tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85823831432411597492024-03-13T23:44:30.582-07:00POGIBLOGKazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-67611820468791595232014-04-08T12:02:00.003-07:002014-04-10T02:33:13.401-07:00Understanding Hungary: The Social Prerequisites of Political Democracy<a href="http://visegradrevue.eu/?p=2465"><br />
This blogpost has been published by Visegrad Revue as an article. You will find the full text by clicking on this link.<br />
</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-85178546281112726982013-06-28T23:52:00.000-07:002013-07-09T11:27:36.120-07:00No income convergence for Eastern Europeans<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vyObWsH80H0/Uc6FI1YfDpI/AAAAAAAAA0E/mCgnQ6aR4WA/s384/V%C3%A9gtelen+l%C3%A9pcs%C5%91.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vyObWsH80H0/Uc6FI1YfDpI/AAAAAAAAA0E/mCgnQ6aR4WA/s384/V%C3%A9gtelen+l%C3%A9pcs%C5%91.jpg" /></a></div><br />
GDP per capita levels in CEE are famously converging to the West, so let us see whether living standards also are. As comparison countries in our limited experiment we have chosen Belgium, Austria and Germany, because they are not totally offshore tax havens (although Belgium and Austria show such features) or have rich natural endowments. Their climatic conditions are similar, and they are economically tied to Eastern Europe as dominant investors. From Eastern Europe we have chosen star performers Slovakia and Poland, as well as laggard Czech Republic. (No data available for the ultimate GDP sloth, Hungary.)<br />
<br />
What we are looking for, are the nonessential income levels, defined as the remainder of the income left over for nonessential consumption or saving once we have spent on subsistance. The subsistance minimum is of course a difficult concept, but that is no reason why the EU should not have tried to come up with a harmonised indicator for it. Eurostate perhaps spent too much of its time on business related data, so there exists no harmonised European subsistance minimum. Eastern European national subsistance leves, around a €100 for parents in the Czech Republic and Poland, €140 in Slovakia, are so ridiculously low, they are meaningless. Whatever the methodology behind it, noone believes one can subsist with such wage levels.<br />
<br />
So we have decided instead to take the Belgian subsistance level, €534 for cohabitating persons per person, and multiply it by the purchasing power consumption standard. (This procedure is likely to come up with a slightly lower figure than realistic, since the ppcs includes hotels, alcohol, and services that poor people do not take advantage of, but where the East-West price differentials are greater. But we shall disregard this.) By doing so we claim to arrive at a realistic subsistance level for these economies. Here is what we find.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Slovakia</b><br />
<br />
Final primary income per inhabitant (on Purchasing Power Consumption Standard) in Slovakia increased from €5747 to €10583 between 1998 and 2008, in the decade before the crisis. The difference from Belgium basically stagnated (€9925 to €9764). Difference to Germany grew (€10576 to €11082). Difference to Austria grew (€10090 to €11684). A realistic subsistance minimum based on the Belgian methodology would be around €343 per month, or €4120 per year. Thus a typical Slovak would have around €6463 to spend on nonessentials, or save if she so chooses, the Belgian €13 939, which is more than double.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Poland</b><br />
<br />
Final primary income from €5395 to €8763. Difference to Belgium grew €10277 to €11584, Germany €10928 to €12902, Austria €10442 to €13504. The realistic Belgian-based subsistance minimum for Poland would be around €286 a month, €3433 a year. This would leave the typical Pole €5330 for nonessentials. A Belgian has more than two and a half times as much. <br />
<br />
<b>Czech Rep</b><br />
<br />
Final primary income grew from €7276 to €11076. Difference to Belgium €8396 to €9271, Germany €9047 to €10589, Austria €8561 to 11191. A Belgian-based realistic Czech subsistance mimimum would be around €367 a month, €4406 a year. This leaves a Czech €6670 of nonessential spending, about half of a Belgian.<br />
<br />
<b>Estonia</b><br />
<br />
Final primary income grew €3847 to €9233. Difference DECREASED SLIGHTLY €11825 to €11114. (Then Estonia crushed...), Germany stagnated €12476 to €12432, Austria €11990 to €13034.<br />
<br />
<b>Hungary</b><br />
<br />
No data for Hungary, but the country's wage growth has been so flat, it is not even looking into. Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-71712061608950383702013-06-17T07:07:00.001-07:002013-06-17T07:44:54.131-07:00Was the welfare state unsustainable?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mNIWvNeK8f8/Ub8ciPSgKlI/AAAAAAAAAzY/_K5AIN7iOOU/s1600/liberte+egalite+fraternite+austerite+precarite+competitivite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mNIWvNeK8f8/Ub8ciPSgKlI/AAAAAAAAAzY/_K5AIN7iOOU/s400/liberte+egalite+fraternite+austerite+precarite+competitivite.jpg" /></a></div>One of the most lasting achievements of the neoliberal hegemonic narrative is related to the “collapse” of the welfare state. It is now received wisdom that social welfare states had suffered from inherent problems that had to be ‘corrected’ in the eighties by 'sensible' neoliberal leaders such as Thatcher and Reagan. What is striking is how little these claims have been or are checked against reality. Doing so would reveal, before all else, that the decades of the welfare state produced higher growth rates and higher levels of employment than the following decades of neoliberalism. Significantly, the data also disproves the central tenet of the Thatcherite narrative, according to which the welfare state collapsed because labour had acquired overly strong rights, primarily but not exclusively in the form of trade union power, which it used to secure itself more and more entitlements. Through these entitlements labour captured a larger and larger share of total economic output in the form of ever higher wages and other benefits. As a consequence the profitability of Western European firms was squeezed, and the financiability of the welfare state came into question by the early seventies. (The Marxist version of this narrative would add that capital gave up the compromise about the welfare state as a result of the profit squeeze in the early seventies.)<br />
As it happens, empirical data disproves this narrative. What we see from the data is that the labour share of GDP stayed constant or even decreased slightly during the welfare state decade. It then increased slightly in the seventies, a decade when five great crises hit the world economy: the first oil crisis, the Nixon shock, the abandoning of the gold standard, the second oil shock and the Volker shock. This was primarily caused by decreased economic activity (the denominator falling) and sticky wages (the numerator staying stable). From the early eighties onwards, with the onset of the neoliberal era we see a continuous and marked drop in the labour share of GDP. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vvCcPCd_XHM/Ub8a63Cl7HI/AAAAAAAAAzA/hbViHA1kFJI/s1600/Labour+share+of+GDP++EU+US+post+ww2+Aneco+data+base.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vvCcPCd_XHM/Ub8a63Cl7HI/AAAAAAAAAzA/hbViHA1kFJI/s320/Labour+share+of+GDP++EU+US+post+ww2+Aneco+data+base.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaKOlcM1YxM/Ub8bNucVPaI/AAAAAAAAAzI/7TVBj7twsaM/s1600/Labour+share+of+GDP+US+post+ww2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaKOlcM1YxM/Ub8bNucVPaI/AAAAAAAAAzI/7TVBj7twsaM/s320/Labour+share+of+GDP+US+post+ww2.png" /></a></div><br />
In the case of the welfare states of the EU 15, we see an oscillation of the labour share of GDP between 70 and 72 per cent of GDP in the sixties. With the arrival of the crisis in the eighties this share increases by no more than two percentage points, then starts to decrease to reach a low point below 65 per cent just before the Great Recession of 2008. In the case of the US, which did not have a welfare state, we see a clear downward trend from 1944 onwards, albeit with some oscillation. The slow downward trend accelerates considerably during the Reagan, Bush Snr, Bush Junior and Obama presidencies, with somewhat of a reversal during the Clinton years. It is also visible from the data that there was no significant difference between the changes in the labour share of public and private employees. All in all, the welfare states did not go bankrupt because of a profit squeeze or the over-empowerment of labour. The narrative did convince some voters, and was used to curb and roll back trade union rights. With the gradual neoliberalisation of the left (Mitterand, Papandreou, Blair, Schröder) even the one time sceptics bought into the mainstream narrative.<br />
Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-56352424147843434172013-06-03T13:01:00.003-07:002013-06-05T01:38:25.290-07:00Turkey: caught between modernisation in postmodernity and Islamisation in Islamophobia<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hq-uDHqXMBE/Ua0DABlNn3I/AAAAAAAAAyk/f15vG9QrqbQ/s1600/gas+dervish.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hq-uDHqXMBE/Ua0DABlNn3I/AAAAAAAAAyk/f15vG9QrqbQ/s320/gas+dervish.jpg" /></a><br />
The current crisis in Turkey was sparked by government insistence to build a mall, shaped as a one time Ottoman barracks, in place of the last remaining patch of green around Taksim square. Obviously, the government went overboard. When thousands demonstrate against change in the city landscape, you suspend the bulldozers, not shoot tear gas canisters at the protesters. Then hundreds of thousands went marching into the streets across Turkey, beating pots and pans,indicating that more was at stakes than trees.<br />
<br />
The events arise from much deeper tensions within Turkish society. There are actually two Turkeys living side by side, mixed but apart, like oil and water. Ataturkists believe themselves to be westernisers and modernisers. They wish to join the EU, although decades spent in the waiting room of the organisation make it seem more like a living room. In fact it is clear Turkey will never be allowed to join, yet no one wants to be the first to say so.<br />
<br />
Kemalism is not equivalent to a Western style democracy. Ataturk's rule was within a one party state, with a strong cult of personality, limited press freedom, and an overly strong military. Above all, its active secularism is not shared by any EU state apart from France.<br />
<br />
It is intriguing that in a country where almost everyone is a Muslim, no Islamic party was allowed to exist. The AKP came very late to fill that gap. Had Kemalists been a little more accepting, the AKP could have become the functional equivalent of a Christian democratic party on a Western political spectrum. This could have made Turkey a model democracy for the other Muslim societies in the Middle East. Kemalists, however, stuck to active secularism. Of course the Islamophobia engineered by the United States governments did not help. All this made Erdogan and his party more radical. To be sure, AKP is popular: they have been reelected twice. The economic figures also look good on paper. The per capita GDP has been tripled over the last decade, although it is still only half of that of Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, regional differences are enormous. While Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast might easily be at around 80% of EU average GDP, in the Eastern provinces it is about 5%.<br />
<br />
As a consequence, the enormous internal migration leads to overurbanisation, and the east and middle part of the country is emptying out. Most of the fast development is unsustainable. Istanbul has grown from a city of a few million to 18 000 000 inhabitants, although the authorities lost count at 12 million. (Similar overurbanisation took place in Ankara and along the Mediterranean coast.) Since figures are very unreliable in Turkey, it is difficult to tell how much of the GDP grow is highly unsustainable overurbanisation. The AKP has been balancing between traditionalist cultural policies and neoliberal economic policies. It has also developed a cozy relationship with major construction companies. Unsustainable bulding projects include a number of environmentally damaging dams in mountainous areas, highways in Istanbul, a third Bosphorous bridge, a third airport for Istanbul (Europe's largest), a canal to connect the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, and now the Gezi Park shopping mall.<br />
<br />
It takes two hour to leave Istanbul by car, and about four to get from one end to the other. The city is a utopian urban jungle of fifteen storey housing blocks, highways and plazas. It is essentially the nightmare scenario of what happens when the developing the world begets a middle class similar to the west. Dirt, pollution, cars and concrete. Although unreliable official figures speak of low unemployment, it is impossible to know how many migrants really find work here. Only high end shops give you an invoice. Modernisation in the age of postmodernity.<br />
