THE West has rightly marvelled at China’s economic miracle. Less noticed is a minor miracle in its own midst. It is time to pay attention to Germany’s new Wirtschaftswunder.
Germany had a savage recession as manufacturing orders dried up, but its economy has since bounced back strongly, expanding by 3.6% last year, far faster than most other rich economies. For sure, this was partly a “bungee effect” after a particularly deep downturn, but it is no one-year wonder. By several measures, including keeping unemployment down (it is at its lowest since 1992) and the prosperity reflected in the growth of GDP per head, Germany was the star performer among the rich G7 countries over the past ten years (see article). Germans entered 2011 in their most optimistic mood since 2000, according to Allensbach’s polls. Business confidence is at its highest since the Ifo institute began tracking it 20 years ago.
What’s Germany’s secret? It helps that the country did not experience a property or credit bubble, and that it has kept its public finances admirably under control. But above all Germany’s success has been export-driven: unlike most other big rich economies it has maintained its share of world exports over the past decade, even as China has risen.
Aung San Suu Kyi
The night before I am due to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, I take a battered taxi to the ancient Shwedagon Pagoda where it all began. It was here on an August morning in 1988 that the daughter of General Aung San, Burma’s independence hero, gave her first big speech, an address that was to plunge her into the cauldron of Burmese politics.
Although she was naturally reserved and the crowd was extraordinarily large – anything between 300,000 and 1m people – she spoke without apparent fear. Behind her was a portrait of her father, the Bogyoke, or “big leader”, assassinated at the age of 32, only months before his dream of Burmese independence was realised.
“Reverend monks and people,” Suu Kyi, then 43, began, asking for a minute’s silence for the 3,000 democracy protesters gunned down or hacked to death in that momentous month of revolution and suppression. “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that is going on,” she said, launching what she called “the second struggle for national independence”. Although she sought reconciliation over conflict, the underlying message was clear. Her father had liberated Burma from the British. She would help liberate it from Burma’s own generals.
GOP pushing for ISPs to record user data
he House Republicans’ first major technology initiative is about to be unveiled: a push to force Internet companies to keep track of what their users are doing.
A House panel chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow morning to discuss forcing Internet providers, and perhaps Web companies as well, to store records of their users’ activities for later review by police.
One focus will be on reviving a dormant proposal for data retention that would require companies to store Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for two years, CNET has learned.
Tomorrow’s data retention hearing is juxtaposed against the recent trend to protect Internet users’ privacy by storing less data. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission called for “limited retention” of user data on privacy grounds, and in the last 24 hours, both Mozilla and Google have announced do-not-track technology.
Amazing. I thought the economy was job #1 for the Republicans.
Warning!
A “shocking” hotel scene.
Germany Strives to be a Leader in Data Privacy
BERLIN — Germany should become a leader in international data protection standards, the country’s justice minister said Friday, and she praised WikiLeaks for helping raise awareness of the issue in the United States.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who has clashed with U.S. internet giants such as Google and Facebook over privacy issues, announced the establishment of a new German foundation that would explore data security issues, such as how a high security standard could be used to competitive advantage and develop technology to protect user privacy.
Three faces of India (and two faces of Tata)
I STARTED the day on Tuesday by visiting Tata’s steelworks in Jamshedpur. I found it awe-inspiring. The scale is mind-blowing: 2.5 hectares of industrial muscle. Even more mind-blowing is the steelmaking process itself: the giant cauldrons of molten steel, the huge trains shifting raw materials about, the fashioning of the molten steel into iron sheets. Three things struck me in particular. First, the relatively small number of people involved. Though based in a relatively poor company, this is a high-tech, high-skill, highly mechanised process. Second, the intelligence and enthusiasm of the people I talked to. These people love to talk about steel! And they love to recite war stories from their visits to other steel mills! (I apologise if I lost the plot every now and again). And third, the smoothness of the organisation. Every process seemed to be perfectly choreographed, and everybody seemed to know their role. Tata Steel has reduced its workforce from 78,000 in the mid-1990s to 35,000 today, while quadrupling the amount of steel it produces. We need a similar revolution in the public sector.
Antitrust bulldog Gary Reback pushes Google probe
In the 1990s, attorney Gary Reback helped goad the Department of Justice into launching the landmark antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. by hauling willing witnesses and damning information before any government body that would listen.
Reback, of Menlo Park law firm Carr & Ferrell LLP, is now waging a similarly relentless campaign against a technology giant of this era, Google Inc.
In an extensive interview with The Chronicle, he argued the Mountain View search company is engaging in a host of anti-competitive behaviors that are no less egregious than the earlier actions of Microsoft.
He also claims the Federal Trade Commission recently backed off an inquiry into certain of Google’s practices at the behest of the DOJ. It’s known to be conducting a separate investigation into, and possibly preparing to block, the company’s proposed acquisition of travel data company ITA Software. (Read on for his take on what that means.)
The Grounds of Courage: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Early in January 1939, the precocious German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, age thirty-two, learned that all males in his age cohort had been ordered to register with the military. A dedicated opponent of the Nazi regime, he might have responded by declaring himself a conscientious objector, but there were two problems with such a course of action. The first was that Bonhoeffer, although pacifist by inclination, was not opposed to violence under all conditions; and he would later play an active role in the conspiracy led by German generals to assassinate Hitler. The second was that his fame in the Confessing Church (more on this below) might encourage other religious leaders critical of the regime to do the same, thereby bringing them under greater suspicion and undermining their efforts to prove that Nazi policies, and especially their rapidly intensifying Jew-hatred, were contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
The solution was provided by America’s most illustrious theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Nine years earlier, Bonhoeffer had spent a year in the United States as a free-floating exchange student at Union Theological Seminary, arriving not long after Niebuhr had moved there from Detroit. He had made such a positive impression on Union’s faculty that Niebuhr jumped at the opportunity to bring him back. If we fail to offer him a job, he told Union’s president, Henry Sloane Coffin, Bonhoeffer will wind up in a concentration camp. This was not the stuff of run-of-the-mill letters of recommendation. Union extended the offer. Grateful to have a way out of his dilemma, Bonhoeffer booked passage, and in June 1939 found himself safe in America.
David Hockney’s friends in art: the iPad and iPhone
David Hockney may be pretty isolated here in Yorkshire, some four hours by train from London, but that’s the way he likes it. Ensconced near the quiet rural landscape he’s immortalized in paintings and watercolors, he has more time not only to draw but to experiment with new ways of making art.
“We think we’re way ahead here,” he confides. “We need this little remote place to be observant about the medium.”
The art-making medium he’s using most often these days is the iPad, brother to the iPhone, which he took up earlier. Whether he’s lying in bed or driving through snow-covered woods, his ever-ready iPhone and iPad are instant drawing pads, always by his side. The electronic duo keeps him in touch with not only his craft but a small group of friends and colleagues who regularly receive his colorful missives of landscapes, flowers, cap or ashtray.
Winter Travel
