Cubicle world

Let's get some things straight, in alot of blogs there seems to be a strong neo-liberal viewpoint (Slovak or otherwise), so although i consider myself a centrist I feel obliged to put the case for the other side of the argument.

Historically treadmills were big wheels, like old-fashioned water wheels, powered by the weight of prisoners endlessly walking forward and, of course, getting nowhere.

Today we're virtual prisoners, chained in our cubicles, toiling to further corporate profits.

To compensate for the boredom and futility of work we chase the 'rewards' of consumerism, the existential emptiness inside is filled up with huge quantities of food and comfort snacking as well as borrowing more money to buy status symbols, and then have to work harder to pay off our debts

Just compare the obesity statistics between USA and Canada (a country with much more left wing policies and an emphasis on quality of life) Prisoners used to know all about treadmills. They were big wheels, like old-fashioned water wheels, powered by the weight of prisoners endlessly walking forward and, of course, getting nowhere.

The turning wheel held several prisoners, all treading forward for hours on end. It was used to power other machines.

But really it was a form of punishment.

Has much changed? Today we're virtual prisoners, chained in our cubicles, toiling for 'the man'. We're replacable pawns to further profits. Yet, there's no revolution, no anger, no challenge to the status quo. We accept our lot, programmed to obey authority.

Wasn't that what school was all about? Sitting behind a desk for six hours, mindlessly bored. Just being 'trained' to fit into the new-style treadmill of work.

Got to work hard in school and get good grades so you can get a good job so you can buy everything you want... and if you don't get a 'proper' job, you're a 'failure'.

To compensate for the boredom and futility of work we chase the 'rewards' of consumerism, borrow more money to buy status symbols, and then have to work harder to pay off our debts. Life is a bitch and then you die. [1]

Management by Stress
Bosses and neoliberal ideologues tell us modern capitalism has changed our lives and the way that we work.

According to them, the world of work has changed dramatically since the years of poverty, lack of control and constant work that characterised the lives of workers at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But the world of work hasn't changed that much, as many workers could testify.
How many of us have had to put up with Human Resource Management? Workers have become used to "key performance indicators", "team working', "appraisals" and a whole battery of measures that go under the rubric of "flexibility" and "modernisation".

Modernisation means more exploitation. Karl Marx described this process as the bosses' desire to "fill up the pores of the working day".

He wrote in the mid-19th century about the brutal effect this has on people's lives: "It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight.

"It haggles over a mealtime, incorporating it where possible with the process of production itself. It reduces the sound sleep to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential."

That is a description which is just as relevant today, whether you are a slave to a factory production line or to a computer in a call centre. [2]

The World Isn't Flat
The vision of the globalized world that Thomas Friedman offers in his book [The World is Flat - A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century] is a rose-tinted, cheery, bullish version, one that has little to do with reality, according to the authors.

Friedman's 'golf course account' of globalization revels in accounts of successful businesses and people. Friedman proffers a vision of a globalized world that has an essentially 'flat' meritocratic global playing field, and provides limitless opportunities for profit for people who are intelligent or who choose to invest in schooling.

He seasons his 'analysis' with accounts of his unmitigated fascination with gadgetry, and unbridled confidence in technology. Friedman's conjuring of this globalized world is in fact so utopic that even the familiar hindersome 'olive tree' is missing.

Only rearing up its head in the Middle East to let you in on the fact that its only the backward culture that's holding the Arab civilization back from the wonderful riches of the flat world.
There are no losers in Friedman's flat world - only people for whom it may take a little longer to get their piece of the pie, for example the Chinese sweatshop worker who saves up to educate his kids who then go on to get better jobs and better pay. Of course, Friedman is wrong.

Globalization is a highly complex interaction of forces. Not only does it exhibit integration, it also exhibits disintegration. It is rooted in cooperation--and it is rooted in violence.
For some, it represents the triumph of free-market capitalism over communism, ushering in democracy, world peace and universal prosperity.

For others, it represents conflict, unbridled greed, deregulated corporate power, and an utter disregard for humanity."

There are the shrinking white collar jobs, the vanishing health and retirement benefits, and the simultaneous mass exploitation of the poor in the global third world.

This attrition, this slide to the bottom, on both sides of the globe, argue the authors, is due to one single mechanism - the transnational corporations whose gargantuan profits have been fuelled by leeching the job security from the white collar workers in the west and extorting labor and resources from the unprivileged.

The Profits of Exploitation
Wal-Mart—the largest private retailer in the United States—is about to completely change the system it uses for scheduling workers’ shifts.

Last year, the company implemented the new system for a portion of its workers, including cashiers and office personnel. This year, Wal-Mart will begin using the system for all of its 1.3 million workers.

The system, developed by Kronos Inc., uses data from previous years along with new information on individual store sales, transactions, units sold and customer traffic to create a "cost-cutting" schedule.

Workers will now be asked to work shifts during those times in which potential profits are the highest.

Wal-Mart is not alone in implementing the so-called scheduling optimization system. Payless Shoe Source expects to have this system in 300 of its 4,000 stores by the end of January 2007. RadioShack and Mervyns are also implementing the new system.

Nikki Baird of Forrester Research said, "There's been a new push for labor optimization."
"Labor optimization" is a euphemism for an attack on worker rights. While the implementation of this system is a new tactic in the bosses’ constant drive to increase the exploitation of workers, it is anything but a new push.

The bosses must compete with each other to constantly increase the rate of profit. They consistently work to undermine workers’ job stability, wages and benefits while increasing their workloads.

Wal-Mart is also an example of the criminality of the entire capitalist class. Along with hundreds of other companies like it, Wal-Mart is guilty of stealing millions of dollars in unpaid wages and benefits from workers. [4]

The Corporate Cube-Farm
It is the right of working people to have jobs free of exploitation.
The sweat shop of old has now become the corporate cube-farm where employees are still required to work long hours without sufficient pay.
Instead of paying workers by the hour, the corporations came up with the ego-assuaging idea of designating nearly all positions as "salaried" which means they are free of overtime costs.
Workers are laid off, their pensions diverted to deceptive "401K" plans that often means they will not be free to retire ~ ever.

