Politico: Reality blurs Macron’s eurozone vision

According to the Elysée, Macron will wait until the end of the month to make his detailed proposal public — just a few weeks before the next European Council meeting in mid-October. A preliminary discussion of deeper eurozone integration will take place at the informal meeting of EU finance ministers in Tallinn, Estonia, on Friday and Saturday. [...]

The old German position is that fiscal restraint and structural reforms in the eurozone countries would suffice to avoid a repeat crisis. But most economists, including German ones, note that external shocks to the European economy would hit different member countries in different ways and that some form of pooling of resources and fiscal transfers — that is, the strong helping the weak — would be necessary in times of crisis to avoid another financial panic. [...]

Contrast this with Merkel’s guarded endorsement of the idea at her summer press conference in Berlin a day before Macron’s interview was published. The common budget, she said, could be made up of “small contributions, not hundreds of billions of euros” from eurozone members and be devoted to rewarding countries that implement structural reforms. As for the eurozone finance minister, the person would merely help provide greater “coherence” in the economic policies of different countries.

That’s also the vision outlined by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday — although he wants the joint economy and finance minister for the EU as a whole. [...]

Skeptics of Macron’s grandiose plans agree that more needs to be done to make the eurozone safer and more stable. But they say it would be enough to complete the major reforms that have already been launched — such as the EU’s banking union, arguably the most important reform of European institutions of the last 10 years.

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Haaretz: Ben-Gurion Invented the Israeli Right

This is a path that leads with absolute certainty to extreme nationalism, by creating a kind of refusal to make do with non-imperial normalcy, to be a nation like all others. Pretensions to greatness, to the heights of “moral superiority,” drive a nation to grant itself excess privileges.

In Ben-Gurion and his little black-and-white hut in the Negev, the modern Israeli can see its current right-wing leaders. Ben-Gurion never stopped quoting from the Bible, identifying himself with the greatest of the prophets. He claimed the Jewish people was created by the Land of Israel itself (and the organic connection between the people and its land was fascism’s contribution to the 20th century), and that it has a right to the entire land, including the territories conquered in 1967. (He was in favor of ceding those territories in exchange for peace, aside from Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, so we can retroactively conclude that he would have supported the peace agreement with Egypt, but opposed peace with the Palestinians and Syria, just like the Netanyahu government.) He defined himself first and foremost as a Jew. He invented the Israeli right. [...]

Those who insist on establishing a model nation, and who consistently inculcate a feeling in their people that they are meant to be an exalted people, better than others and therefore can’t settle for an ordinary existence, will end up with the seeds of fascism and the belief that God speaks to this nation.

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Social Europe: Economic Sovereignty: A Delusion

It has been Conservative policy in Britain since Mrs Thatcher to reduce the size of the state in pursuit of some golden age where private ownership and management would dominate (see Meek). The scale of the dismantling of the state and the destruction of what Meek calls ‘universal networks’ (the social and technological system deemed essential to all citizens) has been extraordinary. As Meek concludes:

The most absurd paradox of Britain’s privatisation is that it has actually led to the nationalisation of British infrastructure by foreign governments with parts of former British state firms becoming the property of the governments of France, the Netherlands, Sweden, China, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. [...]

It is not that foreign ownership is in itself a bad thing but to argue that Brexit will permit the UK to re-establish economic sovereignty is simply a chimera. The UK is a very open economy with a ratio of Imports and exports to GDP of 61% and rising (51% in 2003). This is one of the highest ratios of any of the G8 countries. How is it possible for an economy so dependent on trade in goods and services to recover its economic sovereignty given this extremely high dependence on imports both for consumption and for production? [...]

The three biggest Eurozone economies (Germany, France and Italy) have jointly presented a paper to the EU Commission calling for a strengthening of powers to control overt political takeovers – especially where these threaten areas of key national interest and security. The Commission would be given the power to review key business takeovers although the ultimate decision making authority would remain at national level.

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Quartz: Economic models are broken, and economists have wildly different ideas about how to fix them

In a new paper (pdf) entitled “Where Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University lays much of the blame on the models used to understand the economy. These Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models have become increasingly popular among macroeconomists, central bankers, and other analysts. [...]

“The core of the failings of the DSGE model can be traced to the attempt, decades ago, to reconcile macroeconomics with micro-economics,” writes Stiglitz. Here, Stiglitz challenges one of the primary appeals of DSGE models: their “micro foundations.” This means that all models are built up from the decisions of an individual or “representative agent.” These models generally assume that individuals act to maximize their utility “over an infinite lifetime without borrowing constraints,” he writes. [...]

First, the models haven’t been good enough at predicting economic trends, particularly around crises, because they are built to detect short-term fluctuations and not large shocks. Second, they don’t sufficiently incorporate the significant influence of the finance industry, because the models are better at incorporating information about individuals instead of institutions. Third, shocks in DSGE-based systems assume that they are caused by external factors and don’t account for the fact that some crises arise from within. [...]

But instead of scrapping efforts to use micro insights to model the macro economy, researchers at the Bank of England suggest doubling down on a data-heavy approach. In a recent paper (pdf), they also acknowledge the problems with modern economic models. They say that machine learning could address some of these shortfalls by taking advantage of the increasingly large amounts of “micro and high-frequency data” available to central banks and regulators, such as transactions between financial institutions and detailed household consumption patterns.