<br />
Thus the difference between the two Turkeys is cultural. Erdogan wants a Muslim country, the Kemalists want a westernised one, As the case of the foreseen Taksim plaza shows, however, both sides are in the pocket, of the constriction industry.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-59845138415446124842013-04-08T08:26:00.002-07:002013-04-08T11:44:44.583-07:00Margaret Thatcher, the Mother of Our Neoliberal Crisis<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UpeYGQKDfM0/UWLpwXX1hmI/AAAAAAAAAwY/osIEqTYtRNk/s1600/Thatcher.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UpeYGQKDfM0/UWLpwXX1hmI/AAAAAAAAAwY/osIEqTYtRNk/s320/Thatcher.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<i>(Source of article: Heterodox International Political Economy by Zoltan Pogatsa)</i><br />
<br />
When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK 1979, she was the first true neoliberal in a major country of the world to be given a chance to implement the creed in practice. She was admittedly deeply influenced by Hayek, whom she held in a high regard, and was in regular contact with. A diehard crusader against communism, deeply committed to capitalism, she found Hayek’s ideas very useful in making her case. She was also a self professed monetarist, and while she duly respected Friedman, he featured much less in Mrs. Thatcher’s symbolism than Hayek, who had had much more direct a connection with Britain. Nevertheless she was a firm believer in the need for sound money, and tried to control the money supply in her initial years, until she realised it did not bring the desired results, at which point she refocused her attention to other axioms of the neoliberal dogma.<br />
Thatcher believed firmly in reducing the size of the state, primarily through reduction of state expenditure. She was convinced that Keynesian solutions to fighting employment were in error, and the only way open for government to do anything about employment was to lower income taxes on the revenue side. This belief was latter coupled in her mind with the Laffer curve and ‘trickle-down economics’, both imports from Ronald Reagan’s America.<br />
Perhaps surprisingly, Thatcher was initially not focused on privatisation. In fact she detested the word, preferring to use ‘denationalisation’ instead. What she did focus on, however, was the restructuring of state enterprises. Her predecessors had nationalised a relatively large share of British industry, and together with the state-led natural monopolies state ownership constituted a sizeable proportion of the UK economy. In these firms, but also in numerous privately run enterprises trade unions managed to acquire overly strong powers over time. This in turn led to over-employment, pay rises beyond business rationale, and as a consequence the loss of competitiveness for British industry generally. What Thatcher wanted to do first and foremost was to revoke these strong rights from the unions, opening the way to rationalisation of employment, technology and production. The curbing of union rights and the resulting heavy loss of jobs of course meant open and violent confrontation with them, as emblemised by her clash with union leader Arthur Scargill and his miners.<br />
Initially the intent of the Thatcher government was to denationalise only a rather limited share of state assets. It was during the process really that her government realised the full political potential of privatisation. Shares of state firms that were to be privatised were more often than not undervalued in the initial public offerings, which made them very desirable, as their price was bound to increase as soon as they were released and bought. Thatcher justified this by claiming that even if this were the case, it was still worth it to take unprofitable companies off the books of the state. While this was true, it has also often been suggested that it was not so much private ownership that later made these firms profitable, but the fact that they were to face competitors. Thus by the time they had been restructured in order to be privatised, they were already able to perform in an economically rational way, were they provided competitors, with or without eventually ending up in private hands. A more formidable form of opposition to the privatisation process came from within her own party. The former Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan famously likened privatisation to the ‘selling of family silver’, a quotation that has resurfaced again and again wherever and whenever state assets were being sold.<br />
Privatisation in manufacturing, transport and telecommunication was a logical precursor to the deregulation of the British financial sector, known generally as the Big Bang, which entailed freeing up financial services to foreign firms. Deregulation opened the way for the City to become one of the key financial centres of the global economy, shifting the core of the British economy from obsolete manufacturing to a heavy dependence on financial services which was to have an unequal effect on the UK geographically for decades, and eventually lead to a major collapse after 2008 with the emergence of the global financial crisis.<br />
A key area of privatisation by the Thatcher government became the housing stock of the local councils. On the one hand it was very popular with the Brits, who have a higher tendency to want to own their flats than their continental counterparts. On the other hand it radically widened the supporter’s base of the Tory party in those years. Margaret Thatcher used to think of and refer to home owners as ‘our people’, and she was likely to have been right.<br />
The initial years of Thatcher as a monetarist Prime Minister were a spectacular failure. They were unable to control the money supply (LM3), their most symbolic policy objective, and inflation increased. Many Keynesians argued at the time that had the government been able to control M3, the resulting squeeze would have made the recession ever deeper.<br />
There was proof that inflation was not ‘always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon’. In their first budget, faithfully to their creed, they lowered the standard rate of income tax from 33 to 30 pence in the pound, and the top rate from 83 per cent to 60. The loss of revenue was counterbalanced by a doubling of VAT revenues, which clearly had the immediate effect of raising inflation radically. It doubled from 10.3 per cent to 21.9 per cent in a year. The creation of a single VAT rate also eliminated the possibility of making use of this tax for something it easily lends itself, differentiated taxation in order to guarantee contributions from richer segments and to favour poorer ones. This, however, was never the goal of the conservatives naturally. It is important to stress, however, that unemployment also did not decrease as a consequence of income tax cuts. In fact it continued to rise for long years ahead.<br />
At the end of her first term Margaret Thatcher stood to lose the election with the lowest popularity rating of any PM in history. However, she was saved by the somewhat bizarre incident known as the Falklands War. In this rather strange conflict she gloriously saved 1800 British subjects from becoming Argentine citizens on a small and barren icy island that her husband afterwards dubbed “miles and miles of bugger all’ upon visiting. She inflated the defence of this awkward remnant of British colonialism 8000 miles from Britain, dependent on the British taxpayer, as the frontier for rolling back aggression and standing up to the defence of the free world. Her ‘Lilliputian war’, as her biographer John Campbell calls it, cost her Ł3 billion from the national budget. Hardly a case of prudent housekeeping, but strangely it did have the amazing effect of uniting the previously hostile British public behind her ‘Churchill like’ war leadership. Ever since, the phenomenon of a political leader trying to reconquer popularity through going to war has been referred to as ‘the Falkland effect’.<br />
Eventually economic recovery did arrive in the second half of the eighties. It is to this part of her governance that her supporters point to as proof of the eventual positive effects of Thatcherism. It came to be known as the ‘Lawson boom’, named after Nigel Lawson, his very talented Chancellor who presided over this period.<br />
The most obvious reason for the Lawson boom was the fact that by this time the world economy had climbed out of recession, and there was demand overseas for British products and services. Clearly, there were healthy domestic elements in the boom as well. After years of intransigence, Mrs Thatcher finally forced the way open to restructuring of obsolete and overly expensive British manufacturing. This resulted in a heavy loss of jobs and output, and eventually in the complete disappearance for instance of the British automobile industry, but in the long run it is hard to argue that it was necessary and had a positive effect. The switch to a heavy dependence on finance is much more questionable. As it became obvious by the 2008 global financial crisis, overly deregulation in the financial industries brought with it an enormous potential for bubbles, unfair business practices and collapse. Financialising one’s industry is also an economic policy that cannot be repeated elsewhere. The global economy only needs a handful of global financial centres.<br />
The Big Bang of the financial Sun, the City, was followed by the development of a string of tax heaven Moons around Britain from Guernsey through Jersey to Belize, the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man. They represent an exploitative and unfair way of conducting international finance, and are far from being insignificant in size.<br />
The explosion of credit also helped fan the boom, both in terms of national borrowing and at the levels of households. The latter took the form of both mortgages and the expansion of credit cards. Strangely, Margaret Thatcher always had a soft spot for mortgage owners. Rather than leaving her much lauded market forces to be at work, she could not be convinced to scrap the tax relief for mortgages throughout her years in government.<br />
Another factor that is likely to have contributed to Thatcher’s economic success was the discovery of North Sea oil. The UK became a net exporter of oil from June 1980 onwards. In her initial years this boost was covered up by the fact that there was a worldwide recession, but later, as production increases, oil became an important factor. As Paul Johnson famously asked:<br />
“…Who was it who had said that an oil well (or two) is a girl’s best friend?<br />
Naturally, large scale privatisation deals also provided the government with windfall revenues that helped to balance the books. The top one per cent of income earners in Britain doubled their share of national income from 6.5 per cent to 13 per cent from 1982 to 200563.<br />
As neoliberals since Mises and Hayek have prided themselves presenting the free market and liberal democracy inseparable, it is interesting to see how they fair in practice. While it is unquestionable that Mrs Thatcher was a leading crusader in the fight against communism, her record in other parts of the world is more questionable. She famously refused to introduce sanctions against South Africa, for instance, recognising fully that Britain had much stronger business interests in that part of the world than other nations for whom it cost less to quarantine the Apartheid regime. In fact she even went as far as to liken the ANC and its leader, Nelson Mandela, to terrorist organisations such as the IRA or the PLO. She read their commitment in the Freedom Charter to a more just and equal society as a sign that they would introduce a Marxist regime after and eventual regime change which she knew to be inevitable.<br />
She was also an active promoter of the British arms industry in her bilateral meetings, realising the contribution of these firms to British output and employment. There were a number of very embarrassing cases during her rule, most prominently the excessive amount of arms sales to Saddam Hussein directly and through Jordan, in spite of an international ban that Britain had also signed up to. Most memorably, she called Augusto Pinochet, convicted for crimes against humanity, her friend, and visited her a number of times during his exile in Britain.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5R0PZIcPMcw/UWLlTMLzKlI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/G9zp-cQKzkY/s1600/Performance+of+Thatcher+and+Reagan+versus+other+countries.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5R0PZIcPMcw/UWLlTMLzKlI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/G9zp-cQKzkY/s320/Performance+of+Thatcher+and+Reagan+versus+other+countries.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<i>Performance of Reagan's America and Thatcher's Britain compared to others</i><br />