CEOs of corporations drive Jaguars and send their kids to Harvard while low-wage workers wonder how to feed their kids and get medical care.

Most people at all ranges of the socio-economic scale work long hours, denying them adequate time to nurture their family lives.

Kids are stuck in impersonal day care centers where mothers and fathers have little input into their upbringing. Day care workers promote capitalistic and consumerist values to the children.
Now we go into the next phase of worker exploitation called "globalization". Worker security is forfeited in the name of corporate profit while workers in third world countries are exploited without even the minimal protections of workers in the US.

The propaganda machine cranks out endless justifications, all of them cloaked in positive language, to make this sound like "progress". [5]

The Unending Benefits of Capitalism [for a Few]
In December, 2006, Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street financial services company, announced a sixteen and a half billion dollar bonus for its 26,500 employees, an average of $623,418 per employee. Their newly appointed CEO received a bonus of $52,000,000.
With the rain of riches falling upon Wall Street these days, the practice of distributing rewards at the top is picking up steam.

CEOs and executives at Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley are receiving bonuses as high as $60 million. The manna from heaven continues to fall, and the optimists just want to let the good times roll. They see the benefits of Capitalism unending. Halleluiah! We're on a bonus march!
If Karl Marx were alive and well today, and living in America, he might not even recognize the economic system that he critiqued and analyzed in Das Kapital, when he wrote it in 1867. It wasn't a bad call.

Starting with primitive capital accumulation to feed the Industrial Revolution, small commodity production developed. It was a snowball rolling down hill. Mergers and acquisitions were the inevitable result.

Monopoly, imperialism and war followed, stimulated by the grab for raw materials from less developed areas around the world. The creation of surplus value and profit, of course, was the key to it all.

Marx might not have believed the working class would have allowed it to have gotten this bad. The amount of profit being raked in by the corporate class is obscene. It certainly would have boggled his mind.

The coming world economic crisis is long past due. It wouldn't be just a stock market crash. It would be the total collapse of the house-of-cards still called "capitalism" today.
All that is needed is a single spark-like China calling in its paper-the debt that the US has accumulated to finance the Iraq war and other catastrophes.

When the collapse comes, the question is, will there be enough time and enough of the natural world left to start rebuilding a new kind of society that has been demonized for generations called "socialism".

Discovering Time Travel in Bratislava

Worth knowing if you are visiting...

Guidebooks mentioning Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, spend more ink extolling the pastoral charms of the surrounding countryside — the wineries, the former Habsburg hunting lodges, the ceramics factories — than on the city itself. Sketched out in broad strokes with references to monuments like the turreted castle that looms over the Danube, Bratislava often comes off sounding like an Austro-Hungarian also-ran.

What the books don't evoke are the sensations that one is both stepping back in time and leaping into the future while strolling through the city's compact historic center.

Main streets like Panska and Michalska are lined with giddy Baroque palaces in shades of marigold and lavender. Onion-domed turrets and spires rise above churches, a grand opera house draws music lovers from neighboring Austria and fin de siècle coffee houses fill up in late afternoon.

Less trafficked lanes, like Kapitulska, look like 19th-century paintings, nary a power line in sight. The street ends with the soaring verticality of St. Martin's Cathedral, a Gothic church consecrated in 1452 that has tremendous historic importance — 11 monarchs, including Maria Theresa, were crowned there from 1563 to 1830.

Yet amid this Old World backdrop there is the buzz of a city brimming with exuberance. With its combination of well-worn cobblestones by day and well-mixed cocktails after dark, Bratislava has become a popular weekend destination for a free-spirited crowd from across Europe and beyond.

"I've been elsewhere in the region, and the amazing thing about Bratislava is that you have these glorious buildings and historic context, but then you've got boutiques like this one tucked into them," said a visiting Briton, John Strachan, who was on a shopping spree with his girlfriend at the new Dana Kleinert boutique on Venturska Street. "And the flight from London cost all of about £50," he added.

Mr. Strachan is not alone in taking advantage of cheap fares from cities like London or Berlin. Indeed, all across the city, Bratislavans are managing to attract visitors with an improbable variety of enterprises tucked into those glorious buildings.

From their courtyards, multiple doors and passageways wind through former palaces leading to lively beer gardens, shops selling etched glassware, art galleries, a wine museum or a Turkish-style tearoom that also stocks seven varieties of Argentine maté. Weather permitting, the action spills out into the courtyards and streets.

"It's amazing how far the city has come in a little more than a decade," said Juraj Alner, a Slovakian journalist who moved to the city with his family in 1948. "There used to be no life here: you didn't go out because there was nowhere to go. Now you can't even cross the streets of the old town in the summer for all the packed outdoor cafes."

Even the remnants of those dark days are up for reappraisal. The Novy Most, or New Bridge, built in 1972 by the Soviet-backed government, is easily Bratislava's most visible structure. For many, the enormous asymmetrical bridge is an eyesore that destroyed the scale and perspective of the riverfront along with some historically important neighborhoods, like the ancient Jewish quarter. But for anyone with a taste for chunky modernism and architectural audacity, the bridge holds some appeal.

Last summer that appeal became easier to savor when the discus-shaped observation deck atop its tower was converted from a kitsch coffee shop to a swanky cocktail lounge and restaurant called UFO. Most visitors there stick to the liquid menu, which includes concoctions with names like Tiger's Milk or Grapeful Dead.

While sobriety is not exactly illegal, liquor does seem to lubricate a fair amount of the local interaction. Before the napkin is in your lap, the jingling aperitif cart will have pulled up tableside at Slovenska Restauracia, where waiters wear Slovakian folk dress and trellised walls are laden with ceramics and braids of garlic and peppers. In late November, I joined the locals in quaffing a borovicka, a potent juniper-flavored liqueur served in traditional long-necked, pot-bellied shot glasses that seem designed to get as much booze into your system as quickly as possible. I downshifted to a glass of the hearty local red wine to accompany a meal of fragrant garlic soup and creamy turkey paprikash.

