Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!


Wednesday, July 30, 2008

 
You can put my face on the Z$50 if you like

So it looks like Zimbabwe is planning a ten-bagel currency reform (and apparently that they have managed to find an alternative supplier of banknote paper and printing software to do so). Brings me back to something I was planning on writing about very early on in this project - the fact that, whoever ends up being in charge of Zimbabwe, they are going to have to deal with the hyperinflation, and my plan for doing so.

Basically the trouble is that all the recipes for curing a hyperinflation require you to have a strong and functional state. You can do it Israeli-style - with strict and firmly enforced price controls, or you can do it Argentinean style - by introducing a currency board. But in either case, you need to make it stick. And that doesn't look very possible at the moment - although the Zimbabweans[1] certainly need and deserve such a government, it would be nice to get rid of the hyperinflation in the near term, in the hope that this would facilitate a transition to more stable government without an economic collapse or civil war.

The only other way to control a hyperinflation is actual dollarisation a la Ecuador, but this doesn't seem practical to me. Zimbabwe has about a third of the GDP of Ecuador, but it doesn't have any material reserves of dollars at all, or any other hard currency. What it needs is something similar to dollarisation, but on the basis of a locally available fiat money standard.

And thus I suggest that Zimbabwe might as well have a go with free banking. One of the curios of the Zimbabwean economy is that it still has a significant presence from UK commercial banks (Barclays Zimbabwe, a subsidiary of Barclays plc is the largest, with Standard Chartered not far behind). Not very well informed UK journalists often discover this fact and then write ill-informed articles about "propping up Mugabe" (the reality is that neither company has made a cent in profit in Zimbabwe for about five years, but both of them have correctly assessed that they would hardly be doing the Zimbabweans a favour by destroying their domestic banking system. They don't "make loans to the Mugabe regime", they hold excess deposits (which are substantial as there aren't many viable commercial lending propositions in Zimbabwe) in short term government bonds.

Both BBZ and SC have substantially better credit ratings than the Zimbabwean state and justifiably so, and they have more of an interest in maintaining sound money in the long term than the Zimbabwean state too. They certainly don't have any interest in printing a note with twelve zeroes on it. Why not let them print banknotes and treat them as legal tender? There's my plan for monetary reform; doesn't work for most hyperinflationary countries as the local banking system is usually about as weak as the state but Zimbabwe is a special case.

[1]Finally got tired of the "Zimbabwegians" joke!

Labels:


10 comments this item posted by the management 7/30/2008 11:19:00 AM

Monday, July 28, 2008

 
Embarrassment of the week

Just a note in passing - neither me nor Marko Attila Hoare would have even fucking heard of a place called Darfur if it were not for people like Julie Flint and Alex de Waal. Although, as the post below says, I don't agree with her on the Bashir ICC indictment, to make the claim that Julie Flint "has aligned herself with the appeasers" is really the sort of thing that ought to have consequences for one's own credibility.

Labels:


2 comments this item posted by the management 7/28/2008 02:19:00 AM

Thursday, July 24, 2008

 
Gosh what happened there?

Well, readers, what happened is that I went off and got married. Yes, thanks very much, quite lovely. Then went off to the seaside in Brittany - basically my advice is to take the ferry to Calais, point the front of the car roughly in the direction of Wilmington, North Carolina and keep driving until the cafes no longer advertise "Wi-Fi Gratuit". Anyway, while I was away, President Mwanawasa got seriously ill with a stroke, and the Zimbabwe situation (of which, more soon) began to start moving again.

I wrote this for the Guardian website but it went in quite late because I screwed up the new submissions system and I don't think they're going to publish it because it's a bit old news now ...

The Biggest Plea Bargain in History?


Most of what needs to be said about the indictment of Omar al-Bashir has already been said. I appreciate the point of view of Jonathan Steele, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, all of whom know much more about Darfur than I do. I very much agree with them that the top priority has to be peace in Darfur and that outside interventions by the self-appointed guardians of the international conscience are really dangerous. But I can't go so far as to condemn prosecutor Ocampo's decision to bring a public indictment on charges of genocide.

For one thing, I do think it has to be accepted that if you're going to have an International Criminal Court, this is the sort of thing it's going to do or there's no point to the thing at all - fiat justitia rua caelum. And I'm not ready to give up on the possibility of international criminal justice yet (note that the provisional Darfur Peace Agreement itself was only achieved through liberal use of threats of ICC prosecutions by Bob Zoellick). For another, the benefit of giving the Darfurians the simple pleasure of anticipating Bashir in prison shouldn't be underestimated. But finally and most importantly, I have a speculative but not entirely ridiculous theory that the indictment is a shrewder piece of politics than it's being given credit for.

