What do Latvians and the Dutch want from my blog?

The chart below gives an idea of the countries from where visitors came to my blog last week (the single-digits are not included)

My blog provides only such a big picture--there is no way to match the visitor with the post they read.  So, I am curious about whatever it was that drew the Latvians ... I haven't tagged any post with Latvia, though the name of the country is to be found in these three posts that, however, do not discuss anything specific to Latvia.  

Maybe the CIA or the FBI keeps an eye on me through some proxy server in Latvia :)

The Great Recession, Part II. The second dip cometh?

Yakking blogging about Ecuador, it turns out, was a wonderful distraction from depressing stuff, like Joseph Stiglitz's column, in which he writes that instead of putting "America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich" the fanatical free market ideology of the right is instead:

pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the U.S. economy in peril and that shred what remains of the social contract. Meanwhile, the U.S. financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways.

When Stiglitz writes thus, it is time to worry. To really, really, worry.

So, what are the Democrats and President Obama doing to counter this ideological offensive from the right?  Mark Thoma is utterly disappointed:

We can do better than this, but it takes leadership and a willingness to fight rather than acquiesce, traits that are far too short in supply in the current administration.

 Hmmm ... so, does this mean that Europe, which doesn't suffer from the ideological right, but is cursed by the ideological left, any better?  Yes, Professor Stiglitz?

But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and other countries face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe, too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece.

Oh, come on.  "Can't anybody here play this game?"

 Stigltiz says there is a way out, but that path is blocked by the ideologues from the right:

an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth itself increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence that this engenders leads to still further growth.Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backward: They believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government's fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity's advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion

I was positive Paul Krugman would have a succinct bottom-line, and he didn't fail:

what we now have is a political drive that will, in effect, undo all those institutional changes that prevented the Great Recession into turning into another Great Depression.

It is a good thing I do not have to worry about stuffing my money into the mattress--have nothing to spare after paying the bills!  Not complaining though--at least I have money to pay those damned bills ...

All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

After watching My Happy Family I pulled up and read an old blog-post of mine about Georgia, its food, its people, the people from the old Soviet Union ... all in America!

Here is my blog-post from from August 2012:
*********************************

When "S" suggested dinner at a Russian restaurant, my immediate response was, "Russian? Bland food?"  But, I was assured that it is not really Russian, but the food is Georgian, and that I would love the two dishes that are "S"'s favorites.

A woman in a summery dress was straightening the outdoor tables as we walked in.  True to the old stereotypes of smoking and drinking Russians, she had with her a pack of cigarettes as well.  The eatery had to be authentic then!

We sat at a table, adjacent to a couple.  Two tables away was a lone young man who looked like he could be from one of the Central Asian "Stan" countries.  At a far table was a group of three older men.  I imagined that they were immigrants who had gotten together for their weekly conversations about the old country, and perhaps tell the same stories all over again, in their deep and gruff tones.

The walls were filled with handwritten notes in various languages.  I scanned them, and I spotted a Thirukkural couplet.  A wonderful couplet that will be meaningful in any culture:

The couplet roughly translates to:

When one harms you, shame them by doing them good.

To the right of the couplet was a vase/cup and spoon that was so much like the ones that Srikumar, my high school friend, had gifted me back in the days when he was a student in the USSR. I still have that at home:

The food was awesome.  Borscht and a chicken dish that is described in the menu as:

Shashlik: This hunter's joy on a skewer is grilled Thursdays through Sundays; please allow 25 minutes. It is said that this dish saved the Yalta Accords between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt in 1944.

As we exited the restaurant, I noticed the summery-dress woman sitting outside. 

"Are all you folks from Russia and Georgia?" I asked her.

"We are from all over the old Soviet Union" she replied.  "I am from Belarus."

"No kidding!"

"We have had people here from Latvia, Lithuania, and many of the old Soviet republics.  We all talk Russian."

I so wanted to joke with her that I thought the Latvians and Lithuanians hated the Russians, but I didn't.  Leave them Russians alone; they have caused enough troubles already!

Thirukkural in a Russian restaurant run by Georgians!

When "S" suggested dinner at a Russian restaurant, my immediate response was, "Russian? Bland food?"  But, I was assured that it is not really Russian, but the food is Georgian, and that I would love the two dishes that are "S"'s favorites.

A woman in a summery dress was straightening the outdoor tables as we walked in.  True to the old stereotypes of smoking and drinking Russians, she had with her a pack of cigarettes as well.  The eatery had to be authentic then!

