Democracy and ethical standards: is the US in troubled waters? - by RM

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of any modern political system and especially that of the US  is to be able to reconcile, at least from an ethical standpoint, the issue of campaign finance with that of moral convictions and democratic principles..

Plato's argument against democracy was that it would promote skilled campaigners rather than qualified leaders. This statement needs only to be amended slightly when we look at today's US political system.

In a sense the American democracy now promotes skilled fundraisers while leadership skills have taken a backseat to the ability of extracting funds from contributors

The real ethical issues of campaign finance lie not in their cost, but rather who is providing the funds. In today's America special interest groups have filled the huge gap between private donations and the realistic costs of running a successful political  campaign. These interest groups are quite varied in the issues they promote, but unfortunately many of the most powerful are very recognizable, such as energy, tobacco, firearm, insurance, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry.

Perhaps, even more disturbing, however, is the way that the funds from these groups are distributed.

Historically, donations from political action committees, or PACs as they are called in America, greatly favor incumbents, at a ratio of nearly four dollars donated to incumbent campaigns to every one dollar donated to the challengers.

This notion would seem to imply a direct relationship between accepting monies from special interests and maintaining political power. In its most basic form one could call this influence peddling, but even operating on the assumption that special interest money does not directly has an influence on US political leaders, it certainly gives the appearance of doing so, and consequently has seriously eroded the US public confidence in their political leaders and democracy.

In a Gallup poll conducted recently on how Americans rate their institutions Congress ranks last with 9% on this list of 16 institutions; the military with a 76%  approval rating earns top spot.. Other institutions which did poorly and scored below 30% in this poll were: Big business (multi-nationals), banking, medical, the press, organized labour and  the criminal justice system.

Overall, even with all the above mentioned negatives, the US political system is certainly not beyond repair, but there are problems that need to be addressed with a major sense of urgency. The time to take action  is now.

The number one issue, without any doubt, is for the Congress to come to grips with campaign finance reform, along with stricter regulations on the influence and access granted to special interest groups and their lobbyists to government and elected officials.

If nothing gets done, at least in these two major area's of concern, one could assume, just by looking at the polls - which show a strong public support for the military and police (authority and order) - that the use of marshal law as a tool to restore the basic principals on which the US was founded as a Republic, is not as unthinkable as once thought before.

EU-Digest

Dutch Confront Euro’s Just Desserts as EU Appetite Ebbs - by James G. Neuger and Fred Pals

The agitators lobbed the banana-cream projectiles at the official, Gerrit Zalm, on Jan. 4, 1999, to denounce the newly arrived euro currency, a tool they warned would lead to the dismantling of the welfare state and the dominance of bankers.

“I don’t regret it at all,” Jelle Goezinnen, a pie thrower then and currently a refugee counselor in Utrecht, says today. “I still stand behind all those actions.”

Fifteen years and one existential euro crisis later, his pie brigade, known as TAART, has successors questioning what the policy makers of that era wrought for what was once a model euro nation. Now the 16.8 million Dutch are caught in a trap much like the one that has caught their bailed-out neighbors: not enough economic growth, too much debt, and a shortage of policy options fueling doubts about the benefit of union.

For Frits Bolkestein, a former center-right Dutch political leader and member of the European Commission, the lesson is simple. “The monetary union has failed,” says Bolkestein, 80, himself once a target of pie-wielding assailants. “I have considerable difficulty in imagining us continuing like this for very much longer. Let us say 10 years ahead: will we then have the same sort of mess?”

From the start, the Netherlands has been intimately bound up with the euro. One of the six founders of the group that grew into the 28-nation European Union, it hosted the 1991 summit in Maastricht that laid out the roadmap to the currency and sent Wim Duisenberg to Frankfurt as the first president of the European Central Bank. The Dutch made a fetish of the euro’s deficit rules, only to run afoul of them when the crisis struck.

Austerity is no longer the national pastime of a country that pioneered global capitalism and made “going Dutch” a synonym for thrift. Even the purveyors of marijuana who dot the city carved by the canals that made Amsterdam a latter-day tourist destination complain of hard times made harder by government rules.

“Look what I got since we opened at nine this morning -- not even 10 euros,” Mohamed Ouchene, 38, co-owner of the “Blue Lagoon,” says around midday, pointing to his nearly empty cash register and the two customers in the shop. “We wanted to refurbish and upgrade the place but we postponed.”

The Dutch economy is set to be the third-worst performer in the 18-member euro area this year, with growth of 0.2 percent, according to the commission. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, even Greece -- four countries saved from financial ruin partly by Dutch aid, grudgingly granted -- will do better.

“When the party is going on, you don’t want to take away the fun,” says Arnoud Boot, a professor of corporate finance and financial markets at the University of Amsterdam. “As long as house prices were going up, there was no problem. The political process was not good at dealing with these things.” 

Note EU-Digest: whatever way you turn it the fact remains that there is a global economic crises going on all over the world - and - if the Netherlands would not have been part of the EU Eurozone the economic crises would have probably hit the country even harder than it did now. 

Where there is a major problem is that the Dutch Government is doing an extremely poor job at communicating the benefits of the EU, Eurozone and EURO. As a result  opportunist radical populist politicians like Geert Wilders are gaining traction with what in essence is total unfounded nonsense. 