The point is this; it seems to be agreed by nearly everyone that to charge Bashir with genocide (rather than an equally serious crimes against humanity charge) is a really speculative and showboating piece of prosecutorial over-reach. De Waal and Flint, in this article, agree with the UN report on the subject and the points they raise aren't really addressed in Ocampo's indictment. If the genocide charge came to trial, it most likely would not stick (and of course, a failure there would be a pretty fatal blow to the ICC's credibility).

But the fact that there's such a high risk of an embarrassing blow-up if the genocide charge ever came to trial, raises the possibility that it isn't intended to come to trial. The fact that the charge has been laid publicly (thus tipping off Bashir that he shouldn't visit any ICC signatory countries) rather than as a sealed indictment also suggests that the ICC isn't actually as serious as it might be about bringing this one into a court.

This has the flavour of a plea-bargain to me. Drawing up a maximal charge sheet and blustering about it is a traditional prosecutor's strategy, with the aim of getting the accused to cop to a lesser charge and go down quietly. And a strategy of this kind strikes me as potentially not a bad way of dealing with Bashir. He's a paranoid bully who reacts badly to threats, but he's also a violent liar who needs to be forced to the negotiating table. Increasing the pressure on him is certainly not without risks, but it allows for a sort of carrot-and-stick approach. Of course, this would mean that the Hague indictment would end up being used as a bargaining chip, which is hardly fiat justitia or a dignified way to proceed, but that's diplomacy.

One thing I would like to see though (and my real criticism of the way that the diplomatic effort is being handled) is some symmetrical pressure being applied to the rebel groups. The UN report did not find widespread evidence of crimes against humanity being carried out by rebel groups, but a number of commanders are certainly guilty of crimes against peace, and the UN team suggested that half-a-dozen rebel commanders could be worth indicting (it's in paragraph 531 of the Inquiry Report)

That would seem to me to be a good next step, given that we are where we are. Not because of any degree of moral equivalence - that simply doesn't exist, Bashir's crimes against humanity dwarf anything done by the other side in sheer scale. But it really does seem to me to be a bad idea to give the commanders of the rebel forces (many of whom don't actually live in Darfur, and therefore don't directly suffer the consequences of prolonging the war) the idea that the UN and international community are basically "on their side", and that if they keep on fighting the ICC will swoop in, pluck out Bashir and give them a separatist state.

That's not going to happen and it's very unhelpful to make implicit promises of support to the rebel factions that aren't going to be kept - it's an obvious recipe for war without end. The next round of peace talks is going to begin soon, and it might go a little better if every single seat at that table had a sword of Damocles dangling over it.
20 comments this item posted by the management 7/24/2008 11:34:00 PM


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?




Links:

Bitch : Lab
Aaronovitch Watch
Balkanalysis
Perfect.co.uk
Maxspeak
Brad Delong
The Robert Vienneau blog

Political and philosophical heroes

Subcomandante Marcos
Will Rogers
Boris Vian
The English Svejk

RSS Feed:
This seems to matter to a lot of people

If you liked this "Daniel Davies" website, you might be interested in

"Danux", the web developer
The martial artist (and fan of extremely annoying Flash intros) from Blackburn
The Welsh political journalist
A Scouse computer programmer who collects Soviet cameras
"Danimal", the heavy metal drummer
Canada's finest recorder of radio jingles
More of the same, at the Guardian
A tailor's in Lampeter where Jimmy Carter once bought a hat
An advertising man who has written a novel about dogging (I think we sometimes get each other's email)
An award-winning facilities manager in Dubai
The son of the guitarist from the Kinks Update: he is apparently "balls-out motherfucking shit-dicked exxxstatic" to be included on a Kerrang magazine giveaway CD of Iron Maiden covers, which is nice.
"Fritz Gretel" from the Ramones film "Rock 'n' Roll High School"
The former presenter of the leading politics talk radio show on the Isle of Man, now a business change manager in the Manx government secretary's office
An aquarium curator in Sussex who keeps on scoring home runs like this (this is the first stable link I've found, but he is constantly kicking ass in acquarial terms)

If you didn't like this "Daniel Davies" website, then don't give up on the Daniel Davies industry completely!

An American "Christian Political Analyst" who has the same name as me
A student at Patrick Henry College
these two might be the same guy ...
"Scatter", the deceased Liberian gangster
A naked man stuck in a chimney in Wigan
A thug in Barrow



This blog has been going downhill since ...

August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
November 2003
December 2003
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011
March 2011
April 2011
May 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
October 2011
November 2011
December 2011
January 2012
February 2012
March 2012
April 2012
May 2012
June 2012
July 2012
August 2012
September 2012
October 2012
December 2012
February 2013
April 2013
June 2013
July 2013
August 2013
March 2014
April 2014
August 2014
October 2015
March 2023