News and Analysis: 8-12 Feb 10 | EmergingFrontierMarkets.com

Based in: Manila, Philippines

Posted on Fri, 12 Feb 10:

Gaza flowers in Europe again as Israel eases closures: For the 1st time since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in the territory in June '07, Gaza's flower and strawberry farmers may be able to export most of their produce to Europe w/ help from the Netherlands, Ag. France-Presse (courtesy Zawya/ U Arab Emir.), 20 Jan 10 (National/ UAE--Israel eases ban on Gaza's strawberry exports | Columbia Reports--Flower sales blossom in time for Valentine's Day | Colombia will export 500 mil. flowers for V-Day)

Tax for development: Making tax systems work is easier said than done. Forget about tax rates or tranches, poor nations often quite simply lack the resources and capacity to build effective tax-collection systems. Attitudes have to be changed. Ordinary people may be unwilling to pay tax, frequently reflecting an accurate perception that officials themselves may be corrupt, and that govts consistently misuse public funds. Elites are equally hard to tax and may be able to use havens or evade taxation. It is also difficult to collect tax from low-income, agrarian economies with large informal sectors or to avoid coercion to raise those taxes by local officials, OECD Observer, 28 Jan 10

Posted on Thu, 11 Feb 10:

Hall of Fame: Madiba had final meal, then walked to freedom--20 years ago today, Nelson Mandela got up at 4:30am. He had slept for only a few hours. He cut short his usual exercise routine, bathed and then had breakfast...Then it was time. The small motorcade left the cottage. Not far from the gate, Winnie and Mandela got out of the car to walk towards freedom out of the prison gate. Today - 11 Feb 2010 - finds Mandela at 91, and in relatively good health. He is retired now and rarely indulges the public's hunger to still see him in the spotlight, Independent/ SAfrica, 11 Feb 10

Kenneth Rogoff: Can Greece avoid the lion?--There is an old joke about 2 men who are trapped by a lion in the jungle after a plane crash. When the 1st of them starts putting on his sneakers, the other asks why. The 1st answers: 'I am getting ready to make a run for it.' But you cannot outrun a lion, says the other man, to which the 1st replies: 'I don't have to outrun the lion. I just have to outrun you,' narrates Harvard prof/ fmr IMF chief economist, Proj Syndicate (courtesy Korea Times), 7 Feb 10

Posted on Wed, 10 Feb 10:

Why a debt crisis in Greece matters to the rest of the world: Greece has a small, largely inconsequential economy, even by European standards. And it was already reeling from fiscal mismanagement by undisciplined govts well before the global credit crisis. Yet its current woes have sent shudders through markets, as fears mount that what began in Greece could easily spread to other nations, Globe and Mail/ Canada, 10 Feb 10 (EUobserver--Germany preparing to bail out Greece)

Coffee/ tea room: Obama says music fueled civil rights movement--The nation's 1st black president transformed the White House's East Room Tue into a concert hall packed w/ members of his Cabinet, Congress, civil rights leaders and students for a program for Black History month. He said activists from coast to coast were inspired by spirituals, felt their will sharpened by protest songs and base broadened by artists of hope. He said their work paved the way toward a more just America that allowed him to make history in '08 w/ his election., AP (courtesy inSing[apore]), 10 Feb 10 (White House Weblog | Dylan sings 'The times they are a-changin' | Would Bob Dylan and Joan Baez reunite this wk?)

Posted on Tue, 9 Feb 10:

'Dark age of macroeconomics' is upon us - Krugman: Midway through his standing-room-only lecture, visiting Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman took a brief detour into world history - specifically to the Dark Ages. It was a period, he suggested, that was esp. dismal not merely due to, say, rampant barbarism, but because it constituted an intellectual reversal: 'In the Dark Ages, people forgot what the Greeks and Romans had learned.' It is an analogy he favors these days when he thinks about his own profession. 'Economists themselves are confused. It's been really amazing w/in the econ profession to see how much has been lost,' MIT News, 9 Feb 10

20 yrs after Mandela's release, SAfrica at another crossroads: The image of fmr Pres Nelson Mandela walking out of prison after 27 yrs on 11 Feb 90 is one of the defining moments of our time. The choice facing the African National Congress and Mandela in '90 was bet. hard or soft power as the best means to overthrow the racist apartheid regime. He insisted on the latter option and engaged the white minority govt in 3 yrs of negotiations that culminated in black SAfricans taking power at the polls, w/o a fight, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (courtesy Earth Times), 8 Feb 10

Paul Romer: For richer, for poorer--In the '50s and '60s, econ models treated ideas as public goods, meaning that once one existed it was assumed to exist everywhere. But they aren't: patents and other legal rules stop some ideas spreading, while others are just easy to keep secret. When I started grad school in the late '70s I was convinced economists underestimated the potential for new ideas to raise living standards. The body of work that grew out of my PhD thesis came to be called 'new growth theory', or post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory in the UK. Initially I just wanted to understand how good ideas, like those which make cheap electric light possible, were discovered. But then another topic began to interest me: why didn't ideas common in some parts of the world spread to others?, says Stanford economist, Prospect Mag, 27 Jan 10

Posted on Mon, 8 Feb 10:

Costa Rica elects 1st woman pres in landslide: Costa Ricans have elected the ruling party candidate Laura Chinchilla, who won after campaigning to continue free market policies in Central America's most stable nation. The 50-yr-old protege of the current pres, Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias, promised to pursue the same econ policies that recently brought the nation into a trade pact w/ the US and opened commerce w/ China, Canadian Press (courtesy CBC News), 8 Feb 10

Henry Paulson: On the Brink--Inside the race to stop the collapse of the global financial system: When the fmr Goldman Sachs CEO was appointed in '06 to become the next US Treasury Secy, he knew that his move from Wall St to Washington would be daunting and challenging. But he had no idea that a yr later, he would find himself at the very epicenter of the world's most cataclysmic fincl crisis since the Great Depression. This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime econ nightmare. Events no one had thought possible were happening in quick succession, and people all over the globe were terrified that the continuing downward spiral would bring unprecedented chaos. All eyes turned to the Treasury Secy to avert the disaster. This, then, is his 1st-person account., Business Plus, 1 Feb 10 (Book excerpt)

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