Eideard

Xi Jinping kicking a Gaelic football at Croke Park in Dublin
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Ireland’s reputation as a technology hub is a big draw for China, the Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping said at the end of a three-day visit, his only European Union stop on a world tour. Speaking at an investment forum Monday with some 350 companies, Xi said Ireland’s history, scenery and culture had impressed the Chinese people.

But he made clear the country’s clout in hi-tech and emerging industries, largely due to a low corporation tax rate that has lured Silicon Valley heavyweights, was a key factor.

“Ireland is strong in software development, ICT and biotech medicines and other hi-tech industries…We give top priority to the new generation of IT and bio-tech,” Xi told delegates via a translator Monday, adding it would be the priority for future trade between the two countries.

“Ireland is a country that is strong in trade and services and this bodes well for our co-operation,” he added…

“They are hungry for technologies, things are changing so fast. Ireland is such a small country but we have lot of small and medium businesses with great technologies,” said Jo Cheng, head of analytics at Dublin-based Idiro Technologies, which she noted, had been approached by two Chinese companies in recent months for the first time.

“Ireland is the (European) headquarters of so many massive technology companies like Google, Facebook, eBay. There is a reason why they’re here,” said Cheng, a Chinese national living in Ireland…

His fascination with Ireland dates back to his first trip to Dublin in 2003 when he was a provincial party secretary…”I recall my first visit to this country in 2003. At that time one Irish person I met said to me an Irish saying that is good things often come in small packages and that person said that is us, that is Ireland. We believe Ireland has so many good things to offer,” said Xi Sunday evening.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who will visit China next month with a trade delegation, added that the countries had a lot to offer each other, despite the differences in size…

Xi, who visited the United States last week and moves on to Turkey Tuesday, began his Irish stay at a high tech zone near Shannon airport that inspired the building of a similar zone in Shenzhen, the pilot project of former leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms…

Beijing has followed with interest Ireland’s transformation from a developing farming economy to one that attracted international technology and drug companies, and is now showing first signs of rebounding from an economic crash…

Eire closed the loophole style of taxation years ago and has committed to a good education through college level free for its citizens. Two things that don’t stand a chance of getting through our ideologue-governed Congress.

Though specifics didn’t come up, I imagine the likelihood of real investment of Chinese companies in Irish firms won’t have to pass through the sort of Cold war vetting that is inevtiable in the US or the UK.

Greece is at the heart of the ongoing eurozone crisis, but is past sleight of hand by Greek statisticians to blame for the country’s current financial meltdown?

“We used to call him the magician, because he could make everything disappear. “He made inflation disappear. And then he made the deficit disappear,” recalls Greek economist Miranda Xafa…

The new fiscal treaty that 25 of the 27 EU member states agreed to…is meant to ensure that in future no country has a budget deficit of greater than 3% of GDP.

That same 3% rule was first enshrined in 1992, in the Maastricht Treaty, which led to the creation of the euro in the first place. But some countries did not respect it. In the case of Greece, not even from the beginning. Greece cooked the books to join the euro in the first place.

“Take the Greek state railway. It was losing a billion euros a year,” Ms Xafa remembers. “The Greek railway had more employees than passengers. A former minister, Stefanos Manos, had said publicly at the time that it would be cheaper to send everyone by taxi…”

“The [railway] company would issue shares that the government would buy. So it was counted not as expenditure, but as a financial transaction.” And it did not appear on the budget balance sheet.

So Greece fulfilled the Maastricht criteria and was admitted to the eurozone on January 1, 2001 – but by 2004 the deception was becoming transparent.”

That year a new, centre-right government was elected. Peter Doukas was appointed budget minister. “I invited the senior staff of the ministry and asked them to give me details of the budget that had been passed the previous December, two-and-a-half months before we took office…

The difference between the published deficit and the real one was huge…The budget said the deficit was 1.5%. The real shortfall was 8.3%.”

So what did Mr Doukas do about it, given the eurozone’s Maastricht treaty rule to keep budget deficits below 3% of GDP…?

“But the answer I got at the time was ‘listen, we are having the Olympic Games in a few months and we cannot upset the whole population and start having strikes and everything just before the Olympic Games’.”