Read more: Dutch Confront Euro’s Just Desserts as EU Appetite Ebbs - Businessweek

US Economy: The Super Bowl, one of America’s greatest pop-culture sports phenomena - by Michelle Flor Cruz

Stadium beer: $9. Last-minute ticket to the game: $3,000. Super Bowl XLVIII T-shirt: $25. The Super Bowl experience in New York/New Jersey: $600 million?

There’s no doubt the public will be paying inflated prices if you have any plans of attending the Super Bowl this year, but do the numbers really add up to as much as the NFL claims?

The Super Bowl, one of America’s greatest pop-culturesport phenomena, has transformed from just a football game into a major economic event. This year’s Super Bowl XLVII -- to be held this evening February 2 at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., will be no different, drawing attention and dollars from all corners of the country. 

Read more: Show Me The Money: What Super Bowl Economics Means From Coast To Coast By International Business Times

International Labour Organization: GLOBAL EMPLOYMENT TRENDS 2014 - by Raymond Torres

South Asia  farrner plowing rice field

Global unemployment increased by 5 million people in 2013

The global labour market situation remains uneven and fragile. True, there are encouraging signs of economic recovery in those advanced economies most affected by the global financial crisis which erupted in 2008.

Also, a number of emerging and developing countries − including: in the Sub-Saharan Africa − are enjoying relatively robust economic growth. The world economy may thus be growing somewhat faster than over the past three years.

However, the report finds that those economic improvements will not be sufficient to absorb the major labour market imbalances that built up in recent years. First, over the fore seeable future, the world economy will probably grow less than was the case before the global crisis. This complicates the task of generating the over 42 million jobs that are needed every year in order to meet the growing number of new entrants in the labour market.

Second, and more fundamentally, the root causes of the global crisis have not been prop erly tackled. The financial system remains the Achilles heel of the world economy.

The state of many banks is such that many sustainable enterprises, notably small ones, have limited access to credit, thereby affecting productive investment and job creation. Significant financial bubbles have re-appeared in a number of advanced and emerging economies, adding new uncertainties and affecting hiring decisions.

Also, global labour incomes continue to increase at a slower pace than justified by observed productivity gains, thus affecting aggregate demand.

Third; and this is an important new finding in view of the post-2015 development debate  −  little progress is being made in reducing working poverty and vulnerable forms of employment such as informal jobs and undeclared work. If confirmed, this trend would unambiguously delay the achievement of development goals.

To ensure lasting job recovery, the report highlights the role of a strategy that combines short-term measures (job-friendly macroeconomic and labour market policies) with further action to tackle long-standing imbalances.

Such a strategy would strengthen the economic recovery and pave the way for more and better jobs.

Read more wcms_233953.pdf

Apps Privacy Risks - 92% of Top 500 Android Apps Carry Security or Privacy Risk

About 460 of the top 500 Android applications create a security or privacy risk when downloaded to Android devices, according to new research. And that’s largely because of a lack of user education, and the fact that mobile users don’t mind sharing personal information for free apps in return.

Read more:  Infosecurity - 92% of Top 500 Android Apps Carry Security or Privacy Risk

"Dutch economy is poised to improve" - says Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot in Davos

The Netherlands recently kept its triple-A credit rating from Fitch, which said that the decision reflected the country’s strong underlying economic, institutional and credit fundamentals.

The rating agency kept the outlook at negative, however, because of the Netherlands’ weak economic growth prospects.

Another rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, stripped the Netherlands of its top-grade AAA rating in late November, also citing its low growth prospects.

So far that has left Germany, Luxembourg and Finland as the only members of the 17-nation euro zone with the coveted top rating from all three leading credit agencies.

Moody’s, which still rates the Netherlands triple-A with a negative outlook, will publish its next update on March 7th.

Note EU-Digest:  The Dutch economy is poised to improve after house prices stopped declining and consumer confidence rose, Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot said. 

“There is no need to think that the Dutch economy will structurally lag the euro zone any longer,” Knot, 46, who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We will have to wait for mid-February to see whether the fourth-quarter gross domestic product numbers confirm the gradual recovery.” .

The Dutch economy, the fifth-largest in the euro area, emerged from a year of recession in the third quarter as exports benefited from a nascent recovery in the currency region. The country has gone through three recessions since the origins of the global financial crisis in 2007.

Read more: Fitch affirms Netherlands credit rating - Economic News | Ireland & World Economy Headlines |The Irish Times - Fri, Jan 17, 2014

and at: The Dutch economy is poised toimprove - Bloomberg

Data Privacy: EU justice chief accuses bloc of hypocrisy in data privacy debates

The EU needs to start protecting its own citizens from the American global spying initiatives and quit being “hypocritical” when it comes to reforming its own data protection system, said the EU’s Justice Commissioner.

Viviane Reding, a vocal critic of American cyber surveillance, lashed out against EU member states’ reaction in wake of Edward Snowden revelations, urging the bloc to protect citizens’ private information and seek more legal assurances from Washington.

“There's been a lot of hypocrisy in the debate,” Reding said at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels on Tuesday. “If the EU wants to be credible in its efforts to rebuild trust, if it wants to act as an example for other continents, it also has to get its own house in order.”

“The EU itself should also look carefully at some of its [data protection] laws. Neither the Commission, the Council, nor the European Parliament can be proud of the Data Retention Directive.”

The Directive requires telecom companies to store all telephony metadata, including geo-location data. Criticizing some aspects of the Directive, Reding said that the data “is kept for too long, it is too easily accessed and the risk of abuse is too great.”

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