At neighboring tables, business deals were going down in English, Slovak, German, French and Chinese. From the number of high-end brands like D & G, MaxMara and Gucci appearing in store windows it would seem that business is booming.

"Most of those shops came in with the E.U.," one local said, referring to the Slovak Republic's entry into the European Union in May 2004.

But Bratislava, which has actually been the capital of modern Slovakia since 1968, when the Soviet-bloc Czechoslovakia decentralized into a federation, could teach a master class in European relations. The city and the country have been adapting to the shifting cultural and political landscape for a thousand years.

Bratislava, known as Pressburg before 1919, sits at a strategic crossroads between Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Home to several universities, the city has long had a rich intellectual and cultural life — as when the 6-year-old Mozart played for Maria Theresa in the stunning Palffy Palace.

The palace is now home to the City Art Gallery, which recently inaugurated "Passage," an installation by the Slovakian artist Mantej Kren, which uses mirrors to expand stacks of books into an infinite library — a fitting image for a city of learning.

BEYOND the City Art Gallery, Bratislava also has the Slovak National Gallery, which displays mostly paintings and betrays the Austro-Hungarian predilection for Dutch artists. Bratislava Castle is home to several museums, including one that exhibits relics of the region's Celtic, Roman and Moravian past; another features musical instruments, clocks, arms and armor and Slovakian furniture.

After dark, the modern-day mix of cultures gets shaken up like a good apple martini in the city's heaving night scene.

"Bratislava deserves its reputation as a party destination," said Eva Boskovicova, who runs the Botel Gracia, a 29-room hotel on a former steamer moored near the New Bridge. "We do get a lot of British stag parties," she added.

Nearby is the truly underground Subclub, a former nuclear fallout shelter tunneled into the castle foundations. It is now trance and techno-music central, where narrow tunnels lead to a large vaulted chamber in which the D.J. and dance floor take the place of whatever accommodation the communist government had in mind for itself in case of nuclear Armageddon.

Those more interested in the first two activities may want to linger after dessert at restaurants like Cajway, which practically turn into clubs when the kitchens close around 10 p.m. and D.J.'s, African drummers or jazz musicians turn up the volume and diners end up dancing among the tables.

As for the surrounding countryside, excursions can be made to the Devin Castle, a center of the Moravian Empire in the ninth century. There are also wineries and delicately painted ceramics to buy in the hamlets of the Little Carpathian Mountains.

But now that post-Soviet Bratislava is in full bloom, the surrounding hills may not beckon quite so loudly.

Slovak PM riding high on popular measures

this says it all really...

By Alan Crosby and Peter Laca

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Many Slovaks began the year with a little extra cash in their pockets thanks to a new leftist government which has brought few of the dire consequences economic analysts warned of six months ago.

Prime Minister Robert Fico, at 42 the country's youngest leader, rose to power after a June election that saw citizens turn their backs on a reformist government that took them from political outcasts to EU members during its eight-year rule.

He promised to reverse many of that government's reforms that were widely praised by foreign investors and analysts but hit ordinary Slovaks in this mainly rural country hard.

The charismatic former human rights lawyer promised to scrap a flat tax system, give pensioners Christmas bonuses, eradicate health service user fees and fight to reduce the large profits made by banks and utility companies.

Analysts said the moves would scare off foreign investors and hit the very open economy and possibly derail plans to adopt the euro in 2009. But six months into governing Fico has toned down his rhetoric and turned from populist to pragmatist.

"When he came to power, he huffed and he puffed," said one EU diplomat based in the capital Bratislava, "but he hasn't blown the house down. Not even close. He's shown a pragmatic side while still giving his core electorate something as well."

To be sure, Fico has managed to unnerve foreign investors, raise eyebrows in the EU and even anger his own coalition partners.

He canceled the $357 million sale -- agreed by the previous government of centre-right Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda -- of the country's largest airport to a consortium led by Vienna airport operator Flughafen Wien.

He pushed the energy regulator to approve lower than requested hikes in gas and electricity prices, and then adopted legislation strengthening the regulator for future decisions.

CHRISTMAS BONUSES

And as pensioners found out, he also approved their Christmas bonuses, a wildly popular move made thanks to the tax revenue windfall inherited from the strong economy brought about by the previous cabinet.

"I did not like the previous government, we did not understand Dzurinda, and he did not understand us. This one is much more attentive to how common people live," said 56-year-old pensioner Magdalena Moravova.

The Dzurinda government was the darling of foreign investors, who poured billions into the economy which is now growing at close to double digits.

The hectic privatization schedule angered Fico, who felt the country was being sold to outsiders on the cheap and to the benefit of a few.

Fico has targeted foreign firms that had bought up Slovak assets -- especially in the banking sector and utilities -- saying they were making a windfall profit on the back of ordinary citizens.

He told the Italian utility Enel, which owns dominant electricity producer Slovenske Elektrarne, that if it did not like changes he wanted to make to a previously signed $2.7 billion privatization contract, it was welcome to leave.

But he later backed down in that fight, and has also left in place the flat tax system that attracted many foreign firms.

Instead, he tweaked other parts of tax laws to help generate funds needed to offset increased social spending and still keep the public sector deficit in line with "Maastricht criteria" needed for Slovakia to adopt the euro in 2009 as planned.

The result, said Samuel Abraham, editor of a Bratislava political quarterly magazine, is that Fico has used the benefits of the booming economy built up by the previous government to make pointed statements to his electorate while maintaining an environment friendly for foreign investors.

And according to opinion polls, Fico's Smer remains by far the single most popular party.

"The government has taken steps that may look small, but they were all visible and brought a message to the people," he said. "This is a very populist government, and it must do things that resonate with people."

finally a sensible article about the situation in Slovakia in the western press

Slovakia's Reforms Deserve Second Look

The go-slow approach of the country's premier has been criticized, but it appears necessary to correct past mistakes and chart a better way forward

by Robert Anderson

Central Europeans have become used to permanent revolution over the past 17 years and are still being urged to make further reforms to catch up with Western Europe and cope with global competition. Any politician who questions this is condemned as "anti-reform," as if that ends the argument.