We sat at a table, adjacent to a couple.  Two tables away was a lone young man who looked like he could be from one of the Central Asian "Stan" countries.  At a far table was a group of three older men.  I imagined that they were immigrants who had gotten together for their weekly conversations about the old country, and perhaps tell the same stories all over again, in their deep and gruff tones.

The walls were filled with handwritten notes in various languages.  I scanned them, and I spotted a Thirukkural couplet.  A wonderful couplet that will be meaningful in any culture:

The couplet roughly translates to:

When one harms you, shame them by doing them good.

To the right of the couplet was a vase/cup and spoon that was so much like the ones that Srikumar, my high school friend, had gifted me back in the days when he was a student in the USSR. I still have that at home:

The food was awesome.  Borscht and a chicken dish that is described in the menu as:

Shashlik: This hunter's joy on a skewer is grilled Thursdays through Sundays; please allow 25 minutes. It is said that this dish saved the Yalta Accords between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt in 1944.

As we exited the restaurant, I noticed the summery-dress woman sitting outside. 

"Are all you folks from Russia and Georgia?" I asked her.

"We are from all over the old Soviet Union" she replied.  "I am from Belarus."

"No kidding!"

"We have had people here from Latvia, Lithuania, and many of the old Soviet republics.  We all talk Russian."

I so wanted to joke with her that I thought the Latvians and Lithuanians hated the Russians, but I didn't.  Leave them Russians alone; they have caused enough troubles already!

Stagflation cometh? Already here?

The next reading of the CPI comes out in mid-July. A negative number will mark the third straight decline and will surely inflate the volume of talk about deflation. (As the historical data show, we haven't seen four straight monthly declines in the CPI since the 1930s.) But when considering the risks of deflation, we shouldn't look at the CPI in isolation. The phenomenon of prices falling modestly at a time when the economy as a whole is growing at a 3 percent click, as it is today, isn't much to worry about. "The combination of slow growth or stagnation and deflation is the thing that's scary," says Michael Bordo. In other words, look out for stagflation.

That is enough to get me worried all the more about a disastrous combination of employment stagnation and deflation, about which I have blogged enough ... Here is a post from back in October 2008 where I quoted extensively from Dr. Doom himself!

Speaking of him, here is Roubini's comical response to Financial Times' quick survey of summer vacation plans:

Where are you going on holiday this year?Recently I have lived like the George Clooney character in Up in the Air (a film I watched on a plane). If I get a vacation this summer it would possibly be a tour of crisis-hit countries – if I am still allowed in them: Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, Greece and, maybe, the oil spill-ridden US Gulf Coast.

Is 2012 is a game-changer in history, as were 1979 and 2001?

I was in graduate school--often sleeping in a corner of USC's philosophy library or Doheny library--as the the Soviet Bloc started coming apart.

It was surreal to watch the entire system come down.  Those were the prime years of CNN and its anchor, Bernard Shaw.  

As one who grew up reading Russian literature, which convinced my parents that I was a commie who would never go to the US, I was all the more fascinated with the events and Gorbachev became my hero for carefully walking down the path of perestroika and glasnost.

All of a sudden there they were: Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania.  Soon after all that there was Yeltsin holding on to a new Russian beginning.

The crazy thing for me as a student was that none of my faculty even remotely talked about such a possibility, say, in 1987 or even in 1988. 

As Yogi Berra remarked, "Prediction is very hard, especially about the future"

Years later, as the summer season of the university's calendar was winding down, it was early in the morning as I was drinking coffee with NPR in the background when I thought I heard something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in NY.  For two days after turning the television on at that moment, I sat transfixed and absolutely depressed by the even more surreal sights--I even skipped out on the back-to-school events on campus where, I later learnt, the university president had apparently highlighted, among other accomplishments, a research work that I had just completed.

I am amazed that I have already lived through such major game changers in world history!

In recent years the dramatic game changers in global history have been quite regular, about a decade apart:

1968: the Tet Offensive
1979: annus horribilis
1989: The Berlin Wall tumbles down
2001: 9/11

It is then tempting to worry that the next event is round the corner.  It is equally tempting to think that the Arab Spring was not a game-changer, but that the recent wave of protests is the beginning of a historic turning point.

But, I have learnt enough to humbly admit to this: I don't know when and where that will happen.

I don't think even Bruce Bueno de Mesquita knows
 :-(