<br />
Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-31177342759107739142013-04-03T12:16:00.001-07:002013-04-03T13:12:58.949-07:00Might Slovenia or Slovakia be the Next Cyprus?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9bHz3S02G1A/UVyM_W6DM6I/AAAAAAAAAvQ/_Ju0VL_ellc/s1600/Ciprus+Atm.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9bHz3S02G1A/UVyM_W6DM6I/AAAAAAAAAvQ/_Ju0VL_ellc/s320/Ciprus+Atm.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>Two Cypriots: "Have you withdrawn your money from your bank?" "Why panic? Tommorrow is another crisis day..."<br />
</i><br />
<br />
Now that Cyprus has joined the PIIGS countries as the latest victim of the euro crisis, many people are asking whether Slovenia or Slovakia could be the next? Another way of formulating the question: if it is true that Greece and Cyprus went under not so much due to their own fault, but because of the low interest rates of the eurozone, why did this not happen to the Eastern European euro members? Or did it?<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, in the case of Slovenia, it did. The tollar was fixed at a low inflation rate in the ERM antechamber of the euro right after the 2004 accession of the country. Centralised wage negotiations, previously characteristic of Slovenia, were abolished in 2006, and the wage repression of the preaccesson period turned to its opposite. Increasing inflation and low nomina euro interest rates lead to low, sometimes negative real interest rates. This lead to an artifical boom much like in the case of Greece or IReland. The current account deficit was not counterbalanced by foreign direct investment (FDI), since Slovenia is not an FDI based economy, like the former Soviet Bloc, but a German/Austrian type Rheinland Model economy, privatised to domestic owners, still holding on to considerable state ownership. A successful corporative economy. As I have elaborated elsewhere, it is the only former Socialist country that has absolved transition successfully. <br />
<br />
The situation in Estonia was similar. They introduced the euro years later, but having operated a currency board, the fixed euro echange rate essentially imported all the problems of the Eurozone. Real interest rates turned negative, a bubble was formed, followed by horrible collapse.<br />
<br />
Interestingly enough it was only Slovakia that managed to sail the stormy eurozone waters without collapse. But why and how? Partly because Slovakia introduced the euro relatively late, and her autonomous monetary policy gave her room to manouver. When they finaly did introduce it, Slovak wages were kept at an astonishingly low level. Of all the countries in the EU, Slovakia has the wages that are the furthest away from what productivity would warrant. In fact they could have double the wages they actually do. To put it crudely: Slovakia managed to avoid the negative side effects of the Eurozone by staying poor. They avoided inflation, thereby low real interest rates and the bubble. In addition, they joined the euro in the midde of the global downturn, with relatively high unemployment rates, and therefore there was no pressure on wages to rise. <br />
<br />
They deserve a wage rise badly. HOwever, they will need to deliver it gradually if the want to avoid being the last one to fall.<br />
<br />
<br />
Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-55813305592079786682012-01-23T00:19:00.000-08:002012-01-23T02:05:35.214-08:00Massive Pro-Government Rally in Budapest Reality Check for Opposition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WYwYc9UzYSY/Tx0Zl6jcy7I/AAAAAAAAAbo/z9FaXM0p-XQ/s1600/B%25C3%25A9kemenet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="128" width="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WYwYc9UzYSY/Tx0Zl6jcy7I/AAAAAAAAAbo/z9FaXM0p-XQ/s200/B%25C3%25A9kemenet.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
Many observers will have noticed that a giant pro-government rally was held over the weekend in Budapest. There is always a tug of war over demonstration sizes, but one thing is clear: at around 50-100 thousand demonstrators, it was bigger than the largest opposition rally, held together by essentially all non-Jobbik opposition forces on the 2nd of January in front of the Opera. That demonstration numbered somewhere around 35 thousands. Even Jobbik's 'let us reoccupy the streets' EU flag burning did not manage to bring together more than a couple of thousand. <br />
<br />
How is it then, that in a country whose PM is criticised internationally for its rolling back of democracy, and its dire mismanagement of the economy, on the verge of a sovereign default, the government can pull together a larger rally than the opposition?<br />
<br />
Opposition commentators have chosen either to ignore the issue alltogether, or ridicule it as some kind of Kim Il Djong type pro-governmental parade. Neither approach is very useful. The rally should in fact serve as a midterm reality check for the opposition in Hungary.<br />
<br />
Elections are not won based on crowd sizes. The tens of thousands parties are able to mobilize and bring into the streets are only the most active fraction of the roughly 2,75 million you need to bring out on election day. But opposition parties do not fare any better in this respect either. Fidesz still holds onto some 40% of secure voters, with Jobbik trailing at around 22%. The Socialists have not moved an inch forward, hovering between 20 and 25%, pretty much what they got in the last elections. The Greens are also stuck just below 10%. <br />
<br />
Fidesz is still by far the largest political community in Hungary after all of the turmoil of the last two years. Why? In spite of what the opposition believe about the economic policies of Fidesz, the government has managed to hold on to the image of a polticial force that is fighting for the interest of ordinary Hungarians. This in spite of the IMF loan, the introduction of tuition fees, the nationalisation of private pensions, the huge losses on MOL shares, etc. etc. Whether the opposition believe it or not, the magic of the contrast with the "last eight years" still holds. Hungarian voters see the very same figures and policies in the opposition that they voted massively against in 2010. The entire leadership of the Socialist Party, as well as the tiny Gyurcsány fraction are seen as used on a personal level. In terms of policies, they still have not made the crucial moves on party financing, corruption, as well as a credible, real left wing alternative to the government, away from the neoliberal agenda they had been pursuing for far too long prior to 2010. No change, no gain.<br />
<br />
The small Green party is still seen as too young and inexperienced, and without a clear policy profile by most. Lately, they have been marred by internal strife as well.<br />
<br />
Left wing chattering classes have been far too busy forging all kinds of prenatal Olive Coalitions, instigating Byzantine intrigue. Without the necessary reality check, they fail to notice that it is all pointless. Without a radical renewal of the Hungarian Left, realistically speaking they do not stand a chance of replacing Fidesz for the time being. Even a Socialist-Green coalition, itself an extremely confrontative and explosive match, would be nowhere in sight of an electoral victory, (even with the previous electoral system). Divisive, burnt oldtimers must go, and the new guard must adopt a much more visible and clear prosocial profile.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-87169218003316433022011-12-21T04:34:00.000-08:002011-12-27T09:58:14.793-08:00The Crisis: Euro, Hungary, Greece, ItalyAn interview Lucia Najslova did with me on topics such as the Eurocrisis, the Orbán government, Greece, Italy, the European integrations process. It appears in Zahranicna Politika in Slovak.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>After the recent (Dec 9) summit, Hungarian government expressed reluctance in supporting deeper fiscal integration. Why?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
According to what we know so far, this is a bad treaty. It does not solve the eurozone crisis in any way, but undemocratically limits the legitimacy of the fiscal process.<br />
<br />
<i><br />
Does Hungary have alternative proposals?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
Hungary? Orbán talks about deep going reforms to the eurozone, but no one has yet bothered to ask him what he means by it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<i>What about Hungary & joining eurozone?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
No date set.<br />
<i><br />
Is there a debate on this issue?</i><br />
<br />
It would be a joke to even dream of it in the present economic situation. Hungary is on the verge of a sovereign debt default.<br />
<br />
<i>Which brings us to the negotiations with the IMF and the European Commission. Both left the table recently, arguing they will not lend to Hungary if its central bank's independence is under threat from government. </i><br />
<br />
The independence of central banks is a fiction. Governments appoint Chairmen, Monetary Council members, etc. It is only that their terms are set apart from the terms of governments, which the current Hungarian government wants to upset.<br />
<i><br />
Sure, why do then EC&IMF criticize the new law?</i><br />
<br />
Chiefly because it goes against THEIR understanding of the independence of central bank, and it threatens those who implement their versions of monetary policy. i.e. the incumbent Hungarian policymakers.<br />
<br />
<i>Can you elaborate a bit where you see the problem of their version?</i><br />
<br />
They want to target inflation. Which is wrong, because it is growth that should receive priority. It is also wrong methodologically, because the Central Bank cannot state for certain why the inflation rate remains so high in Hungary, as opposed elsewhere in the region.<br />
<br />
<i>How should they support growth?</i><br />
<br />
By gradual lowering of interest rates. I have to add, that at this point this becomes impossible due to the horrible EUR HUF exchange rate, since lowering central bank indicative rates would send the EURHUF rate through the roof. But such a change of policy would have been possible in past years. So the government is pushing at the wrong time. <br />
<br />
<i>What would be the best thing for the government to do now?</i><br />
<br />
Push the central bank issue at a later point, and concentrate on a credible budgetary alternative with the goal to avoid having to take the IMF loan.<br />
<br />
<i>Would that mean spending cuts?</i><br />
<br />
Never. Spending cuts NEVER make sense in NO SITUATION in NO COUNTRY.<br />
<br />
<i>How do we stimulate growth without borrowing and cutting spending?</i><br />
<br />
Spending cuts lead to a fall in demand, which leads to a worse economic situation, which leads to more cuts..etc. Economic hardships should be used to, firstly, restructure tax revenues and secondly, to reform expenditure.<br />
<br />
<i>This is what Joseph Stiglitz is saying - that Europe fought with wrong tools & austerity is not the answer. How should then Hungary redirect its expenses?<br />
</i><br />
Cut the possibility to avoid taxes through offshoring, reintroduce a progressive private income tax, reintroduce inheritance tax, introduce loads of taxes on environmental pollution. It should increase spending on education, education, education. And employment systems, anti-corruption, tax agency.<br />
<br />
<i>Would that mean bigger taxes for corporations, for man on the street/employee or both?</i><br />
<br />
Bigger taxes for large corporations and owners of capital. Especially the ones who have been avoiding taxes. Lower taxes for domestic small and medium enterprises. When it comes to individuals, it would mean higher taxes for the rich.<br />
<i><br />
Why hasn't the Hungarian government taken up such measures yet?</i><br />
<br />
Because their policy has been to "boost the upper middle class". The only problem is that there is no upper middle class in Hungary.<br />
<br />
<i>Coming back to Stiglitz, he as well suggests that in present shape eurozone cannot save itself. Two reasons - lack of central fiscal authority plus low mobility. Can we have one European currency & economic zone without one finance ministry?</i><br />
<br />
A central fiscal authority would have been nice at Maastricht in 1992. But Europe did not want it. It would have required elections at the Commission level. Member states never wanted that. And now it would even be too late. Italy needs refinancing today, not fiscal monitoring tomorrow. So peeping into the Italian budget from a nonelected Commission that derives from member states is in NO WAY better than the member state itself.<br />
<i><br />
Most integration measures in Europe were not introduced because member states "wanted" them, but because it was the least bad option. </i><br />