Reform should be a banned word for journalists covering central Europe. Its unqualified use implies that the tide is going only one way and that you can either go with the flow - preferably as speedily as possible, catching the wave and being borne aloft - or you can futilely rail against it, march into the waves and drown.

But there is not just one model that central European societies must adopt. Western Europe has diverse economic models ranging from the United Kingdom's free market to the French social market, and it is a political decision which one a new member should adopt. To demand "reforms" begs the question of which direction the reforms should be heading.

Before applauding reforms one must also examine the content, to see if they are really needed and well prepared, as well as the timing, because it can sometimes be better both politically and economically for governments to take their time introducing complex and painful changes.

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s leftist premier since July, has suffered more than most from this simplistic misperception of reform.

His rightwing predecessor, Mikulas Dzurinda, pushed through the most radical reform program in the region. Economists and business people were so enamored that they cited Slovakia as a model for sclerotic Western Europe. Conversely, Fico was disparaged as the anti-reform candidate who would try to turn the clock back.

Business was therefore shocked by the scale of Fico’s victory and his decision to opt for the "worst case" scenario of a coalition of his Smer movement and two nationalist fringe parties.

Fico’s initial lukewarm commitment to adopting the euro in 2009 led to a plunge in the value of the Slovak crown at the end of June. The central bank spent more than 3 billion euros - around one quarter of its reserves - trying to arrest the crown’s fall before Fico and his business-friendly finance minister, Jan Pociatek, were able to restore confidence in the euro timetable.

Since that inauspicious start the worst fears have not been realized. Many of Fico’s campaign promises have been cut back and the reform framework has been preserved. For example, the flat income tax has been maintained, though personal allowances have been reformed to force high earners to pay more tax.

The crown is now at record levels and the rating agency Moody’s even increased Slovakia’s credit rating in October to A1. The country is likely to be chosen as the site of a huge new LCD plant by Samsung, demonstrating that foreign investors remain bullish.

Economists and business people now damn Fico with faint praise, commending him for making only minor changes to Dzurinda’s reforms, as if anything his government did would necessarily be negative. They now either see his government as a giant waste of time or, if they are charitable, as a period when the country treads water and catches its breath before another giant wave of reforms.

TRIED AND FAILED
This overlooks first of all the problems with Dzurinda’s reforms. Many were successful but others, notably in the more complex areas of health care, education, and welfare, either failed or created huge discontent or both.

For example, long-term unemployed - primarily Roma - were forced to do unskilled manual work just to receive a lower level of benefits than they had previously been entitled to. The aim was to cut welfare spending and improve incentives to work. However, given that many Roma live in areas of very high unemployment and discrimination, this simply deepened poverty and alienation.

The reforms were also shallow because the Dzurinda government did not tackle the issue of how they would be administered. The impact of the reforms was eroded by a state administration and local government that remained overstaffed, inefficient, and obstructive. Ironically for a government that liked to boast about attracting foreign investment, a good example of this is Sario, the investment promotion agency, which remains a pale shadow of CzechInvest, its Czech counterpart.

The reforms also ignored the chronic unemployment and poverty in eastern Slovakia. Bratislava and western Slovakia boomed, but for those in the east migration was the only way out. Only at the very end of his government did Dzurinda target investment incentives at eastern Slovakia and accelerate motorway building to link it the west.

Using the healthy economy he has inherited from Dzurinda, Fico plans both to improve the reforms and address problems that have been neglected. For example, social benefits are being increased to tackle poverty, while Pociatek plans big cuts in state administration through an ambitious e-government revolution.

In other fields Fico’s party - true to its Slovak name - plans to go in a different direction altogether. The flawed and unpopular health-care reform has already been canceled, while next year the Social Affairs Ministry should reform Dzurinda’s liberal labor law, aiming to restore workers’ and trade union rights and to maintain the flexibility that employers crave.

Overall, Fico’s reforms will be much more modest than Dzurinda’s, but it is often essential to pause in order to assess and correct the impact of reforms and to build popular support for the next step.

It should not be forgotten that Dzurinda never really had a popular mandate for his bold reform program. Most of the reforms were at best sketchy before his coalition’s narrow election victory. His government rushed the implementation of the reforms because it knew it would never have a second chance.

By contrast, Fico now enjoys record electoral support and is in a strong position to win the next election and push through further reforms at a time and pace of his own choosing.

Robert Anderson is a Prague-based correspondent for the Financial Times. The opinions expressed in this article represent his personal views.

Free people or free capital? Does money have rights?

I agree with Adam Smith that free movement of people is a core component of
free trade. As for free movement of capital, that's a totally different
matter. Unlike persons of flesh and blood, capital has no rights, at least
by Enlightenment/classical liberal standards. As soon as we bring up the
matter of free movement of capital, we have to face the fact that while
people are in principle at least equal in rights, in a just society, talk
of capital conceals the reality: we are speaking of owners of capital, who
are vastly unequal in power, naturally.
In the real world, free movement of capital entails radical restriction of
democracy, for obvious reasons that have long been well understood.
Speaking of capital and labour as if they were on a par is so hopelessly
misleading that sensible discussion is impossible in these terms.

State vs. Private sector

An old interview with a great economist. What he says has been common sense since the 1930es until the mid 90es. Its strange how this view would be seen as leftist these days... Especially if the same words were uttered by a politician anywhere in europe including Slovakia but particularly in the english speaking countries.

Government and the Market:
INTERVIEWER: Who knows best? government or the free-market system?

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH: I have no doubt on that. The correct balance is pragmatic. If the market system, as you call it, has its own things that it does very well, no one could question, for example, its ability to make automobiles or grow food or provide a large part of the substance of life. But then there's an area where it doesn't work, and the distinction between
the areas where it works and the areas where it doesn't work is the basis of sound policy.

