](http://fabians.org.uk/publications/publications-news/cheap-energy-harman-independent), [speech by Sunder Katwala](http://www.fabians.org.uk/general-news/general-news/katwala-finance-downturn-risks), [focus-grouped views on bonuses &c](http://www.fabians.org.uk/images/stories/Fabian_Review_Winter_Fabian_Essay.pdf)

* ATTAC: [new docs from France](http://www.france.attac.org/spip.php?page=nouveautes)

* [Casino Crash](http://casinocrash.org/): “Critical thinking on the financial and economic crisis”

* Prospect: [After Capitalism](http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10680)

* The Nation: [Reimagining Socialism](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/ehrenreich_fletcher?rel=hp_picks)

* Demos: [Lessons from the global financial crisis](http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/aftertheapocalypse)

* IPPR: [Towards an accountable capitalism](http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=652), [commentary on the G20](http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=655), and (getting tenuous now) [green jobs](http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=658)

* [Amartya Sen](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22490) on ‘Capitalism Beyond the Crisis’

* [The quiet coup](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice) – Atlantic article on the IMF, by Simon Johnson of baseline scenario

From the centre

* [Planet Money](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/), a blog and tri-weekly (?) podcast from NPR. The team also made an [hour-long introduction](http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242)

* [Obama’s latest speech](http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=04&year=2009&base_name=obamas_speech_1) on the economy, giving an overview of what he’s been up to

* [The Turner Review](http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Corporate/turner/index.shtml). [Guardian summary](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/18/banking-regulators). [Direct pdf link](http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/other/turner_review.pdf)

* G20 London summit: [Communiqué](http://www.londonsummit.gov.uk/en/summit-aims/summit-communique/), [official site](http://www.londonsummit.gov.uk/en/), [unofficial information collection](http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/g20/)

* Esprit issues devoted to the financial crisis, [November](http://www.eurozine.com/journals/esprit/issue/2008-11-10.html) and [December](http://www.eurozine.com/journals/esprit/issue/2008-12-11.html)

* Economics blogs/pundits: [Paul Krugman](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/), [Tyler Cowen](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/), [Brad DeLong](http://delong.typepad.com/), [The Baseline Scenario](http://baselinescenario.com/), FT [Economists’ Forum](http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/), [Nouriel Roubini](http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini), [naked capitalism](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/)

Books

* Max Otte’s book [Der Crash kommt](http://www.amazon.de/Crash-kommt-Max-Otte/dp/3430200016) has been hanging around on German bestseller lists for months. But I haven’t seen it mentioned in the English-speaking world, and there doesn’t seem even to be an English translation

* Charles Morris, the trillion dollar meltdown

* Robert Shiller, [the subprime solution](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8714.html)

* Nassim Taleb, [The Black Swan](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/04/nassim_talebs_t.html)

* Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes. [First Chapter](http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/46/04714671/0471467146.pdf)

* Friedman, The great contraction. [First Chapter](http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8754.html)

* [Books listed in the Turner Review](http://labourandcapital.blogspot.com/2009/03/fsa-reading-list.html)

* Martin Wolf’s book [Fixing global finance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Global_Finance)

Bulgarian anthropologist Ivaylo Ditchev has some interesting articles up at Eurozine. He’s good on migrant workers; he’s downright brilliant when justifying my prejudices against home ownership.

As in the rest of the country, nine out of ten people in Sofia own the home they live in (unlike in the former GDR, for example, home ownership in Bulgaria was as high during communism as it is today). A similar proportion consider it self-evident to keep the same flat for life and see their children inherit it; to sell property is considered somehow to be an evil.

The real-estate market, abolished under communism in 1948, has been slow to come into motion. People find excuses not to sell: they waited for prices to go up first with Nato accession (2004), then with EU accession (2007). Well, prices did go up, but there was no property boom. Typically, elderly persons would live in extreme poverty, turning off the central heating in all but the bedroom, and obstinately refusing to sell their bigger flat and buy a smaller one.

This means that even after 15 years of “transition”, the spatial expression of new social inequalities has been slow to take shape. In the same block of flats, one finds growing differences in income, culture, and expectations; rarely is it possible to convince all owners to pay for the re-plastering of the façade (making much of the city look as if it had been subject to air raids). From the outside, it is possible to single out the rich owner who has covered his floor with a strip of brand-new stucco; it is said that burglars identify their targets according to the estimated price of the window frames.

The British and American faith in home ownership as a free-market idol confuses me. In personal terms, investing 300% of your wealth in one asset seems like dubious personal finance. In market terms, apartment blocks are like enclosures: more efficient than strip farming, and they free the serfs to seek their fortune in another city.

Seems to me, Britain isn’t far from Bulgaria on this. Some of the reasons for owning homes are exactly comparable: faith in ever-rising prices, and the desire to pass on a family home through the generations, despite the low likelihood of your children wanting to live in the same place.

Most of our other reasons are historical, cultural and social, conservative rather than pro-market. Renting meant government ownership, hence unresponsive management. It also often meant blocks of flats, hence New Brutalist concrete, product of cheap postwar reconstruction and a bone-headed architectural fad. Thatcher’s sale of council homes was a way to turn the richer workers into loyal Conservative voters. Pillaging public assets to subsidise this, she made buying into a genuinely good deal for anybody rich enough to afford it. Since then, we’ve convinced ourselves that house prices always rise, so anybody who rents is either a fool, or too poor to get rich. Plus, there’s that unpleasant “Englishman’s home is his castle” thing.