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CityLab: Even Liberals Can Be Refugee NIMBYs

A new study by researchers at Dartmouth College finds that Americans are more likely to support refugee resettlement nationally than in their own locales. This attitude was consistent across demographic profiles, ideologies, and geography. It also did not correspond with characteristics of the participants’ immediate environments—so factors like population density, unemployment, or concentration of refugees in the county did not seem to matter.

In other words, the idea of refugee resettlement appears to be well and good in abstract. But like in the case of housing for low-income black and brown people, even liberals may take on a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude when it is closer to home. [...]

The second part of the experiment gauged how the media narratives influenced attitudes towards refugees. The findings here were pretty grim: The negative news stories had a more powerful effect on depressing overall support for resettlement than the positive ones had in boosting it. “Our results provide clear evidence that pro-resettlement advocates may be wise to focus their appeals on other considerations (for example, humanitarianism) rather than directly attempting to refute security arguments,” the authors write in the paper. A slim silver lining: proximity to refugees tended to blunt the effect of negative news. So folks who actually had refugee neighbors were less likely to perceive refugees as threats. This finding is consistent with previous research showing that contact with someone of a different race or gender, even just for ten minutes, can reduce prejudice. Trump voters, for example, didn’t live near any Mexican immigrants. It also explains why residential segregation within cities is such an important factor in fueling misperceptions about communities of color.

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Broadly: Satanists vs. Republicans: A Battle for Abortion Rights Rages in Missouri

The Satanic Temple is a fairly notorious organization; it describes itself as non-theistic religion centered on the literary figure of Satan. This particular group of Satanists don't worship the actual devil—they don't believe in the devil, or any sort of supernatural being, for that matter—but they contend that "religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition." Since their founding in 2013, they've taken religious freedom laws to their logical extreme as a form of political protest, essentially arguing that any legal exemptions that apply to Christians should apply to Satanists as well. [...]

This assertion is antithetical to two of the central tenets of Satanism: that one's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone, and that one's beliefs should conform to the best scientific understanding of the world. "There is no medical or scientific purpose for mandating an abortion waiting period, nor is the idea that 'life begins at conception' a scientific fact," explains Jex Blackmore, a spokesperson for the Temple. For this reason, Mary Doe presented a letter of exemption to staff at the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, which was the only abortion provider operating in the state at the time. [...]

The oral arguments in the federal appeal will take place on September 20, and Blackmore says the state-level hearing on Monday went well, though she's "not so confident in the impartiality of Missouri's legal system, which is largely conservative." If the Satanic Temple succeeds in their appeal, she believes the decision will set an important constitutional precedent. And, ideologically, it will send a message to those in power: If the moral convictions of " those who believe in a supernatural being that demands total servitude under the threat of eternal damnation," as Blackmore puts it, are worth protecting under law, then the moral convictions of Satanists are worth protecting, too.

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Al Jazeera: Tunisia lifts ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslims

The announcement came a month after President Beji Caid Essebsi called for the government to lift the ban dating back to 1973, arguing that existing practice violates Tunisia's constitution, adopted in 2014 in the wake of the Arab Spring revolution. [...]

Until now a non-Muslim man who wished to marry a Tunisian woman had to convert to Islam and submit a certificate of his conversion as proof while a Tunisian man is allowed to marry a non-Muslim woman. [...]

Daughters are entitled to only half the inheritance given to sons.

Mainstream Muslim clerics almost universally see the inheritance rules as enshrined in the Quran, Islam's holy book, and consider the rules on marriage to be equally unquestionable in Islamic law.

The country's leading imams and theologians have issued a statement denouncing the president's proposals as a "flagrant violation of the precepts" of Islam. [...]

The first president of independent Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, championed a landmark social code in 1956 that set a standard for the region by banning polygamy and granting new rights to women unheard of in the Arab world at the time. But even he didn't dare push for equal inheritance.

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Politico: Speak pray love

A senior Italian official in Florence briefed on London’s plans said: “We were told that May chose Florence because it is the historical heart of Europe and which existed without the need for the European Union. It used to be a European capital centuries before the EU was created, it’s a sort of Europe without the EU.” [...]

The choice of a continental location means this is a speech directed primarily at the EU27 and Brussels — rather than a domestic audience. And it is what the prime minister has to say — not where she is saying it — which is really important. [...]

Could she break the deadlock with a “big, generous offer” to pay, in full, Britain’s commitments to the seven-year EU budget?

Such an offer could only be made with strings attached, but it could nevertheless clear a significant blockage from the road to Brexit.May could demand the status quo on trade until the end of the budget period in late 2020 in return for the status quo on money.

Without a clear offer, the speech will only annoy the EU27 more than they already are (no mean feat).

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The New York Times: Follow Kenya’s Lead on Plastic Bags

Last month, Kenya took strong action to tackle the scourge. Manufacturers and importers of plastic bags now face fines of $19,000 to $38,000 or four-year-jail terms. Retailers can no longer sell plastic garbage bags. Shoppers risk having plastic bags confiscated.

The ban imposes more difficulties on many Kenyans than just the inconvenience of getting reusable bags. Poor residents of Nairobi rely on plastic bags as “flying toilets” in the absence of a functioning sewage system and of public toilets that don’t charge a fee. The solution is to provide more toilets and latrines. [...]

More than 40 countries, including China, France and Rwanda, have taxed, limited or banned plastic bags. By 2019, those bags can no longer be handed out free in Europe.

These measures are effective. After England imposed a 5-pence charge on plastic bags in 2015, use dropped 85 percent in the first nine months.

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