We're not, as we talk, in the United States having a big, sometimes quite mindless, argument about education. Everybody agrees that education is a public service, or almost everybody, and has to be handled, financed by the state, by the government. On the other hand, there's nobody, so far as I'm aware, suggesting that the state should take over the manufacture of automobiles, which I just mentioned, or farm products, or a wide range of other things. So it's a practical judgment that has to be made in the specific case, and it doesn't lend itself to the kind of broad theory implied in your question.

INTERVIEWER: At the end of the day, is morality at the heart of economics?
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH: No, but it can be. We're talking today in a very rich country, at a very rich time, and at the time we talk a large part of the American population, 10, 15 percent, are living below the level of enjoyment. They're hungry, they're ill housed, they are sick, and very largely as the result of the lack of income, mostly as the result of the lack of income. I would like to see a minimum income for everybody so that you have a life-supporting safety net. I think it's something a rich country like the United States can afford. And I'm not the only one with that view. Conservatives will say that people endowed [that way] won't work. Well, that's quite possible, but I'm impressed with the fact that leisure, if you're rich enough, is also a very good thing. In the past, often I've walked through Harvard Yard and have had one of my colleagues say to me, "Ken, aren't you working too hard?" Excessive work, leisure can be very good for a college professor, or somebody of affluence. Work can be unnecessary.

SRAMKO: Slovakia Will Meet Maastricht Inflation Criterion

Slovakia Will Meet Maastricht Inflation Criterion, Says NBS Governor The National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) estimates the reference inflation level in 2008, which Slovakia should not exceed with regard to its ambition to join the eurozone in 2009, at 2.8 percent. In the monitored period in the spring of 2008 the central bank expects the average inflation in Slovakia to be at 2.5 percent, NBS Governor Ivan Sramko said. The central bank's predictions do not count with further prepared changes in regulated prices that significantly influence the development of headline inflation. After inclusion of the declared drop of natural gas prices for households, the growth rate of consumer prices could be even lower. We could thus meet the Maastricht inflation criterion, although it still remains the most difficult hurdle on the way to eurozone, stated Mr. Sramko. Despite expectations of positive changes, Mr. Sramko still sees a risk in regulated prices of energy.

1995-1997 Meciar's handiwork

"In the period between 1995 and 1997, the board of the NPF decided on 887 direct sales, transfers of shares of state companies or state asset transfers with a total book value of SKK 103bn (US $3 billion at the time). The purchase price was, however, only 48 per cent of the book value. During the entire period, actual NPF privatisation-related revenues reached only 28.7 per cent of the book value of privatised assets.2 Opportunities for corruption and unlawful conduct were therefore mostly linked to the direct sales of privatised property where the NPF board exercised complete discretion over sales of some of the largest enterprises in Slovakia behind a curtain of secrecy. "

The good stuff is always on the PDFs ;)
read the case study by Transparency International PDF

warning

if i hear the sequence of words: " you know the world has changed after September the 11th" once more i ll smack the person that said it!

War on tossers

Transparency International Corruption index

For countries like Italy, ranked 45th, the index provides an annual rebuke, and confirmation that corruption can thrive even without the alibi of poverty. USA is now as corrupt as the Latin American nation of Chile this year's ranking was a fresh embarrassment (Well done Bushy and Republicans!).

interesting article on

The full table (Slovakia is becoming less and less corrupt year after year, its comparable to Czechia and improving fast. For example it has now surpassed Greece in clean dealing by far and last year it was quite a few places behind Greece)

On the table on the right i was fascinated to find that Iraq has become even more corrupt year after year after the americans arrived... (maybe the US index position is not so bad because all the corrupt republican contributors are busy in Iraq corrupting it further and doing "business")



THE FULL TIS CORRUPTION INDEX 2006
the higher up the list a country is the "cleaner" it is

