The Global Perspective - Market Leading Commentary On The World Economy

Sign Of The Times

Mostly, I'm pro words over pretty pictures. This however, points out well how out of touch the McCain campaign (and Sarah Palin in particular) is with current events:

Understandably, most Americans just don't care about terrorism right now - and neither does the world. (For the record, I do not care for "terror-talk" much, either, but I never have done). They want a leader -- any leader -- who can show some kind of firm grasp on economic affairs.

There are more of these cartoons over at Cagle

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.