<br />
But most crucial ones have been blocked by one or more member state for decades. For instance, they never introduced a real political union, only a free trade based EU.<br />
<i><br />
Do you feel than that deeper integration is not happening as a response to the crisis? That the treaty will be buried?</i><br />
<br />
There have been 21 summit meeting in 14 months. After each one they claimed to have had a breakthrough. Yet things get worse and the average European is not even keeping an eye on these bullshit meetings any more.<br />
<br />
<i>Yes, the Europeans are either resigned or just angry. But should we then proceed only by saving the burning cases like Greece and Italy? Isn't the crisis a sign that the EMU stands on weak pillars?</i><br />
<br />
It is time to face reality. The EMU was stillborn, and needs to be rolled back somehow. As Robert Mundell wrote in 1968, and this was repeatedly mentioned in the debate around Maastricht, you cannot have a common currency for an unoptimal currency area.<br />
<br />
<i>What did he mean by unoptimal?</i><br />
<br />
Where there are high and low growth countries, there is no good common interest rate.<br />
<br />
<i>Would eurozone then make sense for countries with similar cycles of growth? Or do you argue for total abandonment of euro?</i><br />
<br />
The central bank will always keep interest rates low for those countries with no growth, and will therefore fuel bubbles in the high growth ones: Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal. If you could guarantee that economic cycles align in all states, you could have them in a Eurozone. Otherwise it is a nice but detrimental dream.<br />
<br />
<i>Well, let’s imagine we'll say goodbye to euro. What could be the impact on the free market?</i><br />
<br />
The free market is the other reason why countries like Greece suffered. They completely deindustrialised after 1981, their EC entry, after decades of 7-9% growth under protectionism. So when the euro came with low interest rates, they bought from the Germans, because they could not produce anything.<br />
<br />
<i>Still – what would be the impact of eurozone's dissolution on free market?</i><br />
<br />
There would most likely be more of a reluctance to trade. So free trade would diminish. But it would not be a tragedy. Free trade as a dogma need to be rethought just as much as monetary integration. It is not necessarily equally beneficial for all. It is time to face reality.<br />
<br />
<i>And now Germans are basically saving themselves – i.e. state investments, not the banks. So they cannot let Greece fall, right?</i><br />
<br />
Exactly.<br />
<br />
<i>But then, following the reports from Greece, it does not seem that the bailout has helped.<br />
People are facing new and new austerity measures + they read about how the other Europeans are angry that they have to send them some money.</i><br />
<br />
Greece has had 5 waves of fiscal stabilisations in 25 years. They only led to fruther fiscal stabilisations. In Slovakia, Sulik is right. And I don't often say that about him.<br />
<i><br />
So, in your view the stability mechanism is a bluff.</i><br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
<i>Why does then everybody support it with exceptions like Sulik and why has it become such a symbol of "Europeanness"?</i><br />
<br />
For a number of reasons. First, it lets the Commission ignore the fact that the Eurozone was stillborn. Second, it would have made sense at Maastricht, but only with democratic legitimation. The EU has long given up on any need for democratic legitimation. Finally, the mainstream consensus is the stupid one that the PIIGS were to blame. That they were irresponsible.<br />
<br />
<i>After Sulik said "no", the Slovak papers were full of commentaries that he is not 'European enough" and various Slovak elites have expressed fear that when they will travel to Brussels now, they will have to feel ashamed.</i><br />
<br />
Eastern European elites understand very little of European integration. They have these superficial tribelike mentalities of being the best pupil.<br />
<br />
<i>Well, PIIGS might have had creative accounting, but we are speaking of big German and French investments...so they either overlooked problems in Pigs or they just exploited the situation without thinking of tomorrow?</i><br />
<br />
PIIGS were helped in their creative accounting by the same firm that Mr. Monti, Draghi and Papademos worked for, Goldman Sachs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>So it is the vicious circle of face-saving for everyone</i><br />
<br />
Pretty much. Without having to have real democracy at the federal level, and having to get rid of the stillborn euro, the detrimental free trade arrangement, or the offshore tax havens. <br />
<br />
<i>Would you then suggest that Greece undergoes supervised bankruptcy?<br />
</i><br />
Greece is already undergoing supervised bankruptcy.<br />
<br />
<i>Would the same scenario work for Italy, a much bigger economy?</i><br />
<br />
No. We would need four times the money we have painfully horded together in the ESFS.<br />
<i><br />
Will Italy then undergo a 'spontaneous' bankruptcy?</i><br />
<br />
Unless we introduce the eurobonds, yes.<br />
<i><br />
What is the major factor preventing us from their introduction?</i><br />
<br />
Angela Merkel.<br />
<br />
<i>Why does Merkel say it is not in their interest?</i><br />
<br />
It would increase the German borrowing rate.<br />
<br />
<i>In the short term. But in the long run it might stabilise economies, no?</i><br />
<br />
Yes.. but in a crisis, when the market threatens you, you tend to think in a short-term perspective. Germany has already experienced a surprise increase on its government bond rate.<br />
<br />
<i>The expression "markets are scared" or "markets threaten you" has been used so many times in the debate on crisis. Who are these markets?</i><br />
<br />
Investors who buy government bonds or your currency, or your company shares.<br />
<br />
<i>And why do you have to abide by their 'threats' when in the end they are dependent on government regulations. Moreover, in a simplistic explanation - the very essence of market is that in many transactions someone looses and someone gains - so, the 'markets' do not act like 1 person, do they?<br />
</i><br />
<br />
They do not threaten you. They simply refuse to buy you bonds. Who will finance you then?<br />
<br />
<i>Sure, government is as well dependent on them, just like they depend on government</i><br />
<br />
They do not depend on the government.<br />
<i><br />
Well, government & parliament regulate the environment in which markets/investors function.</i><br />
<br />
Governments can regulate the markets. But it is not a question of regulation whether you decide to invest in something or not. It is an independent decision.<br />
<br />
<i>So, what would the eurobonds bring?</i><br />
<br />
Eurobonds would mean a transitory period of peace for the EU as whole, and somewhat higher refinancing rates for the Germans. <br />
<i><br />
Let’s look at the issue that you have mentioned several times – democratic legitimacy in Europe. Can European governance be legitimate unless we become a federation?</i><br />
<br />
The European Commission is composed of delegates from the member states, and is financed from national contributions. It is therefore dependent and controlled by member states. The European Parliament has its strongest powers in the co-decision procedure, but even there the Council can veto it. And finally in the Council any state has de facto veto power even after Lisbon, and in many important cases even de jure veto power.<br />
<i><br />
Yes, so, the EU as it is now is legitimate? Just because member states have veto?</i><br />
<br />
The EU is essentially still an intergovernmental organisation, run by the Member states. The next question to ask is: who controls the member state governments?<br />
<br />
<i>European governments are often composed of parties that got votes of minority of population.<br />
Plus, you have Europeans who would be happier to vote for a representative of another member state since they are not happy with the menu presented at home</i><br />
<br />
That is not the main issue in my opinion. The main issue is that European governments are made up of parties that had been intransparently financed by big business in the elections, who expect something back.<br />
<br />
<i>Yes, business influence is certainly relevant consideration the new "99 percent" party in Slovakia<br />
is (quite cynically) financed by people from arms industry. But, how can we overcome the influence of big business on politics? </i><br />
<br />
1. One party campaign donations account nationwide. 2. One party campaign expenditure account nationwide. 3. Ban on any business entity financing political parties. 4. Private individuals should only donate to the degree of the price of one single television set. 5. No political ads in national media.<br />
<br />
<i>Great idea. And this law would have to be adopted by - parliament. Which is composed of.... etc.</i><br />
<br />
Parties that run on THIS platform. And they gain popular support.<br />
<i><br />
Is there a country where this already works?</i><br />
<br />
Several. Belgium, Netherlands, etc In Sweden even personal income tax returns are in the public domain...<br />
<br />
<i>Perhaps here the Commission could show its usefulness and propose a directive to apply these rules to all countries</i><br />
<br />
The Commission is a captive of the member states, who are in turn captives of big business.<br />
<br />
<i>It worked with anti-discrimination directive but then, there was no money involved, 'just' human rights</i><br />
<br />
Barroso is a former Maoist who turned conservative, and then a promoter of genetically modified potato.<br />
<br />
<i>Back to European governance. Can you imagine that Europe would have a joined federal government composed on the basis of results of elections to European parliament<br />
in which European citizens would not have to choose only from national nominees? <br />
</i><br />
There should be Europe-wide elections with pan-European parties for the EP. There should be Europe-wide elections WITH SEVERAL CANDIDATES for the Commission. (Leonhid Barroso was elected from ONE candidate. 3. The post of the Council President should be scrapped, it is totally redundant, and only serves to confuse. (He was elected from NO candidates! Noone volunteered their name on the morning when Rompuy was elected!).<br />
<i><br />
Is that possible without panEuropean media ? Who watches Euronews? The only pan-European medium is BBC and we know the UK's European thoughts..</i><br />
<br />
This is the other way around. EU institutions do not matter, so Europeans do not read/watch them...<br />
<i><br />
Or journalists are not able to show cases where EU institutions do matter..</i><br />
<br />
Also, yes.<br />
<br />
<i>As a Hungarian citizen, are you glad that Hungary was not ready to adopt euro earlier?<br />
Or, does it matter?</i><br />
<br />
It does not matter. Countries that are fiscally sound, like Slovakia, do NOT need the euro. Countries that are fiscally unsound, like Hungary, would need it, but would never achieve it.<br />
<br />
<i>What makes SVK fiscally sound? Our expenditures to relevant sectors -i.e. education are a joke.</i><br />
<br />
The Dzurinda government opened up to FDI inflow exactly at the time when the inflow of FDI had the post transition reconstruction effect of bringing in more revenues, while they also radically cut expenditure to live up the future of Slovakia. Fiscally sound in this narrow sense only means BALANCED. It does not mean that the allocative, redistributive or regulatory roles pf the budget are OK as well.<br />
<i><br />
FDI's are in short term irrefutable - but, if we look at what type of labor is requested in many of the newly opened factories it does not really contribute to development of significant added value</i><br />
<br />
Low wage, low value added, unsustainable. Dzurinda admitted that much after having lost the election to Fico.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-28382761224350605132011-10-15T10:56:00.000-07:002011-12-27T06:34:40.372-08:00Requiem for Slovak government?!?I have never been a fan of Sulik and his neoliberal SAS party, but this time around he acted responsibly. Wasting Slovak taxpayers' money on the Eurozone that is going to collapse withing months is just irresponsible. The likelyhood of Greece falling is 98%. If Greece collapse, so will Spain and Italy, who are a prayer away from bailout level refinancing rates for their debt. And the ESFS and the ECB have no money to bail them out. Therefore Sulik was responsible.
Maybe he did blackmail the government, but it was Radicova who decided to make this vote a vote of confidence, not him. And you cannot go around justfying the continued existence of a government just because you are always afraid of Fico-the-Antichrist. You cannot base a democratic political system on this.