Country Rank

Country

2006 CPI Score

Surveys used

Confidence range

1	Finland	9.6	7	9.4 - 9.7
1	Iceland	9.6	6	9.5 - 9.7
1	New Zealand	9.6	7	9.4 - 9.6
4	Denmark	9.5	7	9.4 - 9.6
5	Singapore	9.4	9	9.2 - 9.5
6	Sweden	9.2	7	9.0 - 9.3
7	Switzerland	9.1	7	8.9 - 9.2
8	Norway	8.8	7	8.4 - 9.1
9	Australia	8.7	8	8.3 - 9.0
9	Netherlands	8.7	7	8.3 - 9.0
11	Austria	8.6	7	8.2 - 8.9
11	Luxembourg	8.6	6	8.1 - 9.0
11	United Kingdom	8.6	7	8.2 - 8.9
14	Canada	8.5	7	8.0 - 8.9
15	Hong Kong	8.3	9	7.7 - 8.8
16	Germany	8.0	7	7.8 - 8.4
17	Japan	7.6	9	7.0 - 8.1
18	France	7.4	7	6.7 - 7.8
18	Ireland	7.4	7	6.7 - 7.9
20	Belgium	7.3	7	6.6 - 7.9
20	Chile	7.3	7	6.6 - 7.6
20	USA	7.3	8	6.6 - 7.8
23	Spain	6.8	7	6.3 - 7.2
24	Barbados	6.7	4	6.0 - 7.2
24	Estonia	6.7	8	6.1 - 7.4
26	Macao	6.6	3	5.4 - 7.1
26	Portugal	6.6	7	5.9 - 7.3
28	Malta	6.4	4	5.4 - 7.3
28	Slovenia	6.4	8	5.7 - 7.0
28	Uruguay	6.4	5	5.9 - 7.0
31	United Arab Emirates	6.2	5	5.6 - 6.9
32	Bhutan	6.0	3	4.1 - 7.3
32	Qatar	6.0	5	5.6 - 6.5
34	Israel	5.9	7	5.2 - 6.5
34	Taiwan	5.9	9	5.6 - 6.2
36	Bahrain	5.7	5	5.3 - 6.2
37	Botswana	5.6	6	4.8 - 6.6
37	Cyprus	5.6	4	5.2 - 5.9
39	Oman	5.4	3	4.1 - 6.2
40	Jordan	5.3	7	4.5 - 5.7
41	Hungary	5.2	8	5.0 - 5.4
42	Mauritius	5.1	5	4.1 - 6.3
42	South Korea	5.1	9	4.7 - 5.5
44	Malaysia	5.0	9	4.5 - 5.5
45	Italy	4.9	7	4.4 - 5.4
46	Czech Republic	4.8	8	4.4 - 5.2
46	Kuwait	4.8	5	4.0 - 5.4
46	Lithuania	4.8	6	4.2 - 5.6
49	Latvia	4.7	6	4.0 - 5.5
49	Slovakia	4.7	8	4.3- 5.2
51	South Africa	4.6	8	4.1 - 5.1
51	Tunisia	4.6	5	3.9 - 5.6
53	Dominica	4.5	3	3.5 - 5.3
54	Greece	4.4	7	3.9 - 5.0
55	Costa Rica	4.1	5	3.3 - 4.8
55	Namibia	4.1	6	3.6 - 4.9
57	Bulgaria	4.0	7	3.4 - 4.8
57	El Salvador	4.0	5	3.2 - 4.8
59	Colombia	3.9	7	3.5 - 4.7
60	Turkey	3.8	7	3.3 - 4.2
61	Jamaica	3.7	5	3.4 - 4.0
61	Poland	3.7	8	3.2 - 4.4
63	Lebanon	3.6	3	3.2 - 3.8
63	Seychelles	3.6	3	3.2 - 3.8
63	Thailand	3.6	9	3.2 - 3.9
66	Belize	3.5	3	2.3 - 4.0
66	Cuba	3.5	3	1.8 - 4.7
66	Grenada	3.5	3	2.3 - 4.1
69	Croatia	3.4	7	3.1 - 3.7
70	Brazil	3.3	7	3.1 - 3.6
70	China	3.3	9	3.0 - 3.6
70	Egypt	3.3	6	3.0 - 3.7
70	Ghana	3.3	6	3.0 - 3.6
70	India	3.3	10	3.1 - 3.6
70	Mexico	3.3	7	3.1 - 3.4
70	Peru	3.3	5	2.8 - 3.8
70	Saudi Arabia	3.3	3	2.2 - 3.7
70	Senegal	3.3	5	2.8 - 3.7
79	Burkina Faso	3.2	5	2.8 - 3.6
79	Lesotho	3.2	5	2.9 - 3.6
79	Moldova	3.2	7	2.7 - 3.8
79	Morocco	3.2	6	2.8 - 3.5
79	Trinidad and Tobago	3.2	5	2.8 - 3.6
84	Algeria	3.1	5	2.7 - 3.6
84	Madagascar	3.1	5	2.3 - 3.7
84	Mauritania	3.1	4	2.1 - 3.7
84	Panama	3.1	5	2.8 - 3.3
84	Romania	3.1	8	3.0 - 3.2
84	Sri Lanka	3.1	6	2.7 - 3.5
90	Gabon	3.0	4	2.4 - 3.3
90	Serbia	3.0	7	2.7 - 3.3
90	Suriname	3.0	4	2.7 - 3.3
93	Argentina	2.9	7	2.7 - 3.2
93	Armenia	2.9	6	2.7 - 3.0
93	Bosnia and Herzgegovina	2.9	6	2.7 - 3.1
93	Eritrea	2.9	3	2.2 - 3.5
93	Syria	2.9	3	2.3 - 3.2
93	Tanzania	2.9	7	2.7 - 3.1
99	Dominican Republic	2.8	5	2.4 - 3.2
99	Georgia	2.8	6	2.5 - 3.0
99	Mali	2.8	7	2.5 - 3.3
99	Mongolia	2.8	5	2.3 - 3.4
99	Mozambique	2.8	7	2.5 - 3.0
99	Ukraine	2.8	6	2.5 - 3.0
105	Bolivia	2.7	6	2.4 - 3.0
105	Iran	2.7	3	2.3 - 3.1
105	Libya	2.7	3	2.4 - 3.2
105	Macedonia	2.7	6	2.6 - 2.9
105	Malawi	2.7	7	2.5 - 3.0
105	Uganda	2.7	7	2.4 - 3.0
111	Albania	2.6	5	2.4 - 2.7
111	Guatemala	2.6	5	2.3 - 3.0
111	Kazakhstan	2.6	6	2.3 - 2.8
111	Laos	2.6	4	2.0 - 3.1
111	Nicaragua	2.6	6	2.4 - 2.9
111	Paraguay	2.6	5	2.2 - 3.3
111	Timor-Leste	2.6	3	2.3 - 3.0
111	Viet Nam	2.6	8	2.4 - 2.9
111	Yemen	2.6	4	2.4 - 2.7
111	Zambia	2.6	6	2.1 - 3.0
121	Benin	2.5	6	2.1 - 2.9
121	Gambia	2.5	6	2.3 - 2.8
121	Guyana	2.5	5	2.2 - 2.6
121	Honduras	2.5	6	2.4 - 2.7
121	Nepal	2.5	5	2.3 - 2.9
121	Phillipines	2.5	9	2.3 - 2.8
121	Russia	2.5	8	2.3 - 2.7
121	Rwanda	2.5	3	2.3 - 2.6
121	Swaziland	2.5	3	2.2 - 2.7
130	Azerbaijan	2.4	7	2.2 - 2.6
130	Burundi	2.4	5	2.2 - 2.6
130	Central African Republic	2.4	3	2.2 - 2.5
130	Ethiopia	2.4	7	2.2 - 2.6
130	Indonesia	2.4	10	2.2 - 2.6
130	Papua New Guinea	2.4	4	2.3 - 2.6
130	Togo	2.4	3	1.9 - 2.6
130	Zimbabwe	2.4	7	2.0 - 2.8
138	Cameroon	2.3	7	2.1 - 2.5
138	Ecuador	2.3	5	2.2 - 2.5
138	Niger	2.3	5	2.1 - 2.6
138	Venezuela	2.3	7	2.2 - 2.4
142	Angola	2.2	5	1.9 - 2.4
142	Congo, Republic	2.2	4	2.2 - 2.3
142	Kenya	2.2	7	2.0 - 2.4
142	Kyrgyzstan	2.2	6	2.0 - 2.6
142	Nigeria	2.2	7	2.0 - 2.3
142	Pakistan	2.2	6	2.0 - 2.4
142	Sierra Leone	2.2	3	2.2 - 2.3
142	Tajikistan	2.2	6	2.0 - 2.4
142	Turkmenistan	2.2	4	1.9 - 2.5
151	Belarus	2.1	4	1.9 - 2.2
151	Cambodia	2.1	6	1.9 - 2.4
151	Côte d´Ivoire	2.1	4	2.0 - 2.2
151	Equatorial Guinea	2.1	3	1.7 - 2.2
151	Uzbekistan	2.1	5	1.8 - 2.2
156	Bangladesh	2.0	6	1.7 - 2.2
156	Chad	2.0	6	1.8 - 2.3
156	Congo, Democratic Republic	2.0	4	1.8 - 2.2
156	Sudan	2.0	4	1.8 - 2.2
160	Guinea	1.9	3	1.7 - 2.1
160	Iraq	1.9	3	1.6 - 2.1
160	Myanmar	1.9	3	1.8 - 2.3
163	Haiti	1.8	3	1.7 - 1.8