Despite this, we talk about home ownership primarily in economic terms. Why?

[John Gray](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22556) likes Margaret Atwood’s new (non-fiction) book on debt:

Atwood’s project is to show how human thought has been deeply shaped by notions of debt. It will be objected that she is merely spinning out an extended metaphor suggesting analogies between debt and noneconomic phenomena that are only vaguely analogous. In fact she is advancing the contrary and more interesting claim that economic activities involving borrowing and lending are metaphorical extensions of an underlying human sense of indebtedness. Beliefs about debt are not shadows cast by processes of market exchange. They are presupposed throughout much of human activity. Economic life invokes a sense of order in human affairs, widely dispersed throughout society.

The [weakness](http://ohuiginn.net/mt/2009/04/market_socialism.html) of the left’s response to the financial crisis is also noticeable here in Germany. Left-wing parties are somehow managing to

lose

popularity, even as capitalism collapses around them. Even Attac — the group campaigning for a [Tobin Tax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax), and generally among the better-informed critics of unfettered free markets — have failed to make a dent in the debate. [Der Spiegel](http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,618304,00.html) nails one reason – the left’s certainty of itself, regardless of the rest of the world:

>Those who know they are always right can deal less with a specific moment than with their principles. So they miss the forward-pass from history, the breath of the moment.

>Thus the clear weakness of the left is not least their inability to react adequately to this unique historical moment, which is for many as confusing as it is threatening.

>That has always been the power of a successful protest movement: vocalising the situation in order to change it. Tangibly, surprisingly. It happened in 1968. It happened in the 1970s, with the environmental and anti-nuclear movements. It happened in 1989, as the wall fell. Always the expression of suppressed or displaced feelings played a decisive role – wit, verve, impudence, passion and a touch of genius, brought together for a ‘concrete utopia’ [all very loosely translated]

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zoe

I’ve just noticed the main section headings at the top of the Guardian website:

    * UK
    * World
    * United States
    ...

yes, the US gets its own section rather than being crammed in with the rest of the ‘world’. There’s no separate top-level section for Europe.

I wonder if it’s because they get a lot of USian readers online, or because nobody has yet managed to get the British interested in Europe.

Tyler Cowen, of [Marginal Revolution](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/) has an [excellent article](http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=517090) arguing that the United States, despite being the epicentre of the financial crisis, will probably survive it better than many other countries:

>Its size is one reason why the United States has such a robust polity and economy. In bad times, international cooperation tends to break down, which increases the relative influence of larger economic and political units. Smaller countries, such as Belgium, are generally more dependent on international trade than the United States. And in truly dire situations, military power counts for more—and the United States accounts for almost half of the world’s defense spending.

Going by these reasons (Tyler has others which don’t apply), you might think Russia is also in a good position. Small CIS countries which had gambled on free markets — Georgia, Estonia — will end up in hard times as falling demand cuts them off from foreign markets, while the Russian military has not lost its ability to dominate them. Russia, its stock market relatively insignificant, is also insulated from the financial downturn, except insofar as it affects energy prices. Hardline Russia-fearers such as [Edward “New Cold War” Lucas](http://edwardlucas.blogspot.com/) will still be able to terrify us with tales of Kremlin power-games in the coming years.

I generally buy that narrative. But in the other side of the balance is the hint that [Russia will continue to be a whipping-boy](http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insightb/articles/eav040809a.shtml) for its neighbours:

>As its economy sinks and social tensions portend a summer of discontent, several mass media outlets in Tajikistan are busy identifying culprits for the Central Asian nation’s problems. By all appearances, the chief scapegoat is shaping up to be Russia. Local newspapers recently have blamed the Kremlin for everything from stoking the 1992-97 civil war in Tajikistan to drug trafficking, economic woes and even a possible future coup d’etat

I wouldn’t suggest this as marking a larger trend, given that Europe and the EU are equally plausible scapegoats for Central Asia. But if economic hardship encourages xenophobia (and it often does) then the easiest targets are expatriate workers. In Central Asia, that mainly means Russians, and to a lesser extent Chinese. They could well find themselves in awkward position, even if Russia turns out to be, like the US, a ‘counter-cyclical asset’.

Sarkozy is feeling [helpless]() about the current French fad of workers holding their bosses hostage as part of protests:

>”What’s this about holding people captive? We have the rule of law in this country. I will not let such things happen,” Sarkozy told a group of entrepreneurs on Tuesday.

>The same day, workers at a British-owned plant detained four managers, including three Britons, and held them overnight.

This is the same Sarkozy who first gained national attention by personally wading in to rescue hostages. Perhaps he should put together a personal SWAT team and embark on a ‘save capitalists’ tour of the country.

Apparently 45% of the French consider kidnapping an acceptable tactic in workers’ disputes. I kind of agree, as long as it’s on the level of ‘inconvenience the boss for a couple of days’, rather than ‘lock somebody in a cell for years, and demand ransom’. But perhaps I should learn to keep my petulant side in check.