One last thing: the Radicova government failed utterly in the most crucial thing needed by Slovakia. That would have been a reform of the educational system. With Radicova having come from academia, they never even tried. No requiem for her government, sorry.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-54487389554324481312010-09-13T00:22:00.000-07:002010-09-13T00:30:53.018-07:00Economic situation in Hungary after the elections<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TI3S_4B71YI/AAAAAAAAAEk/p-lRJyOGY1A/s1600/Orb%C3%A1n+VW.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TI3S_4B71YI/AAAAAAAAAEk/p-lRJyOGY1A/s200/Orb%C3%A1n+VW.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516297113412818306" /></a><br />While an economic wunderkind in the nineties, Hungary has featured amongst the basket cases in the European Union in recent years, along with the likes of Greece, Lithuania and Romania. The previous, Socialist led government was responsible for the worst mismanagement of any economy in post transition Europe, resulting in a record high budget deficit on top of an already high national debt. This swept Hungary to the edge of sovereign default, with the IMF having to step in and provide an emergency standby loan as market interest rates of refinancing the country’s debt suddenly became unrealistically high in the wake of the international financial crisis and the disappearance of liquidity from international financial markets. Citizens became dramatically disappointed with the government, in spite of a change of prime minister and a drastic stabilisation programme in the final year of an eight year, two term rule, which decreased the hole in the national budget from above ten per cent of GDP to below four per cent, an achievement that is now being held up by international financial institutions to other austerity economies such as Greece or Spain. This helped little to calm anger and frustration, and at the national parliamentary elections in early 2010 the Socialists were reduced to a small party of 17 percent, while their main rivals, the centre right Fidesz party won a landslide victory with a whopping 67 per cent of votes cast.<br /> The vote was primarily a protest vote, little was known about the future economic policies of Fidesz during the elections. The lack of information the party itself gave rise to wide ranging speculation, which continued for weeks even after the formation of the new government under Viktor Orbán, who had already governed once between 1998 and 2002. The fog cleared somewhat in the middle of the summer, once again as a consequence of pressure from the international financial markets. Leading members of the Fidesz party gave a series of statements to the press about “corpses” in the budget they inherited from the previous government, hinting that the annual deficit might be much higher again, than expected. It seems likely that these unfortunate pronouncements were only a concerted attempt to create more fiscal room for the policies of the new government, but they did not go down well with international investors. The forint took a dive, and the government had to backtrack and calm sentiments by making it very clear that they intend to stick to the original 3.8 per cent deficit target, as planned by their predecessors. They also held a three day emergency session, after which Prime Minister Orbán addressed parliament to outline a rather eclectic mix of 29 points that included everything from releasing the ban on distilling pálinka (gin) to a complete overhaul of the tax system. The major thrust of the package was the reduction of the tax burden on small, primarily Hungarian owned enterprises (through a second, lower rate of corporate tax) and middle class earners (through a single rate personal income tax), while increasing the tax burden of low earners and banks, including a special tax on financial institutions. With this, Hungary essentially joined the low flat rate tax competition that had swept across Central and Eastern Europe in previous years, started by Slovakia and followed up by Romania, Bulgaria and others. The interesting experiment of the new Orbán government is aimed at trying to alleviate the dramatically low employment rate of the country, at 54 per cent, ten percentage points lower than the EU average, through decreasing the tax wedge on labour. Whether this will work with Hungarians who have now been out of work for two decades, and have lost their skills and motivation, is an open question. However, by introducing the special bank tax, which is meant to counterbalance the immediate loss in government revenues from labour related taxes, Orbán has indirectly admitted that he no longer believes that tax reduction will be self financing through an increase in employment. Another indication of this is the fact that he is only willing to set employment targets for a ten year period, way after his current mandate, by which time he foresees one million new jobs created.<br /> The introduction of the special financial task, amongst other issues, has lead to a deadlock in the negotiations with the IMF for the extension of the current standby loan, which will expire in October. Orbán then stepped in to declare that Hungary no longer needs the assistance of the IMF, and will be able to refinance its debt from the international markets. This certainly seems possible for the next two years, but from 2013 repayments of former debts will increase dramatically, coupled by repayments on the current IMF loan. Whether Hungary will have stabilised its economy and started on the path to high growth by then is anyone’s guess in the current turbulent international economic environment.<br /> <br /> <br />(This article appeared in Hospodarske Noviny in Czech)Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-29203044795039924632010-07-13T04:59:00.000-07:002010-07-13T05:03:03.561-07:00A magyarok nyelvtudása<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TDxViG2MXfI/AAAAAAAAAEM/65AxloOZaZY/s1600/nyelvek.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 124px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TDxViG2MXfI/AAAAAAAAAEM/65AxloOZaZY/s200/nyelvek.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493359689926991346" /></a><br />A leértékeléssel illetve adócsökkentéssel versenyképességet elérni igyekvő polgártársaimnak. (Kattints az ábrára nagyításért.)<br /><br />Kommentár nem szükséges.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-27427842039437933972010-06-18T06:16:00.000-07:002010-06-18T08:24:59.344-07:00Hungarians in Romania no longer more prosperous<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TBtzbVTqODI/AAAAAAAAAEE/KdRKVC0O7aM/s1600/753px-Hungarian_language_in_Transylvania.svg.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 159px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TBtzbVTqODI/AAAAAAAAAEE/KdRKVC0O7aM/s200/753px-Hungarian_language_in_Transylvania.svg.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484103884666976306" /></a>
<br /><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CPogi%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CPogi%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CPogi%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> <w:cachedcolbalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont val="Cambria Math"> <m:brkbin val="before"> <m:brkbinsub val="--"> <m:smallfrac val="off"> <m:dispdef/> <m:lmargin val="0"> <m:rmargin val="0"> <m:defjc val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent val="1440"> <m:intlim val="subSup"> <m:narylim val="undOvr"> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" defunhidewhenused="true" defsemihidden="true" defqformat="false" defpriority="99" latentstylecount="267"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="0" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Normal"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="heading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="35" qformat="true" name="caption"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="10" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" name="Default Paragraph Font"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="11" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtitle"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="22" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Strong"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="20" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="59" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Table Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Placeholder Text"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="No Spacing"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Revision"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="34" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="List Paragraph"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="29" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="30" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="19" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="21" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:238; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:238; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page WordSection1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">For decades it has been widely believed that Hungarians in Romania are more prosperous than the rest of the country. This no longer seems to be the case.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Hungarians in Romania live predominantly in Transylvania, although there is a considerably non-historical minority in Bucharest, who have moved there predominantly because of administrative occupations in the capital.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Hungarians form a large majority of the population in the counties of Harghita (84.6%) and Covasna (73.79%), and a large percentage in Mures (39.3%), Satu Mare (35.22%), Bihor (25.91%), Salaj (23.07%), Cluj (17.4%) and Arad (10.70%) counties.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Within Transylvania, Hungarians cluster around the Hungarian border region, as well as deep within Transylvania, in a non-official area generally referred to as Szeklerland.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The 1998 Green Paper on regional development in Romania placed counties on a six scale index according to their global level of development (1-worst, 6-best). In Szeklerland, Covasna and Harghita were level 4, Mures was level 5. In the border region Satu Mare was 4, Bihor was 5. In the two counties with a relatively smaller number of Hungarians Cluj was 6, top, but Salaj was only 3, below average.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The GDP/per head of Romania was 344650,6/ 21537563= 0.01601 million lei at 2008 prices in 2006. For the Szeklerland it was Covasna 2779,7/223364=0.01244, Harghita 4464,5/325611=0.0137, and Mures 8174,1/581759=0.0141. Thus this whole region is well below the national average. As for the other partially Hungarian counties Bihor 9475,4/594232=0.0159, Cluj 13558,6/692316=0.0196, Satu Mare 4699,7/366270=0.0129, and Salaj 3054,0/243257=0-01255. Thus with the exception of county Cluj, all other counties are well below the national average. (Own calculations based on Romanian Statistical Office.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In 2007, unemployment in all of Romania was 4% (Romanian Statistical Office). The same indicator in the Szeklerland was 7% in Covasna, 5.1% in Harghita, 4.3% in Mures. Altogether this is worse than the national average. In the other counties: Bihor 2.4%, Satu Mare 2.6%, Salaj 4.4%, Cluj 3%, altogether better than the national average.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The dependency ratio (employed person per total population) for all of Romania is 4885319/21537563=23%. For the Szeklerland it was Covasna 49788/223364=22%, Harghita 64401/325611=20%, and Mures 127953/581759=22%. Thus this region is only slightly below average. As for the other partially Hungarian counties Bihor 163325/594232=27%, Cluj 194239/692316=28%, Satu Mare 75246/366270=21, and Salaj 46343/243257=19%. Thus this shows a mixed picture. The figures for Bihor and Cluj are most likely inflated by the cities of Oradea and Cluj, where Hungarians make up 28% and 19% respectively. Thus Hungarians are slightly overrepresented in these cities! (Own calculations based on Romanian Statistical Office)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">As for income, the whole of Romanian averaged 1396 lei gross and 1042 lei net per month in 2007. Average monthly income in the Szeklerland was 1036/792 in Covasna, 1081/814 in Harghita, and 1265/950 in Mures, all significantly lower. On the other counties it was 1086/811 in Bihor, 1489/1113 in Cluj, 1171/896 in Satu Mare and 1208/920 in Salaj. Thus in this non-core region only CLuj had higher than average earnings, where the percentage of Hungarians is the lowest.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In summary it can therefore be stated that the core regions of the Hungarian ethnic group in Romania, the Szeklerland, is well below Romanian average. So are the other areas where Hungarians form a considerable minority, with the single exception of Cluj county, whose figures are largely determined by the high significance of the city of Cluj in the Romanian economy. <o:p></o:p></span></p> Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-58908241844552094962010-06-15T10:25:00.000-07:002010-06-15T12:05:40.753-07:00Neoliberálisok képviselhetik a magyarokat Szlovákiában?