For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles — not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with creative accounting).
問題は財務規律がなかったということではない。
No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites — specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment.
None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.
こうした問題が起きたことは、ユーロ導入前から指摘されていた。無視されて危機が起きた。
But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. What we’ll probably see over the next few years is a painful process of muddling through: bailouts accompanied by demands for savage austerity, all against a background of very high unemployment, perpetuated by the grinding deflation I already mentioned.
Sales by case volume grew 29 percent in China and 20 percent in India, helping boost global volume 5 percent and helping offset declining volume sales in North America. Revenue increased 5.4 percent to $7.51 billion, the company said. Five analysts predicted $7.26 billion, on average.
In January, Audi sold more cars in China than on its home turf in Germany. Audi's China sales more than doubled to 16,798 cars compared with 7,816 in the same month last year while it sold 11,657 cars in Germany last month, up 9.3% year-to-year.
AS NEWSPAPER companies across the developed world took a beating in the past few years, those in one rich country merely shrugged. Japanese newspapers are by far the world’s biggest: Yomiuri sells 10m copies each morning and another 3.6m in the evening. Newspapers enjoy such close ties with politicians and companies that news in Japan does not so much break as ooze.
The problem is not circulation, which has held up well thanks to a distinctive system of distribution.
問題は流通にあるのではない。独特の流通システムによって支えられている。
宅配システムのことですな。
Between 1999 and 2009 the combined circulation of morning and evening papers in Japan fell by just 6.3%, according to Nihon Shimbun Kyokai (NSK), the newspaper publishers’ association. By contrast, American newspapers lost 10.6% of their paying readers between 2008 and 2009.
Yet the population of newspaper readers is ageing. Young people are less likely to read newspapers than their elders (see chart). Nor do they appear to be growing into the habit as they age, says Takashi Kasuya, an executive at Asahi, the second-biggest newspaper.
Demography, which has disguised the extent of the problem so far, will eventually exacerbate it. Japan has a huge population of post-war baby-boomers and relatively few young people—indeed, so few children are being born that the population has started to shrink. At present the newspaper-loving baby-boomers are propping up circulation. When their eyesight fails, newspaper circulations are likely to collapse.
Advertising has already done so. Revenues were dropping even before the recession
広告費も落っこちてて・・・。
まあ、これは良く言われてることですな。
Elsewhere newspapers are responding to the problem of flat or falling audiences by hawking more services to their remaining readers. British newspapers sell wine and online games. Last month the Wall Street Journal launched a travel agency.
Such a strategy is not possible in Japan because the sales agents, not the newspapers, control access to readers. Those agents may also complicate efforts to sell digital newspapers on e-readers and tablet computers. The newspapers’ greatest strength could become an acute weakness.
Conversely, in all cycles, the unemployment rate continues to deteriorate (i.e., rise) well after a recovery in consumer spending has begun, fostering pessimism at a time when the economy has actually begun to improve. In this regard, all early-stage recoveries are “jobless recoveries,” a fact that many economist reporters never seem to learn.
Current Comment: It is no surprise, given the Unemployment Rate’s lagging relationship to consumer spending and the economy in general, that it reached its peak of 10.2% in late 2009, well after Y/Y real consumer-spending comparisons appear to have bottomed out and the stock-market recovery was well under way.
今回も、消費支出の回復から失業率が遅れをとっても、驚くにあたらない。
If real consumer spending growth continues even at a modest rate in 2010, the unemployment rate will almost certainly fall, perhaps to as low as 8.0-8.5%, by the end of 2010.
output grew at an annual rate of 5.7%. This week, they are reminded that a return to growth has yet to benefit the jobless.
GDPは5.7％回復したが、雇用回復にはだつながらないことを米国民は知らされた。
The economy lost 20,000 jobs in January, a decline driven by the loss of 75,000 jobs in the construction sector. Economists had forecast an increase in employment of around 15,000.
The unemployment rate, based on household rather than establishment data, showed a slight improvement, dropping from 10% to 9.7%, but nearly 15m Americans remain unemployed.
Several positive trends continued in January. Firms added 52,000 temporary workers and increased hours, just as they did in December, hinting at growing if cautious optimism. Employment rose in health, education and professional services, and retail employment grew by 42,000 in January, on a seasonally adjusted basis, after declining in December. Manufacturing employment also grew, by 11,000, the first increase since the beginning of recession. Analysts point out that the adjustment of the data is tricky around the holiday season, and actual underlying employment may have grown in January.
Most troubling of all is the continued failure of economic growth to benefit the labour market. Employment fell by over 300,000 jobs during the last three months of 2009, despite strong expansion in GDP. The first quarter of 2010 is unlikely to show as big an output gain, suggesting that the pace of improvement in employment may be slowing, even as regular job growth has yet to return. And the situation may be more dire still; initial jobless claims have grown in recent weeks, indicating that what momentum there was in labour markets has been lost.
The Vatican newspaper and radio station are criticizing James Cameron's 3-D blockbuster for flirting with the idea that worship of nature can replace religion – a notion the pope has warned against. They call the movie a simplistic and sappy tale, despite its awe-inspiring special effects.
Cameron "tells the story without going deep into it, and ends up falling into sappiness," said L'Osservatore Romano. Vatican Radio called it "rather harmless" but said it was no heir to sci-fi masterpieces of the past.
L'Osservatore said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature." Similarly, Vatican Radio said it "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium."
"Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship," the radio said.
自然はもはや守るべき神の創造物ではなくなり、神聖で崇拝されるべきもの自身となっていまっている。
ぞぞっとする指摘でして、お前、異端だぞ、と脅してる感じですな。
あたしにはよくわからないんですが、昔だったら火あぶりだぞ、というニュアンスも入ってますかね。
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that – film criticism, not theological pronouncements – they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI's views on the dangers of turning nature into a "new divinity."
Benedict has often spoken about the need to protect the environment, earning the nickname of "green pope." But he also has balanced that call with a warning against turning environmentalism into neo-paganism.
The pope explained in the message that while many experience tranquillity and peace when coming into contact with nature, a correct relationship between man and the environment should not lead to "absolutizing nature" or "considering it more important than the human person."
In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human beings with other living things in the name of a "supposedly egalitarian vision." He said such notions "open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man's salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms."