U.S. companies are reviving Soviet-era factories—and winning new markets

Alcoa Inc.'s AA mile-long rolling mill south of Budapest seems like a throwback to the Soviet era. The sun struggles to penetrate smudged skylights. Massive Russian-made machines from the 1960s grind away amid clouds of steam. Forklifts the size of flatbed trucks rumble by, stacking coils of aluminum sheeting like giant rolls of toilet paper.

Yet the 65-year-old factory in the city of Szekesfehervar isn't the dinosaur it appears to be. Those brutish Russian machines, long since retrofitted with computer controls and precision rollers, need just 15 minutes to reduce an ingot the size of a sofa to a roll of sheeting a few millimeters thick. In fact, Alcoa Inc. is so pleased with its Hungarian operations that it's spending $83 million to add more modern equipment to the plant and make more sophisticated products. "The investment projects show our long-term commitment," says Bela Forgo, Alcoa's country manager for Hungary.

Across Central Europe, U.S. companies are getting great mileage out of old factories they bought on the cheap. That these soot-stained giants are worth something may come as a surprise to anyone who has spent much time in the former Warsaw Pact region. The countryside is still littered with the carcasses of factories that didn't survive the transition to market economics. But some were always more competitive than they looked.

STEAM TURBINES
Last year, electricity producer AES Corp. AES converted two 1950s-era coal-fired plants in Hungary to generate power from agricultural waste such as sawdust or sunflower seed shells. While AES added equipment to burn the new fuels, Communist-era steam turbines still turn the generators. "We've managed to breathe some new life into those businesses," says John McLaren, president of Arlington (Va.)-based AES's European and African operations. And Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. has become a major player in Europe with its purchase of a huge steel complex in Slovakia in 2000 and another in Serbia in 2003. In the second quarter, its European operations generated $188 million in profits--one-third of U.S. Steel's total operating income.

Central Europe's cast-offs have helped U.S. companies conquer a piece of the Continent that might otherwise have eluded them. General Electric Co. GE was an also-ran in European lighting before it purchased Hungarian bulb maker Tungsram in 1989. Now GE is No. 3, with 12% of the market. And workers there have proved more adaptable than they're sometimes given credit for. "Hungary is an attractive place not only because assets could be bought from the government, but also because it has a good workforce," says Istvan Szini, chairman of GE's Hungary unit. Now Hungary is home to one of GE's two main centers for lighting research and development.

Modernizing these plants hasn't been cheap, but it has turned out to be money well spent. Alcoa has laid out $900 million in Hungary on both acquisition costs and new gear. Today the original brick buildings are filled with Japanese robots and German equipment. U.S. Steel last year invested $249 million in Slovakia and Serbia, with much of that used to meet European Union pollution standards. But profits from the mill were twice that. "Prior to these acquisitions we had some shipments into Europe but not many," says David H. Lohr, president of U.S. Steel Kosice. "This has been a major step in learning about this market."

Moronic lobbying pt.2

The Mor(m)ons are lobbying again. God needs your money, do you know how much it costs to run heaven... ?

Just click the link

Organised religion = profit making out of people's fears and weaknesses.

piss of back to Utah you inbreds

While sitting on his Texas ranch pondering the state of women's rights around the world, George W. need not look as far as Afghanistan. In his "W is for Women" campaign Bush argued that under the Taliban, a regime once supported by the American government, women's rights in Afghanistan were in peril: Afghani women had lost their right to education, their right freedom of movement, and their right to basic health, to name a few.

In Utah slightly northwest of the Bush homestead the effects of fundamentalist Christianity on women have a terrifyingly similar resonance. In many parts of Utah, within the various extremists sects of Fundamentalist Christians, women are denied education, they are forced to marry at a young age, they are victims of horrific cycles of abuse- physical and emotional, and they live in absolute poverty dependent on the state or their spouse for support.

Andrea Moore-Emmett's newly released book God's Brothel tells the story of 18 women who escaped the horrors of polygamous, abusive relationships in the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and Mormon communities. Moore-Emmett, born and raised in the Mormon faith, provides a space for insiders' to tell their expository accounts of the sexual slavery and abuse rampant in much of Utah, parts of Missouri, Wyoming, and California; states where polygamy is illegal, but tolerated.

The government of Abraham Lincoln passed legislation criminalizing polygamy. In 1856, the Republican Party pledged to abolish the "twin relics of barbarism - polygamy and slavery". In fact, these policies and the prevalence of polygamy prevented then Utah from gaining statehood.