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TBe4GILBd4I/AAAAAAAAAD8/heK07hJJDUQ/s1600/sulik+bug%C3%A1r.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 128px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/TBe4GILBd4I/AAAAAAAAAD8/heK07hJJDUQ/s200/sulik+bug%C3%A1r.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483053486759311234" border="0" /></a><br />A hazai sajtó a szlovákiai választások nyomán arra a tényre koncentrál, hogy a Fidesz elsietett kettős állampolgárságos döntése nyomán klienspártja, a Magyar Koalíció kiesett a pozsonyi parlamentből. Szinte egyáltalán nem foglalkozik azzal a kérdéssel, hogy milyen profilú párt is a nemrégiben alapított "Híd-Most", amely közel 8%-ot megszerezve innentől fogva egyedüliként fogja képviselni a szlovákiai magyarokat a törvényhozásban.<br />Pedig nem érdektelen ezt közelebbről megvizsgálni. A párt vezetője és poszterszemélyisége a liberális nemzetpolitikai karaktere miatt a szlovákok körében is népszerű Bugár Béla, akinek határozott gazdaságpolitikai arcéle nincsen. 7 magyar és 7 szlovák képviselőt küldenek majd az országgyűlésbe. Alelnöke az az <a href="http://www.most-hid.sk/hu/content/ing-ivan-svejna">Ivan Svejna</a> aki a szlovák <a href="http://www.hayek.sk/">Hayek társaság</a> társelnöke, a nemzetközi neoliberális Mont Pellerin társaság tagja.<br /><br />A Híd-Most legközelebbi szövetségese Richard Sulik neoliberális pártja, a szintén nem olyan régen alakult Szabadság és Szolidaritás (SaS). Sulik maga a szlovák egykulcsos adó kitalálójának tartja magát (erre a címre többen pályáznak). A magyar közbeszédben sikeresnek hitt szlovák egykulcsos adó hátulütőiről már írtunk <a href="http://www.portfolio.hu/cikkek.tdp?k=3&i=134317&is=1">itt</a> és<a href="http://ecopogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/szlovakia-tatrai-tigris-vagy-elkesett.html"> itt.</a> A párt EP listáját a Hayek Alapítvány másik vezetője, Martin Chren vezette.<br /><br />Pozsonyi pletykák szerint a két párt vezetője a választás éjszakáján is együtt ünnepelt, borozott, szivarozott. Úgy néz ki tehát, hogy a szlovákiai magyaroknak neoliberális képviselete lesz a következő szlovák kormányban és parlamentben.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-12091292847905537522010-05-09T18:32:00.000-07:002010-05-09T18:54:36.477-07:00A görög válságról<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S-di_N7KKJI/AAAAAAAAAD0/LmED7a6Bymo/s1600/Balkans.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 197px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S-di_N7KKJI/AAAAAAAAAD0/LmED7a6Bymo/s200/Balkans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469449110673827986" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">BAJBAN AZ EUROZÓNA<br />Komoly bajban van az eurozóna. Bebizonyosodott az, amit a kritikusok végig mondogattak, hogy a hatvanas évektől létező optimális valutaövezeti modell ellenére egy olyan valutaövezetet hoztak létre, amelyik egyáltalán nem optimális. Ráadásul a valutaövezeti irodalom intései ellenére nem készültek fel egy válság, vagy az egyes tagállamokat jobban érintő gazdasági sokkok kezelésére. Azazhogy a monetáris unióhoz a fiskális oldal összehangolása, adott esetben komoly belső transzferek szükségeltetnek.<br />Senki ne gondolja, hogy az övezetbe való belépéskor történt csalásokat csak a görögök nyakába lehet varrni. A költségvetési elszámolás szabályait maga az Eurostat hozta létre. Ha nem vették észre a görögök manipulációit, akkor az az ő felelősségük. Ha észrevették, és együttműködtek, az is. Az utóbbit valószínűsíti, hogy ismert módon már a kilencvenes években is együttműködtek egyes alapító tagállamok (Olaszország, Portugália, Belgium) eurozónába „tuszkolásában”. Az euró politikai projektként túl fontos volt ahhoz, hogy a gazdasági racionalitás prudens keretek közé szorítsa.<br /><br />MI OKOZTA A VÁLSÁGOT?<br />Nagyon érdekes, hogy a viták szinte teljességükben a nemzetközi mentési akcióra fókuszálnak. Szinte senki nem teszi fel az alapkérdést, hogy mért alakult ki a válság Görögországban? Lehetett volna-e megelőzni? Megismétlődhet-e máshol?<br />A görög, portugál és egyéb valutaövezeti tagok problémái ugyanis felvetik a valutaövezet alapját adó egységes belső piac működésének kérdését is. Az EU déli perifériája mióta a nyolcvanas években belépett, egyfolytában versenyképességi problémákkal küzd az egységes piacon belül. A kétezres években, az eurozóna tagjaként ez a periféria minden addig látottnál alacsonyabb kamatszinteken jutott tőkéhez, amely egyfajta befektetési boomot okozott a térségben. Görögországban mindezt megfejelte még egy olimpia is, amely extra lökést adott a gazdaságnak. A konjunktúra és a kedvező világgazdasági környezet minden eddiginél nagyobb, 40-60%-os reálbér növekedést eredményezett a déli periférián. A bérek növekedése a fogyasztás megugrásával és a háztartások eladósodásával járt együtt. Ezt a hatalmas bérkiáramlást pedig nem követte a termelékenység növekedése, azaz a mediterrán országok jelentős versenyképességi hátrányba kerültek Németországgal szemben. A német exportgépezet óriási többletet halmozott fel az egységes belső piacon belül. Ennek az egyik oka az volt, hogy a németek öndiagnózisa a túl magas bér volt, amelyet a nagyon lassú termelékenységi növekményüknél nem gyorsabb, visszafogott bérkiáramlással orvosoltak. Azaz amíg a déliek egy egységnyi termékre jutó bérköltsége meredeken emelkedett, a németeké stagnált. Ráadásul a német cégek bérköltségei még avval is csökkentek, hogy az alacsony bérszintű kelet-európai új tagállamokat belefoglalták nemzetközi termelési láncaikba. Az így megtermelt tőkét pedig Németország visszaforgatta közvetlen működő tőke és banki hitelek formájában délre, különösen az után, hogy a kelet-európai hitelezés a válság kirobbanta után bedőlt. (Amikor tehát a németek, franciák és mások Görögországot mentik, tulajdonképpen a saját bankjaikat is mentik.)<br />A dolog érdekessége, hogy Görögország tulajdonképpen sikeres felzárkózásban is lehetett volna a 2000-es években. A termelékenység emelkedése például magasabb volt, mint Németországban, azaz ha türelmesebb módon egy lassabb bérnövekménnyel is megelégednek a görögök, akkor szép nyugodt és fenntartható felzárkózásban lettek volna.<br /><br />NEM AZ ÁLLAM TEHET RÓLA<br />Nem igaz ugyanis, hogy a görög állam tehetne a krízisről. A görög állam akkor sem nagy, ha minden negyedik görög az államnak dolgozik. Az állam kiadásai a 2000-es években mindvégig a GDP 45%-a körül voltak, a német kiadási méret alatt. Az állam bruttó adóssága 2000 után folyamatosan csökkenőben volt a nemzetközi gazdasági válság kirobbanásáig, csakis azután nőtt meg a hirtelen hatalmasra ugró költségvetési hiány következtében, illetve amikor a négy legnagyobb görög bank állami segítséget kért. A megugró bérkiáramlásra a magánszektorban, illetve a háztartások hitelfelvételi boomjára a görög államnak csak igen korlátozottan lett volna ráhatása.<br /><br />GÖRÖG KULTÚRA?<br />Az sem teljesen igaz, hogy a görög válság a gyarló, dőzsölő és korrupt görög kultúra eredménye. Itt érdemes tenni egy összehasonlítást Ciprussal, amely gyakorlatilag egy másik görög köztársaság. Míg a görögök régóta ismert módon problémásak, Ciprus érdekes módon az az ország volt, amely EU-n kívüli országként is mindvégig megfelelt volna az eurót meghatározó, 1992-ben meghatározott maastrichti kritériumok mindegyikének. Erre az unión belül egyetlen ország sem volt képes. Azaz a kulturális meghatározottság mítosz. A két ország között jelentős különbség, hogy míg Ciprus gyakorlatilag adóparadicsomként működik az EU-n belül is, addig Görögországban a gazdasági elit legjava, a nagyvállalkozók igen gyakran nem adóznak, az országon kívüli kedvezőbb adóztatású paradicsomokban – többek között Cipruson - tartják pénzüket.<br /><br />A MEGOLDÁSRÓL<br />Mi lesz a görög válság kimenetele? Nos ennek egyik oldala a mentőcsomag, másik pedig a görög kormány tettei. Ismert módon az eurozóna tagjai az eredeti szerződések explicit tiltásai ellenére is áthidaló segítséget nyújtanak Görögországnak. Természetesen a segítség jelentős része a Görögországban kitett, főleg német és francia bankok megsegítését célozza, illetve annak elkerülését, hogy a többi dél-európai ország, és ezen keresztül az eurozóna is bedőljön. Ez középtávon elégségesnek bizonyulhat, ám nem oldja meg a problémákat. Az 5%-on felvett hitel ugyanis kedvezőbb természetesen a vállalhatatlan piaci alternatívánál, de a jelenlegi államháztartási hiány és GDP csökkenési cél mellett is azt jelenti, hogy Görögország GDP-hez mért államadóssága minden valószínűség szerint 150% körülire nő a jövő év közepére. Márpedig kevesen tudják, hogy a külső adósság újrafinanszírozása szempontjából 2010 kevésbé veszélyes év, mint lesz 2011.<br />Mindehhez hozzájárulhat az, hogy Papandreou kormány által kényszerűen vállalt megszorítások nem hogy nem fognak a gazdasági növekedés újraéledéséhez vezetni. Természetesen helyes dolog az állami alkalmazottak és a nyugdíjasok mindenfajta 13. és 14. Havi juttatását megszüntetni, ám a köztisztviselők bérbefagyasztása maximum a munkamorál csökkenését eredményezheti (gyenge kényszerlépés, hiszen a magánszektor bérkiáramlására a kormánynak nem lehet ráhatása). A ÁFA és a jövedéki adók emelése hozzájárulhat az egyensúly visszaállításához, de a gazdasági növekedést visszafoghatja. És mindezzel együtt is csak -9% körül tartunk, honnan lesz itt egyensúly közeli állapot? És akkor még nem beszéltünk sztrájkokról, demonstrációkról, a leblokkolt államról…<br /><br />KI A KÖVETKEZŐ?<br />Spanyolország teljes adóssága 342%, ezen belül az állam 47%, de ebből csak 27% van külföldön. Olaszország teljes adóssága 298%, ebből 101% az állam, és ennek 56%-a van külföldön. Azaz a két nagyobb ország közül messze Olaszország a kitettebb. A jóval kisebb Portugália államadósságának szintén 60%-a külföldön van. (Görögországban a 230-ból 120% körüli államadósság 99%-a külföldön van.) Olaszország likviditási szükséglete is sokkal nagyobb a 2010es évben. Egyértelműen Olaszország a legkitettebb….</div>Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-48322416899241740792010-05-02T01:16:00.000-07:002010-05-02T01:35:21.090-07:00Az iparpolitika lehetetlensége a mai Magyarországon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S905QRKCpaI/AAAAAAAAADs/aauoPrIMaFU/s1600/walking+on+water.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 129px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S905QRKCpaI/AAAAAAAAADs/aauoPrIMaFU/s200/walking+on+water.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466588474343859618" /></a><br />Az elmúlt években újra és újra felröppennek javaslatok, hogy mely ágazatokat kellene fejleszteni Magyarországon állami eszközökkel: biotechnológia, thermál, mezőgazdaság, ez, az. Ezzel szemben a valóság az, hogy erre az államnak nem csak hogy eszközei és lehetőségei sincsenek, de kifejezetten káros is lenne.<br /><br />Miért ne csináljunk iparpolitikát ma, Magyarországon?<br /><br /> 1. Mert a legtöbb iparág esetében nagyon gyenge lábakon áll az érvelés, hogy miért pont az adott iparágat támogassuk, és miért ne a másikat. Nincsenek mögötte igazi hatástanulmányok.<br /> 2. Mert a magyar statisztikai rendszer jelenleg nem alkalmas megalapozott iparpolitika alátámasztására.<br /> 3. Mert a magyar gazdaság szerkezete az elmúlt másfél évtizedben még nem kristályosodott ki olyan szinten, mint azokban az országokban, amelyek sikeres ágazati politikát folytattak. Még nem láthatók világosan olyan bajnokok, mint a finn Nokia, az ír szolgáltató, elektronikai szektor, a koreai hajógyártás vagy a spanyol divatipar.<br /> 4. Mert a magyar gazdaság legfontosabb húzóágazataiban multinacionális túlsúly van, ráadásul egy-két domináns céggel. Azaz külföldi cégeket támogatnánk.<br /> 5. Mert bizonyos tőke illetve tudás intenzív ágazatok fejlesztése olyan mértékű beruházást igényel, amelyre a magyar állam képtelen. A magyar költségvetésben iparpolitikára nagyon kevés pénz van, az is jobban hasznosulna máshol (lásd alapfeltételek lenn).<br /> 6. Mert Európai Uniós pénzek direkt ágazati támogatásra nem fordíthatók.<br /> 7. Mert a magyar költségvetésben jelenleg meglévő fejlesztési forrásoknál is több fog elmenni az uniós támogatások társfinanszírozására. Fejlesztési forrás tehát nem marad. A működési költségeket pedig a konvergencia program miatt amúgy is csökkenteni kell. Azaz nem lesz rá pénz.<br /> 8.Mert az Unió versenypolitikája a hazai direkt állami támogatások lehetőségét erősen korlátozza.<br /> 9.Mert a legtöbb ágazat esetében nem az állami támogatás a fejlődés legkritikusabb feltétele.<br /> 10. Más országok példái megmutatják, hogy ha az állam nem találja el sikeresen, hogy mely területekbe fektesse az adófizetők pénzét, az súlyos mértékű félre-beruházás, amely később számonkérhető lesz.<br />11. Mert amíg a korrupció megfékezése nem történt meg, addig az ilyen típusú támogatások ugyanúgy korrupciót szülnek, mint az elmúlt években.<br />12. Mert nincsenek alacsony és magas hozzáadott értékű iparágak, csak alacsony és magas hozzáadott értékű termelési fázisok.