Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10:00 am today in association with NZ Mint.
Bernard Hickey will be back on tomorrow. (pheww!)
We welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
Thank you for your patience and tolerance over the past five weeks. Normal service is about to be resumed.
See all previous Top 10s here.
1. Could General Motors be run by a woman?
GM may be grooming a senior female manager to take over as chief executive.
The current supremo has said she will be a candidate when he retires, and that he would like to appoint from within.
It would be an important signal if a woman was appointed to that top spot. More here »
Ms Barra, whose father worked for GM, first worked for the car maker as an 18-year-old student to help pay her tuition fees. The 50 year-old, who trained as an electrical engineer and has an MBA from Stanford University, is now tasked with overseeing and making more efficient the global design and production of GM's cars. She has estimated that the company wastes about $1 bln a year in the production and design process.
2. Money printing, Italian-style
While Europe’s financial overlords debate the wisdom of spurring growth by letting the European Central Bank print more money, some enterprising sorts northwest of Naples are taking matters into their own hands and printing reams of counterfeit euros. The NY Times is on to them:
“In Italy, there’s a great, ancient and august tradition: Here, they make fake money, done well,” said Col. Alessandro Gentili, the head of the Italian Carabinieri’s Currency Anti-Counterfeiting Unit in Rome. “Giugliano is still the capital. It has the best professionals.”
Quite a number of them, as it turns out. When the police rolled up some of the counterfeiting operations around Giugliano as well as in the Calabria region farther south in January 2009, they raided 162 locations and arrested 109 people, seizing a mountain of illicit materials.
Despite that raid, the biggest in years, Colonel Gentili says the counterfeiting continues, a tradition that — like winemaking, pottery, fabrics and other fine arts for which Italy is justly famous — is often passed from father to son.
3. 'We need 50 million more jobs'
The world needs to create 50 million jobs to return to pre-crisis employment levels, according to the ILO's World of Work 2012 report, but fiscal austerity and tough labour market reforms threaten the scenario for a true jobs recovery. The ILO has an interesting perspective on relative poverty rates:
4. Performance pay
Because teachers unions have been so trenchant in opposing performance pay in their profession (that is: higher pay for superior performance), they are now facing frustration from policy makers which may well result in the inverse - lower pay for poor performance. Had they front-footed the issue, it seems doubtful the current direction would have gained traction. Hopefully teachers here will learn from a developing British situation:
MPs claim the reforms would address fears that poor teachers are having a “very significant” impact on children’s long-term career prospects. The report quotes international research which shows that the worst teachers could cost a class of 20 the equivalent of £250,000 in lost earnings over their career.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University in America, has shown that an excellent teacher can cover a year and a half’s material in a single year, whereas a poor one will get only a third as far.
Teaching unions are strongly opposed to any attempt to alter national pay and conditions. However, the committee’s report says: “No longer should the weakest teachers be able to hide behind a rigid and unfair pay structure.
5. 'Europe to the brink again'
Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary, and former Harvard boss, explains why austerity is not the answer to Europe's debt problems.
Skeptics will rightly wonder how a prescription for more spending by countries that already have trouble borrowing can be correct. The answer lies in the difference between borrowing by individuals and countries. Normally, an individual helps his creditors by borrowing less; but a person who stops borrowing to finance commuting to his job does his creditors no favor. A country’s income is determined by spending, so a country that pursues austerity to the point where its economy is driven into a downward spiral does its creditors no favor. Yes, there will ultimately be a need to raise retirement ages, reform sclerosis-inducing regulations and restructure benefit programs; phased-in commitments in these areas would be constructive. But the prospect for political and economic success in these endeavors depends on growth being restored.
6. Rising since February
We hear a lot about the "Baltic Dry Index" when it is falling - confirmation for gloomsters that the end is near. But its not in the news at present so we thought we would check its recent trends. It's on a steady rise, and you can see it here: draw your own conclusions about what it 'predicts'.
7. Hogan's tax war over
The Australian Tax Office has ended its pursuit of actor Paul Hogan. They've been after him for more than ten years. In the settle-up, he didn't have to admit guilt and is now free to travel. The ATO was after "unpaid taxes" of A$150 mln. although this included interest and penalties. Apparently the claim was for undeclared income from the movies he directed/produced, especially the "Crocodile Dundee" series. He has always maintained he has done nothing wrong.
8. Change at the top
The outgoing head of the Bank of England is taking even more criticism that usual. Some have even called his tenure a "disaster". Dr Bollard is leaving the RBNZ soon as well, but he must be relieved no-one is on his case as they are in the UK.
Mr Cumming did not expand on his position, but City figures are known to be frustrated with the Governor’s apparently conflicting demands for lenders to boost their capital buffers and increase lending at the same time. Furthermore, they find his sermons about bankings' ills grating given his regulatory failings before the crisis.
“He was happy to let them run at 150 miles an hour. Now he wants them running at 10 miles an hour and armour plated,” said one senior City figure. “He’s gone from very light touch to excessive regulation. That’s making it difficult for banks to lend, which is bad for them and the economy.”
9. The death of Facts
A columnist at the Chicago Tribune has lamented the death of 'facts' and written an obituary. He notes that Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak of its power.
But those halcyon days would not last.
People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.
"There was an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what's true or how you would go about verifying any truth claims," Poovey said. "Opinion has become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in the 'news' an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that confirms their opinion as fact."
And then there is the "backfire effect" - NPR has that story.
10. The last laugh
Lets finish my stint with the cast from The Simpsons.
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