Loomnie

The advert:

Applications are invited for 4 full time three year PhD studentships available in Law, Politics and Justice, including in the area of Gender, Sexuality and Law, at Keele University from 2009-10. Further details are available at: http://www.keele.ac.uk/gradschool/funding/keelefunding.htm

The deadline for applications is 27th February and the funding support pays UK/EU fees plus a research studentship stipend for 3 years (the 2009/10 stipend rate is £13,290).

Mr Roger Cohen of the New York Times writes in his column:

A strong Europe is essential to America’s recovery. The United States is too stretched — militarily and economically — to do without the cohesion of its closest allies.

There are three major European powers: Britain, France and Germany. Britain is going through a meltdown so severe that the joke there is that the country’s the next Iceland. That aside, its European credentials are always a little suspect.

And:

The recession is severe in Germany, but the country still has a savings ratio of 11 percent (it’s negative in the United States), a strong manufacturing sector and, after spending a staggering $1.8 trillion to integrate the Communist East, it has managed to get its budget close to balance.

And that is where I think America and the UK should learn from Germany. I have found it increasingly baffling that almost every economist has pointed to the need to increase consumption, the need to make people start buying again. I find it a little problematic that people do not seem to want to discuss how part of the current economic crisis was created by people buying what they cannot afford and spending money they do not have. I hear stories of people having more than three credit cards, and I simply do not get it. That is where Germans can teach Americans and the Brits a bit. An average German, for instance, spends what they have saved; and I don’t think there are many who hold multiple credit cards.

If only one lesson is taken away from the current global economic crisis, it should be that people cannot just keep spending money they do not have without eventually running into trouble. But, sadly, it seems that is not a lesson people are prepared to learn. At least that is what is shown by rhetorics of economists and policy makers who aim to get banks to start lending again, and people to start borrowing and spending again.

You can read Mr Cohen’s column here.

The UK – Tiny cities that somehow promise you that they would get bigger for you once you get used to them, or once you grow to love them.

The US – Large cities that promise that the huge impersonal cities will narrow down to become smaller and more personal for you.

In other words, the cities in one get larger while in the other, they get smaller. Perhaps this has something to do with the roads?

From The Economist:

Though banking standards have certainly risen a lot in recent years, they still lag behind those of America and the European Union, particularly in terms of transparency. In April, United Bank for Africa, one of the country’s biggest, fell foul of American regulators who served the bank with a $15m fine for ignoring anti-money-laundering regulations despite several warnings. “There’s no resemblance at all between operating in Britain or America and operating in Nigeria,” says Fola Fagbule, a research analyst with Afrinvest. “It’s light years apart, and it’s an issue [the banks] need to address”. Read in full.

Ever wondered about the budget of the United Nations specialised organs? The figure below is from The Economist.

Note that only six institutions on the list have budgets over one billion dollars.

In 2002, the treasury department of the UK projected that the budget of DFID would be increased to 4.6billion pounds per year, by 2005/2006. The budget estimate (pdf) of the USAID for 2008 is 22.1billion dollars.

Is anybody surprised that UN institutions under-perform?

(I probably should add that not all the institutions in the table are UN organs. Thanks, Virginie, for calling my attention to the misunderstanding this could cause.)