<br /><br /><br />Tehát most nem érdemes és lehetséges iparpolitikát csinálni Magyarországon. Később, egy jobban kialakult gazdaság körülményei között, jobb makrogazdasági helyzetben, amennyiben az EU engedi, talán igen. Jelenleg a fejlesztéspolitika akkor segít a legjobban az ágazatoknak, ha megteremti azt a gazdasági környezetet, amely elősegíti a gazdasági szereplők sikerét. Ezek az alapfeltételek a következők:<br /><br />--> (első sorban fiskális) makrostabilitás,<br /><br />--> stabil forint, majd euró<br /><br />--> a stabilitásból adódóan alacsony kamatlábak, <br /><br />--> decentralizáció,<br /><br />--> megfinanszírozott, hatékony oktatási és szakképzési rendszer,<br /><br />--> hatékony, integrált foglalkoztatási rendszer,<br /><br />--> magasabb K+F,<br /><br />--> egészségügyi reform<br /><br />--> az autópályarendszer után a vasúti és közösségi közlekedési rendszerek kiépítése.<br /><br />Ha a magyar állam ezen alapfeladatait elvégezné, nem is maradna pénze iparpolitikára. A gazdaságot nem felülről kell húzigálni, hanem alulról nyomni!Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-8472418374866166352010-04-27T00:28:00.000-07:002010-04-27T00:50:10.605-07:00Corrupt Greece, Prudent Cyprus: The Weakness of Cultural Explanations for the Greek Crisis<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S9aS-FXm8fI/AAAAAAAAADk/oc26shQ2dQY/s1600/Papandreou+dark.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S9aS-FXm8fI/AAAAAAAAADk/oc26shQ2dQY/s200/Papandreou+dark.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464716793151418866" /></a><br />There is an amazing amount of talk, articles, analysis of the Greek euro-crisis. Interestingly almost all of it seems to focus on one single issue: how to solve the situation? Should EU member states provide Greece with a loan? Should they set up a Euro-IMF? Or should they leave it to the IMF proper?<br />What is perplexing is that almost nobody discusses the CAUSE. Why did Greece end up with a huge international debt burden and a budget deficit of 13.6% out of the blue? Were there any signs of this before? Could this have been prevented? Could other nations face similar difficulties that could still be evaded?<br /><br />I fear that this discussion is missing for two reasons. Firstly, once again, simplistic assumptions are accepted by almost everyone. Secondly, some uncomfortable truths would come to light if these debates were indeed carried through.<br />The simplistic assumptions are about Greece being an inherently corrupt country, with a bloated public service, and that this would be the main cause of their difficulties. I.e. they have themselves to blame, they are corrupt and cheat on statistics. However, this is a rather weak argument. There are dozens of countries with very corrupt business and state lives in the EU. One of them is Greece’s twin, Cyprus. Both sides would agree that the formerly Ottoman Hellenic states share an almost identical cultural heritage, including VISMA, the need to have strong personal connections for business success, rather than a formalised set of rules. Yet the macroeconomic performance of the two states could not be more dissimilar. While Greece is the fiscal apocalypse itself, Cyprus has continued to be the muster for budgetary prudence. Just one example: while not a single would be Eurozone country observed all four of the Maastricht criteria throughout the nineties, Cyprus, then outside of the EU, did. The country has continued to be an example of fiscal and monetary prudence. Could we say, therefore, that Greek cultural deficiencies account for Papandreou’s current headaches? Hardly.<br />The arguments about large public sector employment are also flawed. There are plenty of countries in the EU with huge public sectors that do not have constant fiscal crises, including countries that guarantee their public servants generous benefits such as 13th month salaries (including Austria, for instance).<br />Let us offer an alternative explanation. One of the key problems with Greece is the low tax morale. It is generally accepted not to pay taxes, especially at the higher echelons of society. The largest Greek businesses can easily avoid paying their dues, and are heavily involved in capital flight right now, as the crisis unfolds. This gives Greek finance minister Papaconstantinou additional headaches. Where are these superrich Greeks taking their money? One can only guess, but offshore islands are an obvious choice, with plenty of them even within the EU. Including, astoundingly, Cyprus. What is most ironic in the Greece-Cyprus comparison is that while Greece is suffering from the impossibility of drawing taxes from the rich, its twin in the Mediterranean actually functions as a de facto tax haven, under close scrutiny by the EU Commission, but never actually found guilty due to very lax EU legislation on the matter.<br />Another reason might be the lack of a wide enough tax base. Greece had a 55% employment rate from its 1981 entry into the EU right until the start of its euro-enhanced artificial boom around 2001. Like in other low employment economies, the narrow tax base and the large dependent population must have been central to the problem of budgetary inbalance and debt accumulation.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-59547881000035447942010-04-13T05:54:00.000-07:002010-04-13T07:01:09.747-07:00Hungarian elections: How a landslide to the right is actually a move to the left<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S8RvA3Cnx1I/AAAAAAAAADc/gg0hykLsPaE/s1600/Paprika+doboz.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 138px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S8RvA3Cnx1I/AAAAAAAAADc/gg0hykLsPaE/s200/Paprika+doboz.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459610708845512530" /></a><br />Most international news about the results of the Hungarian elections are superficial and concentrate on the issue of the far right and the 2/3 majority of Viktor Orbán. If you just fly in and out of the country and look at the names of political parties, you get the impression that there has been a massive shift from the left to the right.<br />But in Hungary everything is the other way around.<br />The Socialists, who have been governing in the last eight years, and between 1994 and 1998, have in fact traditionally been a very right wing, neoliberal party - a complete break with their past of being the Communist party of Hungary until 1989. Their pendulum swang to the opposite exteme. From believers in the omnipotent state they went on to being believers in the free market. Socialist Prime Minister Gyula Horn carried out mass scale privatisation to foreing investors, making trade unions weak and Hungary one of the most open economies in the world. Socialist governance between 2002 and 2008 was characterised by an attempt to privatise healthcare, constant talk (albeit little action) about decreasing taxes, inflation targeting in monetary policy, and massive capital flight from amongst the Socialist political-economic elite to de facto tax havens such as Cyprus.<br />These Socalists have now suffered the biggest defeat in their history, and their auxilliary parties, the neoliberal Alliance of Free Democrats and the Hungarian Democratic Forum (also neoliberal lately) have not even made it into parliament. So neoliberalism maintains a 19% presence in the Hungarian Parliament.<br /><br />All of the other political forces in the new parliament are to the left of the Socialists economically.<br /><br />The nominally conservative Fidesz are likely to get a 2/3 majority in Parliament, perhaps even more. Although at the centre of their election campaign were also tax cuts, which would make them neoliberal and Lafferist, they are already backtracking on this issue, and it is difficult to see how they lower taxes without blowing an enormous hole hole in the national budget that is already in strongly negative territory. All other areas of their agenda are very vague, essentially populist, but past policies of Fidesz were rather social democratic in character: a stronger state, state aid to enterprises, free and state owned healthcare and education, etc.<br /><br />Much has been made of the exremist party, Jobbik, which has received 17% of popular vote. While strongly nationalistic, antisemitic and racist (anti-Gipsy) in their politics, their economic policies are in fact very similar to Fidesz's except they advocate no tax cuts and would instead default on Hungary's huge debt burden - a very unrealistic idea.<br /><br />The last party that got into parliament is called LMP (a Hungarian acronym for Politics Can be Different). It is a Green party of the Scandinavian type, with a root in the left wing global alterglobalisation movement. Their ideology is the New Left / Naomi Klein / Chomsky type, which realises that environmental sustainability is dependent on a radical shift of the economic system from assymetrical deregulated capitalism to societal-economic-environmental sustainability. That in fact green is red. What policies they will actually advocate in parliament is somewhat difficult to tell at the moment, as their election manifesto was a little vague on detail, not unlike the mainstream parties that they criticised. <br /><br />Since all three parties are left of the Socialists economically, a landslide towards the right in fact means a decisive move towards the left in Hungary.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-31622380298765363872010-03-31T21:55:00.000-07:002010-04-01T20:12:43.642-07:00CAN GYPSIES WORK?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S7QswkGr8fI/AAAAAAAAADU/oyYzZZlYQwc/s1600/G%C3%A1bor+b%C3%A1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 183px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S7QswkGr8fI/AAAAAAAAADU/oyYzZZlYQwc/s200/G%C3%A1bor+b%C3%A1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455034261489578482" /></a><br />It is often heard from the far right that gypsies are unwilling or unable to sustain a normal job, due to some alleged deficiency of socialisation that leaves them unaccustomed to regular work. When trying to counter these arguments, the more tolerant segments of society have mostly pointed to the high degree of prejudices against Roma in the workplace as the primary reason for their generally very low level of employment.<br /><br />While doubtless true, this argument is not accepted by extremists, and even reinforces their stereotypes to some degree, with the following logic: 'even pro-Gipsy arguements accept that Gypsies DE FACTO DO NOT WORK'.<br /><br />Well, recently I came across some very interesting data. It came from the latest available survey of Gypsy employment in Hungary. (It is in itself quite telling that we do not have such sruveys on a regular basis, and the latest such results come from 2004. It shows the lack of commitment of the Hungarian state and goverments to the Roma issue, apart from declarative involvement in 'decades of Roma inclusion' and EU financed 'pilot projects'. But let us leave this aside for now. See the <a href="http://www.asz.hu/ASZ/jeltar.nsf/0/CCFD3F343F5DE190C1256F970038832E/$FILE/L-0468J000.PDF">letter of the head of the National Court of Auditors</a> for more detail.)<br /><br />The survey led by Erzsébet Debreceni concluded that while the rate of Roma employment in rural Eastern Hungary is around 14%, in Budapest some 49% of Roma are employed. Now this is incredibly interesting for three reasons.<br /><br />Firstly, a 49% employment rate amongst adults in an ethnic subculture is not very far away from the roughly 56% employment rate in Hungary overall. Even if Budapest has a higher employment rate than the national average, 49% is way closer to majority levels than 14% to majority levels in Eastern Hungary. What this really indicates is that BY AND LARGE GYPSIES IN BUDAPEST HAVE FOUND EMPLOYMENT! It is an interesting argument against racists: whenever there is plenty of work, such as in the case of the development pole of a peripheral economy, there will be jobs available for the less educated Roma as well!<br /><br />Secondly, it provides a hint that either rural Gypsies are very unlike urban Gypsies as a subculture, or an impoverished rural setting provides no opportunities for the poor of the poor, the rural Gypsies. This question would be interesting to investigate further.<br /><br />Thirdly, the findings provide hope for the future: if any future government would be willing to introduce REAL programmes for Roma emacipation, and if the Hungarian economy improved in general, there is in fact reason to believe that Roma employment could indeed be guaranteed in the longer run, and interethnic tensions could wither away! It has become commonplace to refer to the Communist system as a contrast in terms of how it had been able to create (some claim artificial) employment in industries such as construction to provide work for the Roma, while the market economy is preceived to be unable to do so. Well, these findings suggest that we need not go back to any planned economy to be able to create work for minority groups with lower levels of education.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-29222095966157561962010-03-09T15:22:00.000-08:002010-03-31T22:37:48.968-07:00Greece would NOT be better off outside the Eurozone!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S5bZ5CNKFOI/AAAAAAAAADM/a4ZlsGhhG3s/s1600-h/Zorba-the-Greek-01.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S5bZ5CNKFOI/AAAAAAAAADM/a4ZlsGhhG3s/s200/Zorba-the-Greek-01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446780373219022050" border="0" /></a><br />It is an interesting dimension of the ongoing Greece saga how many people think that it would be better for Greece to be outside of the Eurozone at the moment. They seem to suggest that if the country still had its good old drachma, it could now devalue, and would have an easier time adjusting than with the eurozone rules.