Church leaders of the Mormon faith, founded in 1843 by Joseph Smith, fiercely argued that polygamy was protected in the Constitution under the right to practice religion freely. On several occasions, the church appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn convictions of their community members, and moreover, to recognize the banishment of polygamy as unconstitutional. According to the Mormon scriptures Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132, multiple marriages are necessary for reverence: "no men can ever attain the fullness of exaltation… if he does not accept the principle of taking on multiple wives." (in Moore-Emmett, p.21) In 1879, in George Reynolds versus the United Stated, the court ruled that the federal law against polygamy was constitutional. The underlying logic was that Americans could believe whatever they wanted so long as they did not practice a belief that violated the law. Mormon followers at the time refused to accept the state's interference and continued their practice.

The passing of the Edmund Tucker Act in 1887 spurred major crusades (called cohab hunts) and attacks against polygamists. In response to searches and arrests Mormons went into hiding or used the Mormon underground to relocate to Mexico or Canada. In 1890, Church President Wilford Woodruff, issued a Manifesto "pledging to congress that Mormons had given up polygamy, thus paving the way to Statehood". (in Moore-Emmett, p.21) And this caused a great divide within the faithful and paved the way to the splintering of smaller, more extreme sects. Moore- Emmett describes at least 15 of these sects that have membership groups that total from 30,000 to 100,000. With their policy that wedded women must have one child per year, these numbers are growing so rapidly accurate counts are difficult.

The women whose stories are told in the book reveal common trends of sexual abuse, forced marriage including that of minors, and the denial of access or engagement with society 'outside' of the sect or compound. Common to most of the women is marriage at a very young age, incest and extreme poverty for women and children. Most of the women whose stories are told have since escaped their fundamentalist communities, though some continue to practice Christian faiths.

Moore Emmett's book is a solid introduction to both the theoretical underpinnings of Fundamentalist Christian communities in the U.S., and the personal trauma and abuses that result from its practice.

While the book paints polygamy as the root of sexual slavery and violence, this is not simply about polygamy - and whether it should be legal or not. In fact, monogamous marriages also continue to be sites of sexual and domestic abuse. Instead, because polygamy is illegal, and state officials turn a blind eye to these rampant polygamous practices, men and their faith leaders are given a carte blanche within their community. And women are left with no protection from the state or law enforcement.

If "W" is, indeed, for women, the Bush government must address fundamentalist communities within its midst.

For more information on this book, please visit: www.pince-nez.com.

For more information on the women's organization started by many of the women whose stories are featured in the book, please visit: http://www.polygamy.org/.

Moore-Emmett, Andrea. God's Brothel. San Francisco:Pince-Nez, 2004.

Reform Fatigue

macko usko says -- This is such a enlightening article about the region, i would also add though that it frustratingly does not include the separation of 2 groups of countries.

• Poland Czechia Hungary
• Slovakia Slovenia Baltics

the firsst group is going nowhere (czech might sort itself out though) and have ;arge deficits

However Slovakia Slovenia and the Baltics are doing great, they are both rising fast in GDP try to keep inflation under control, and have high likelihood of joining the euro

Its really annoying that people lump Slovakia and Slovenia with the rest. Fico is determined to get into the euro. There is no navel gazing in Slovakia! The only thing in the way is inflation (due to rocketing growth, at 4.5% its not unrealistic to bring it down in 2 years)
--


So much for the region's "big four." But bad news is emerging from the smaller countries as well, including the Baltic states. Across Central and Eastern Europe, the scene is almost universally depressing.

When so much goes wrong at the same time, it is tempting to look for a common cause. One factor that is often cited is "reform fatigue."

In barely 15 years, these countries have moved from central planning and economic backwardness to "normal" market economies with impressive GDP growth. But rapid change is always unnerving, and not everyone has emerged better off. Above all, uncertainty has become the norm, in contrast to the gray but predictable future offered by the old communist regimes.

Today, many people now long for that period, which they see as less driven by material values. Communist parties, more or less reformed as socialists, appeal to a surprising number of voters. In some countries, like Slovakia and Poland, far-right nationalist parties provide another alternative, by offering the soothing appeal of traditional values and familiar enemies. Reform fatigue implies that Central and Eastern Europe needs a respite to catch its breath. But another explanation of recent developments in the region begins by noting that post-communist reforms were largely dictated from outside, as a condition of admission to the EU. With membership
achieved and EU money starting to pour in, leaders feel secure enough to let economic policy slip.

Thus, budget deficits are the rule, and where they are largest, as in the Czech Republic and Hungary, they have gained priority over euro adoption. Indeed, only Slovenia has been admitted to join the euro area next year, the earliest possible date. Estonia and Lithuania applied as well, but were refused entry.

gift of the soviets

There is some truth in both explanations of Eastern Europe's backsliding. But what is the phenomenon that such explanations are supposed to clarify? There has been no general tilt to the right or left in the region. Reforms that are attacked in one country continue to guide others.
Nevertheless, the EU's newest members share some key features. Most importantly, they inherited from the Soviet era bloated and inefficient public sectors, which they are finding hard to downsize and professionalize. The private sector has been entirely rebuilt and is vibrant, but it cannot remain competitive if fiscal demands are not reduced -- a familiar problem in Europe as a whole. For now, the tension has been left unresolved, leading to high budget deficits.
But the EU's new member countries have no access to any safety net. They could well squander the significant transfers that they receive through the agricultural and structural funds, as many previous EU recipients did. If they abandon macroeconomic discipline, as Hungary and possibly the Czech Republic may be doing, they alone will face the consequences. Being outside the euro area, their currencies would fall, undermining growth in purchasing power and living standards. As they are economically small, the rest of the EU would barely shudder. Fortunately, the main lesson to emerge from the region's current troubles is that economies adapt faster than
polities to changing conditions. Growth has been strong; while it could have been stronger under more favorable policies, only huge mistakes could break the rise in living standards, given the region's productivity gains.

Western Europe went through a similar phase of economic development in the 1950's and 1960's; now it is Central and Eastern Europe's turn. Sadly, then as now, countries never seem to learn from others' mistakes.

Charles Wyplosz is professor of international economics and director of the International Center for Money and Banking Studies at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.