The world for the last month and a half

So the last post was... December 5, 2009. What's happened eversince? 1st: Greek statistics are useless aparently. So much so that the EU might end up with audit powers! 2nd: The commissioners have all more or less lined up before the european parliamentary committees. The Bulgarian nominate got kicked out after the Socialists decided to show they could bark and the rest were not ready to see if they could bite as well. The issue was incompetence and political malpractice for not abiding to the rules. In the end there were documents showing that everything was fine. Then again if Greek statistics suck, I can see why some people might not have given much credit to the document. Ultimately it's irrelevant, the issue was political I guess... 3rd: Oh yes, the Copenhagen summit on carbon emissions and the survival of the planet. Let's hope we don't depend on it. If there's something that we can learn from it it's that the developing world is quite strong. Not only that but it would seem to me as though the developed world and the under developped world shared a common wish (though for different reasons) that there be emission reductions. However the developing world seems to be quite powerful these days. More over it might be interesting to reconsider the BRIC (Brazil, Russia,India and China) and replace it with the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) as this article argues. 4th: Russia and Belarus exchanged pleasantries over oil, but Europe has so far had a warm enough Winter. 5th: Governments and firms are having to pay a lot for the money they want to borrow, probably because of the risk associated withlending to countries who are facing high deficits and have little prospects of enormous economic growth. (high interest on sovereign debt and on corporate bonds, implying low demand and high supply of bonds) 6th: 2 huge earthquakes have devastated Haiti. In an already poor country infrastructure (what little there was) was more or less completely destroyed. 200 000 people died. The world nonetheless seems to have united in a pledge to help the country. In related news, Sweden has donated less money to that country than Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. I hope this means more about Brangelina's commitment than it does about Sweden's, or Poland's for that sake. On a more personal note I've been absent because I have been working on an upcoming article to be published by the European Public Choice Society, on the dynamics of Fiscal Federalism and whether and when there is a "Race to the Bottom". The conclusion is that there is, but the revenues of the subnational polity must be independent of transfers from the central national state. Moreover the policy areas on which this competition occurs cannot enjoy a lot of visibility or relevance to the electorate. When the article will come out I'll put some extracts here. Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to write something more soon.