<br /><br />I think this is not quite right. First of all, if Greece would not have been in the zone in recent years, it would not have had access to cheap credit, and the few years of boom would not have taken place (which, in spite of the excessive credit boom, were perceived to be good years by the Greek population).<br /><br />Secondly, devaluation is not necessarily a painless alternative to fiscal cuts. First of all, it makes import prices higher, something that the whole population would suffer from. Secondly, it would wipe out people's savings. Thirdly, it would not save Greece from carrying out efficiency oriented, meritocratic reforms of its state apparatus, and attempt to control 'visma', the endemic corruption which is characteristic of business and state relations.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-27058609761028697712010-03-08T00:08:00.000-08:002010-03-31T22:38:29.317-07:00Historic Iceland vote about rules of globalisation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S5Sw5V9IeyI/AAAAAAAAADE/fhH3UQTeOGc/s1600-h/Gejz%C3%ADr.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 142px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S5Sw5V9IeyI/AAAAAAAAADE/fhH3UQTeOGc/s200/Gejz%C3%ADr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446172348590357282" border="0" /></a><br />Over the weekend Icelanders have voted in a little noticed referendum about the rules of globalisation. The actual question asked was whether they would be ready to pay for the debts that the Icelandic bank IceSave owes to its mainly British and Dutch former customers.<br /><br />93% voted against. This is in fact a historic defeat for a previously accepted principle of globalisation that while financial institutions can go overseas and act fairly unchecked, they immediately seize to be multinationals as soon as they are hit by a major crisis.<br /><br />Icelanders decided enough is enough. Why should they be forced to foot the bill for the reckless mistakes of a group of bankers in a private enterprise over which they had no control?<br /><br />Naturally, the Iceland saga is still not over. Ratings agencies are expected to downgrade Iceland, and it will be more difficult for them to borrow. We shall see how that goes. However, the people of Iceland at this point must be applauded for their confidence.<br /><br />It is also quite clear that although initially Icelanders believed they could seek refuge from similar financial crises in the EU, they have now turned against EU membership. They have understood that Brussels would acually be in support of them paying for the sins of their banking system, rather than establishing that financial regulations and oversight had not been prudent enough. They have understood the EU to be what it really is: integration pro-capital rather than pro-people.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-56620651779416933042010-02-28T00:03:00.000-08:002010-03-31T22:39:30.613-07:00Actual Individual Consumption<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4okmnWid8I/AAAAAAAAAC8/qW_x3u43GVQ/s1600-h/AIC.PNG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 194px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4okmnWid8I/AAAAAAAAAC8/qW_x3u43GVQ/s200/AIC.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443203345447811010" border="0" /></a><br />A múltkori PPS-ről, árakról szóló bejegyzés érdekes gondolatokat hozott felszínre az olvasók között. Az egyiket most megosztom, ez a gazdasági felzárkózás izgalmas és releváns mutatója, az úgynevezett Tényleges Egyéni Fogyasztás (Actual Individual Consumption). Az Eurostat számolja és publikálja, csak valamilyen rejtélyes okból hallgat róla mint a sír. A tartalma az egyének tényleges fogyasztói kosara, egyes termékek gyakoriságával súlyozva, és ugyanazok árszínvonalával korrigálva. Ez valószínűleg elég jó közelítést ad az uniós országok tényleges életszínvonaláról, mindenesetre sokkal jobbat, mint bármifajta GDP/per fő vásárlóerő paritáson.<br /><br />Lássuk akkor a tényeket, a táblázat rákattintva kinagyítható.<br /><br />Amint látható, a tényleges fogyasztás általában korrelál a kibocsátással de vannak eltérések. A fejlettebb országokat lefelé mozdítja, a fejletlenebbeket felfelé.<br /><br />Nekem továbbra is kétségeim vannak, hogy ezek a számok megfelelőek-e. Mivel a keleti bérek valahol 35% körül vannak a nyugatiakhoz képest, az árak meg mondjuk 2/3 környékén, ezért szerintem ez a mutató is felüllövi a keleti életszínvonalat.<br /><br />Fogadjuk el azonban egy pillanatra az adatokat. Mit látunk? Azt, hogy a nyugat-európa valahol 100-120% között van, kelet pedig 44-70%-ig. (A szlovén modell teljesen más, őket nem számítom keletnek.) Azaz egy tipikus nyugati fogyasztása igen elnagyoltan minimum másfélszerese, maximum háromszorosa a keletinek.<br /><br />Persze ne felejtsük el, hogy az adatok két nagyon fontos dolgot elfednek! Az egyik, hogy a tényleges fogyasztásból mennyi a megélhetési kényszerfogyasztás, és mennyi az ezen felüli, mondjuk úgy, hogy luxusfogyasztás. Míg kelet-európa nagy része a megélhetésért küszködik, addig nyugaton ez relatíve garantáltan teljesítve van, bőségesen marad önfejlesztésre, amortizáció pótlására, szórakozásra, pihenésre.<br /><br />A másik dolog, amit az adatok elfednek, hogy a fogyasztás teljesítése után mekkora összeg marad meg megtakarításként. Tudjuk. hogy ez Kelet-Európában minimális, alig van az embereknek tényleges vagyoni biztonsága. Az is alapvető közgazdasági tapasztalat, hogy a magasabb jövedelmekből az emberek sokkal nagyobb részt tesznek félre.<br /><br />Még egy tanulsága van a táblázatnak, amit depressziókeltést elkerülendő csak félve említek meg. Míg szinte mindenhol a térségben volt valami felzárkózás a AIC tekintetében, addig Magyarország oda süllyedt, hogy a trendeket nézve már csak a bolgárokat és a románokat előzzük meg fogyasztás tekintetében, a bejövő horvátok is valószínűleg már magasabban vannak, és a törökök sincsenek már olyan nagyon nagyon messze...Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-39295710235450940302010-02-23T16:02:00.000-08:002010-03-31T22:45:13.483-07:00A fogyasztói árak Európában: mi értelme a vásárlóerő-paritásnak?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4R3KlqIfkI/AAAAAAAAACk/9RZIk_eZC-A/s1600-h/CPI+EU+27.bmp"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 98px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4R3KlqIfkI/AAAAAAAAACk/9RZIk_eZC-A/s200/CPI+EU+27.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441605273561628226" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">A mellékelt, ráklikkeléssel kinagyítható táblázat az Eurostat 2008-as adatsorra arról, hogy mennyire zárkóztak fel az árak az új tagállamokban. Amint látható, gyakorlatilag majdnem, sőt, egyes termékek esetében ma már Kelet-Európa drágább at átlagnál is. A bérek messze nem zárkóztak fel ennyire, erről külön bejegyzést fogok írni, de nagyjából elmondható, hogy az 1996-os 25%-ról 2007-re 34%-ra zárkóztak fel a keleti bérek a nyugatiakhoz képest.<br />Joggal merül fel a kérdés, hogy mennyi értelme van a vásárló-erő paritásnak a különböző makroadatoknál, ha a lakosság fogyasztói árindexe ilyen mértékben felzárkózott?<br />Kérdés az is, miért lehet Kelet-Európa egyes esetekben drágább?<br />További kérdés, hogy miért mutattak az árak gyorsabb felzárkózást, mint a bérek?<br /></span>Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-45140740633488321172010-02-21T10:10:00.001-08:002010-03-31T22:40:01.298-07:00Új regionális GDP adatok az Eurostattól: Prága Bécs és Párizs előtt? Magyarország lenn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4F95TfFRuI/AAAAAAAAACU/IvWgJ9g8wP4/s1600-h/prag.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S4F95TfFRuI/AAAAAAAAACU/IvWgJ9g8wP4/s200/prag.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440768248276928226" border="0" /></a><br />Kijöttek az Eurostattól a <a href="http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/1-18022010-AP/EN/1-18022010-AP-EN.PDF">a legfrissebb regionális GDP adatok</a>, melyek szerint Prága (172%) Bécs (163%) előtt van vásárlóerő-paritáson mért egy főre jutó GDP tekintetében. Ezt elég nehéz elképzelni. Persze ha még valamilyen statisztikai módszertanból adódóan igaz is, akkor is igen szépen mutatja, hogy a GDP-ben mért felzárkózás mennyire nem jár együtt a jövedelmi vagy vagyoni helyzet alakulásával. Azaz mennyire nem lehet azt mondani, hogy a magasabb GDP-jű régiók és országok 'gazdagabbak' lennének. A GDP a gazdasági kibocsátás mutatója. Tulajdonképpen az is kérdés, hogy mi indokolja a vásárlóerő-paritás használatát a kibocsátás mérésénél?<br /><br />Az adatok azt is szépen mutatják, hogy a kelet-európai fővárosi (Prága, Pozsony, Budapest, stb.) és a vidéki régiók között mekkora drámai különbségek vannak.<br /><br />Magyarország régió közül négy (Dél-Dunántúl, Dél- és Észak-Alföld, valamint Észak-Magyarország) is a legalacsonyabb kibocsátású húsz uniós régió között van.<br /><br />Az Unió legnagyobb kibocsátású régiói továbbra is Luxemburg, a londoni City, Brüsszel, és Hamburg, az egyetlen igazi érdekesség a (környezetét is magában foglaló) Párizst is megelőző Prága. Szintén magas szinten (160) van a Pozsonyi Régió, amely Prágával szemben azonban a Pozsonyi régió a környezetét is magában foglalja.<br /><br />A legalacsonyabb kibocsátású régiók Bulgáriában, Romániában, Lengyelországban és Magyarországon vannak.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-56852482539196656492010-02-08T07:27:00.000-08:002010-03-31T22:40:58.657-07:00Szlovákia: Tátrai Tigris vagy elkésett gazdasági újjáéledés?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S3A2aG5QBTI/AAAAAAAAACE/nfqjZIVM9Zs/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 113px; height: 122px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S3A2aG5QBTI/AAAAAAAAACE/nfqjZIVM9Zs/s200/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435904572391425330" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />A tátrai tigrisnek elnevezett pár éves szlovák gazdasági növekedése a közhiedelemmel ellentétben sem foglalkoztatás-növekedést nem hozott, sem jelentős életszínvonal emelkedést a társadalomnak. Ráadásul középpontjában nem is az egy kulcsos adó bevezetése áll.<br /><br />Magyarországon történő másolása pedig kifejezetten aggasztó következményekkel járhat.<br /><br />A tátrai tigrist ebben az <a href="https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B0GIjNLGtdqBYjE1MTJhOTktM2FlNC00OGZiLWI5ZDQtYjk1ZTY0ZWMxMTJl&hl=en">összefoglaló</a>ban demisztifikáljuk.Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8582383143241159749.post-85832500570317796302010-02-08T03:15:00.001-08:002010-03-31T22:41:31.894-07:00A Brit Konzervatív Párt gazdasági programja<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S3A4LoZ8SSI/AAAAAAAAACM/FcruVPYC018/s1600-h/768px-Conservative_logo_2006.svg.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 46px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bdZ6fXO2jeI/S3A4LoZ8SSI/AAAAAAAAACM/FcruVPYC018/s200/768px-Conservative_logo_2006.svg.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435906522712131874" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Idén választások lesznek Nagy-Britanniában is és Magyarországon is. Mindkét országban várhatóan a jobboldal kerül hatalomra. Érdemes megnézni a brit konzervatívok gazdasági programját, amely megtekinthető <a href="http://issuu.com/conservatives/docs/neweconomicmodel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ezen a linken</a>. Tele adatokkal, tényekkel, grafikonokkal, számokkal, konkrét tervezett intézkedésekkel a kormányra kerülésük utánra.<br /><br />Ehhez képest a Fidesz gazdaságpolitikai tervezetét hol keressem? Talán az <a href="http://jovonk.hu/FideszPP2007_HU.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Erős Magyarország</a> programban, amelyben a<span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">z oldalszámokon kívül más szám nincs?<br /><br />Orbán Viktor <a href="http://tv2.hu/tenyek/video/interju-orban-viktorral-a-teljes-beszelgetes-vagatlanul">egy TV interjúban </a>legújabban arra hivatkozva nem adott konkrétumokat, </span></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">hogy nem tudnak semmit mondani az adókról, mert a 'kormány' nem adja a számokat. Ez megint nem stimmel. Többségében nem a kormány adja a számokat, hanem például a KSH, az MNB, stb. A költségvetés számait pedig a kormányon kívül áttekint az erre létrehozott </span><a style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);" href="http://www.mkkt.hu/">Költségvetési Tanács</a><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">. Ezer hazai és nemzetközi közintézmény, kutatóintézet és cég elemez és tervez ezekre a számokra építve.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(238, 238, 238);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">Nagy-Britanniában nem gondolják azt, hogy az 'ellenzéknek nem az a dolga, hogy programot készítsen, hanem hogy ellent mondjon', meg azt sem, hogy nem szabad gazdasági programot adni, mert ellopják. A választók pedig nem hajlandók egy olyan pártra szavazni, főleg nem 2/3 arányban, aki nem mondja meg, hogy mit fog tenni, ha kormányra kerül.</span><br /></span></span>Kazantzakishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14293456399716261023noreply@blogger.com0