Instead of reforming public finances, Greece borrowed and borrowed to meet the deficit. Banks queued up to lend. The markets did not believe there was a risk of default because Greece’s currency, the euro, was locked into that of Germany…

Suddenly, in this one very narrow respect, every country was Germany…The markets failed to see the debt mountains that were accumulating. And they underestimated the risk…

In fact the Stability and Growth Pact was as good as dead by the time Mr Doukas took office in 2004.

The big nations of the EU, the predominant economic forces of France and Germany were as willing as the little guys to bend the laws, stifle the accounting, because it made the overall books look bigger. The whole of Europe was becoming one big happy family and just one bank, the European Central Bank, was needed to keep track of everything. Even if the rules weren’t lived up to in the first place.

And all the work that’s been put into turning around the train wreck that was the Great Recession started by our local crooks in the United States still can be undone by another recession spinning out of control from Greece and Europe — courtesy of a magician who made the cost of running the Greek train wreck disappear into economic limbo.

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A new law promising internet users the “right to be forgotten” will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday. It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are “legitimate” grounds to retain it…

Details of the revised law were unveiled by the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich…

“These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social network websites, or about the various privacy settings available,” said Matthew Newman.

He noted that this could cause problems later if the users had no way of deleting embarrassing material when applying for jobs. However, he stressed that it would not give them the right to ask for material such as their police or medical records to be deleted.

Although the existing directive already contains the principle of “data minimisation”, Mr Newman said that the new law would reinforce the idea by declaring it “a right”…

The commissioner said that firms would have to explicitly seek people’s permission to use data about them and could not proceed on the basis of “assumed” consent in situations where approval was required.

Her proposed law says that internet users must also be notified when their data is collected, and be told for what purpose it is being processed and for how long it will be stored.

The bill also suggests people must be given easier access to the data held on them, and should have the right to move it to another provider in addition to the right to have it deleted.

However, the commissioner said that she recognised there were some circumstances under which this right would not apply. “The archives of a newspaper are a good example. It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history,” Ms Reding told delegates.

RTFA. There’s a certain amount of regulatory crap I’ve left out. The core of the concept is worth discussing throughout the Web.

And, yes, there was a time when conservatives were as concerned with these topics as liberals or progressives. Not anymore, man.

I don’t know about the rest of you – I’m going shopping
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that EU treaty changes rather than eurobonds will help solve the eurozone debt crisis.

Ahead of European Commission proposals for bonds backed by all 17 eurozone states, she said what was really needed was a political response. Mrs Merkel argued if there was to be a debate on eurobonds, it should be at the end, not the middle of the crisis…

The eurobond plans, due to be presented by the commission on Wednesday, are attracting increasing support, despite Germany’s opposition. Greece’s new Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, said on Tuesday that eurobonds “or similar tools could provide the means to overcome the crisis”.

Addressing Germany’s confederation of employers in Berlin on Tuesday, the German chancellor said that if changing treaties proved too difficult on an EU level, they would be dealt with instead by the 17 members of the eurozone.

“We have to change the construction of the euro area,” she said. “Treaty changes are for me an immediate part of solving the crisis, the political response to a politically derived confidence crisis.”

Reports on Monday suggested that Britain would accept a “narrow” amendment of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty covering the eurozone in return for a deal on the EU’s working time directive.

Although full details of the commission’s proposals are not yet known, a leaked draft document indicates they would involve three options

An extensive scheme that would completely replace national bonds and would require each eurozone government to guarantee the debt of other countries

A lesser scheme that would see national bonds partially replaced with eurobonds up to a limit that could relate to how closely a country adhered to strict rules.

The replacement of some national bond issues with a limit on guarantees

Flip-flopping hardly describes the way this crisis is going down to the wire. And maybe beyond.

Now, the lies accepted to justify sleazy economic practices is haunting the politicians who hoped to benefit. Except an increase in risk supersedes an increase in power. It’s looks more likely to me they will have to shrink the European Union back to the nations which can deal responsibly with each other on debt and currency. That’s a single-digit number.

Leave it up to Fibber McGee and Molly
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President Hu Jintao of China will arrive in Cannes, France, this week pondering a plea from Europe for tens of billions of dollars to help the continent get out of its debt crisis. And President Obama will arrive with a smile, some hearty handshakes, and his own plea: that Greece get its act together and that Europe fix its economic ills, which he has called one of the biggest drags on the United States’ own ailing economy…

The last few months may well end up being an inflection point, in which the United States, though easily still the world’s leading power, no longer has quite the responsibility or the burden it once did. The pattern has been evident in the Arab Spring, with the American military playing mostly a supporting role in Libya, and now in the European financial crisis, with Asian money coming to aid the Europeans…A significant difference in policy between Obama and traditional Cold Warriors in both of the TweedleDeeDum parties.

In many ways, the situation is a natural evolution of the campaign promises made by Mr. Obama in 2008, when he vowed to turn away from the Bush administration’s more unilateral approach.

As president, Mr. Obama is now overseeing the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and has emphasized multilateral diplomacy in all its messy forms. He refused to consider American intervention in Libya until the United Nations approved a resolution supporting it, and then he stepped back and allowed France and Britain to take the lead though American military help remained essential…We only have about 174 countries to go to withdraw from the rest of our foreign military bases.

Mr. Obama’s backers say that he is simply acknowledging reality and developing a clear-eyed strategy for what the United States can and cannot do and that he ultimately may prove right in diagnosing Europe’s economic problems and its need to take difficult steps to fix them…

Arriving in Cannes on Thursday, Mr. Obama will be trying to balance providing that leadership while not taking on any of the additional burden — particularly financial — that such leadership often requires…

But for all the acceptance that the United States will no longer be the world’s policeman and financier, the emerging strategy carries risks…

The American military remains the world’s most formidable, and the most likely to be called on to back American allies like Israel, Japan and South Korea.

Of course, no one expects South Korea or Japan to invade one of their neighbors – and start a war.

Greece would be in much better shape now if it had never joined the euro zone, or if it had been kicked out in 2004 when it admitted that it had lied about its finances to join the club. So would the rest of Europe.

So why not get out now?

One answer is the same one that was given when Greece’s cheating was revealed: Legally, there is no way out. The euro was designed to be the Roach Motel of currencies. Once you enter, you can never leave. There is no provision for departure.

The sophistry in this article is that the lies, the cheating, was “revealed”. Hogwash. Everyone knew what was going on. Including the Greek politicians who stood in line to gobble up the Euro dole.

But, of course, there is a way out. It would be messy, and perhaps disastrous. But no one is going to send an army to Athens to force it to keep the euro.

If Greece were to follow the example set by Argentina nearly a decade ago, it would simply convert its debts from euros into its old currency, the drachma, at the old exchange rate of 340.75 drachmas to one euro. It could also convert euro currency in the country at the same rate. So if you owned one million euros in Greek bonds, they would be converted to bonds with a face value of 340.75 million drachmas.

With a printing press available, Greece could meet those obligations. Of course the drachma would soon be worth a lot less — perhaps 1,000 to the euro. So bondholders would have lost two-thirds of face value…Greece would suddenly be forced to run a balanced budget, or to borrow from its own citizens, whose savings would have lost much, if not most, of their value.

For Greece to pull that off, it would probably have to do it over a weekend, without leaks of what it was planning. If people got wind of what might be coming, there would be an immediate run on Greek banks…

Think there are any Euro politicians who could keep that kind of secret?

…Greece remains woefully uncompetitive in export markets, and there is no credible plan to get its economy growing. The rest of Europe uses the threat of cutting off funds to force more and more austerity on the Greek government.

The message from Greece now may be summarized as, “I’m small. I’ve suffered. You can afford to rescue me. If you don’t, I can create chaos for all of you.”

Part of the earlier spring agreement Greece agreed to included – eventually – a replacement rate of 1 for 10 as civil servants retired. Some of the hacks on board before the government began the hiring tsunami that followed EU membership. Well, 18-20,000 retired who should have been replaced by 2,000 tops. The government hired 24,000.

France and Germany may effectively run the European Union, but Finland has been demonstrating how even a small country can disrupt their grand designs.

By insisting that it receive collateral from Greece in return for aid, Finland is threatening to upend an agreement that euro zone countries, led by France and Germany, made in July to expand the E.U. bailout fund.

Finland would contribute less than 2 percent of the guarantees provided to the fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. But the country’s demands, the subject of intense negotiations in recent days, threaten to derail the fragile consensus that is preventing Greece from defaulting on its debt.

Finland is the most vivid example of the way domestic politics can become Continental problems, threatening the unity of the 17 euro zone members as they face their deepest crisis ever. But Germany, the Netherlands and Austria — all wealthy countries with strong economies — also harbor deep opposition to bailing out Greece, Portugal, Ireland or any other country that may become overwhelmed by debt…

In Finland, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen faces discontent within his governing coalition as well as pressure from a nationalist opposition group, the True Finns, which rode euro-skepticism to big gains in April parliamentary elections…

Finnish officials say they want to resolve the collateral issue and contribute to the bailout fund. But they are also adamant that the country must receive guarantees.

“We have to listen to the people of Finland,” said a government official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Collateral is an absolute condition for Finland to be involved.”

It is unclear what the collateral might consist of — jokes making the rounds suggest that Greece could pawn the Acropolis or the island of Corfu. And any concessions made to Finland would probably then be demanded by other countries like Austria, where citizens are also grumpy about having to provide tax dollars to support Greece…

They may be jokes to NYTimes writers; but, that was exactly the same response from my favorite banker when we got into a discussion of exactly these fiscal issues — the European Union not being a fiscal union.

Confederacies still haven’t anymore viable economic solutions than they have political solutions. A simple agreement for commerce and currency doesn’t guarantee sound monetary policy for seventeen different economies.

European Union leaders gave the go-ahead on Friday for Croatia to join the EU, after six years of preparations marred by slow democratic reforms in Zagreb and the EU’s reluctance to expand.

The former Yugoslav state of 4.4 million people should be able to wrap up accession negotiations next week, they said at a summit in Brussels, but warned the Zagreb government that it has to continue to fight widespread corruption with “vigor.”

The recommendation marks a turnaround for Croatia, which struggled for years to convince the EU’s 27 governments that its judiciary reforms would produce genuine results and prove it has recognized its role in the Balkan wars in the 1990s…

Several EU governments, led by Britain and the Netherlands, pushed for strict monitoring of Croatia during the ratification process and had insisted that the completion of talks remains open-ended.

But others wanted a more clear message. Many EU politicians are hopeful that rewarding Croatia for a last-minute reform push will persuade other governments in the western Balkans that the EU is willing to accept new members if they are ready…

EU enlargement is likely to remain on the backburner in the coming years, however, with voters around the continent wary of its cost at a time of economic austerity…

Croatia, the richest of EU hopefuls in the Balkans and which relies heavily on tourism, is hoping that accession will bolster its appeal to foreign funds at a time when Europe’s financial woes have slashed direct investment in the region.

Not until they change out the tablecloth-looking football kit.

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.

The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.

The agreement acknowledges that there will be occasions when people are delayed or prevented from flying because they are wrongly identified as a threat, and gives them the right to petition for judicial review in the US federal court. Well, isn’t that special?

The 15-year retention period is likely to prove highly controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU’s PNR (passenger name record) regime to cover flights into, out of and within Europe. A period of five and a half years has just been negotiated in a similar agreement with Australia. Germany and France raised concerns this week about the agreement and the unproven necessity for the measure.

Britain has already announced its intention to opt in to the European PNR plan, in which the home secretary, Theresa May, played a key role, and is expected to join the US agreement this summer…

The US Senate passed a resolution last week saying it “simply could not accept” any watering down by European ministers of data-sharing, describing it as “an important part of our layered defences against terrorism”. Senators said it was an important tool in the security agencies’ “identifying possible threats before they arrive in our country”.

But the European parliament, which would have to approve it, has demanded proof that such a PNR agreement is necessary, and said it should in no circumstances be used for data-mining or profiling…

This draft agreement appears to give the Americans all they have asked for…

The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, the names of those they are travelling with and how much baggage they have, as well their itinerary.

Well, we certainly are assured our government cares enough about our safety and security that they are willing to keep an eye on us for years and years. I feel safer, now. Don’t you?

Yes, part of Libya’s army is called NARC

In the first indication the crisis with Libya could take on a military dimension, the Pentagon is looking at “all options” it can offer President Barack Obama in dealing with the Libyan crisis a senior U.S. military official tells CNN.

The official declined to be identified because of the extremely sensitive nature of the situation but he has direct knowledge of the current military planning effort…

The official said the “prudent planning” for military options centers around the president’s priorities of protecting U.S. citizens and interests and stopping the violence against Libyan civilians. He cautioned against thinking the U.S. military “was about to storm the beaches” but he also declined to specifically rule out the use of military force.

Let’s hope this is limited to the kind of Reaganesque sword-rattling that warms the hearts of fools and military arms vendors.

None of this hands any responsibility to the United States other than the safe extraction of our citizens.