lunes, 1 de febrero de 2010

Excuses for not doing what is needed- Europe

Reforming European economies. The cruelty of compassion.
Social cohesion has become an excuse for avoiding necessary reforms in Europe
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SOCIAL cohesion is one of those values all decent Europeans can sign up to: less social conflict and less of the inequality that America and Britain (see article) put up with. Some countries, notably Germany, really do manage to marry social harmony and economic reform. In the past decade Germany has—thanks to good management and obliging unions—kept its public sector in check, partly freed its labour market, held down unemployment, and regained competitiveness. Elsewhere, though, the need to preserve social cohesion, parroted by European politicians from left and right, has become a self-defeating excuse to avoid reform.

In Greece, for instance, the hard-pressed Socialist government of George Papandreou talks up social cohesion as a reason to avoid unduly large public-sector pay cuts in its urgent fiscal retrenchment. Spain’s Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, touts it to justify the retention of labour-market laws that make it ruinously expensive to sack permanent employees. Italy’s right-wing government, under Silvio Berlusconi, is similarly loth to lift burdensome regulations on small businesses and services for fear of protests and strikes. Sweden’s centre-right leader, Fredrik Reinfeldt, is reluctant to be seen attacking his country’s generous social model by trimming benefits, pay and pensions. Even France’s conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is unwilling to damage social cohesion (and risk trouble in the streets) by pushing hard for labour-market, pension and welfare reforms.

Two worrying common threads can be discerned in all this. One is that the natural desire for social cohesion is being abused to justify the protection of “insiders”—those in permanent jobs, in trade unions or in privileged professions. But the cost of protecting insiders falls largely on “outsiders”—the unemployed and those in temporary work, especially young people and immigrants. The gulf between insiders and outsiders destroys the very social cohesion that the policy is meant to preserve. And in the long run it is bad for everyone, because employers do not train temporary workers—a particular problem in economies like Italy and Spain, where new permanent contracts are rare. This lack of training is one of the main reasons why Europe’s productivity growth over the past two decades has persistently lagged behind America’s.

The second common thread is that social cohesion has become a reason to defend the privileges and perks of the public sector, which is also now the last bastion of trade unions. Across Europe many private-sector workers have seen their pay, pensions and other benefits frozen or cut by cash-strapped employers during the recession. Yet most governments, even Britain’s, have been reluctant to apply similar treatment to the public sector. One result is that the state is taking a rising share of GDP, which is sure to lead to heavier taxes. Another is that public-sector pay and benefits have shot ahead as a cosseted caste extends its privileges.

Follow the Irish—or Germans
Most governments seem too paralysed by their muddle-headed talk of social cohesion to act, despite the struggle to finance huge deficits. Yet they now have a striking example in Ireland. Faced with a gaping budget deficit and a recession, the Irish government has torn up its 30-year social compact with employers and unions. It has slashed public spending and made sharp cuts in pay. Indeed, pay is now falling across the whole economy. Not surprisingly, workers and unions are unhappy. This week, the public sector began a work-to-rule. But the harsh medicine seems to be working, as Ireland pulls out of recession, the public finances improve and the economy regains competitiveness lost inside the euro.

It is not always necessary to face down strikes. Italy and Spain could learn from Germany’s trick of reforming without strife. But that may be beyond deeply troubled countries like Greece, which probably has no alternative but to copy Ireland. What all European governments must grasp, though, is that many of the policies espoused in the name of social cohesion do not promote compassion over cruelty. Rather, they encourage decline, entrench divisions and thus threaten the harmony they pretend to nurture.

New money for corrupts

Fighting corruption in India-zero contribution-unconventional way to combat petty corruption
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

5th Pillar
A ZERO-SUM game is one in which the gains of one player are exactly balanced by the losses of another. In India a local non-governmental organisation has invented a new sort of zero sum which, it hopes, will leave everyone better off: the zero-rupee note.

What on earth is the point of that? The note is not legal tender. It is simply a piece of paper the colour of a 50-rupee note with a picture of Gandhi on it and a value of nothing. Its aim is to shame corrupt officials into not demanding bribes.

The idea was dreamt up by an expatriate Indian physics professor from the University of Maryland who, travelling back home, found himself harassed by endless extortion demands. He gave the notes to the importuning officials as a polite way of saying no. Vijay Anand, president of an NGO called 5th Pillar, thought it might work on a larger scale. He had 25,000 zero-rupee notes printed and publicised to mobilise opposition to corruption. They caught on: his charity has distributed 1m since 2007.

One official in Tamil Nadu was so stunned to receive the note that he handed back all the bribes he had solicited for providing electricity to a village. Another stood up, offered tea to the old lady from whom he was trying to extort money and approved a loan so her granddaughter could go to college.

Mr Anand thinks the notes work because corrupt officials so rarely encounter resistance that they get scared when they do. And ordinary people are more willing to protest, since the notes have an organisation behind them and they do not feel on their own. Simple ideas like this don’t always work. When India’s government put online the names of officials facing trial for corruption, the list became a convenient guide for whom to bribe. But, says Fumiko Nagano of the World Bank, transforming social norms is the key to fighting petty corruption and the notes help that process. They are valueless, but not worthless.

domingo, 10 de enero de 2010

Columbia University ASOCIATED WITH 78 NOBEL LAUREATS.

Research universities Powerhouses Jan 7th 2010
From: The Economist print edition

The real dangers facing America’s most important universities

The Great American University: Its Rise to Pre-eminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected. By Jonathan R. Cole. PublicAffairs; 640 pages; $35. Buy from Amazon.com

WHAT do the following have in common: the bar code, congestion charging, the cervical Pap smear and the internet? All emerged from work done at America’s pre-eminent research universities. The central contention of Jonathan Cole’s book is that these mighty institutions are “creative machines unlike any other that we have known in our history”. They stand at the centre of America’s intellectual and technological global leadership, but are now under threat as never before.

Professor Cole has worked all his life at one of these institutions, Columbia, where he was provost for 14 years from 1989 until 2003. His book is really three, each a magisterial work. First, he sets out an admirably comprehensive history of how America’s great universities came into being. Then, he trawls for examples of the enriching inventiveness of these institutions, listing the extraordinary range of innovations in technology and in thinking that have sprung from their research. Finally, he outlines the forces that threaten America’s research universities.

The author describes how these institutions built upon Germany’s model of the 19th century, with its combination of research and teaching; how they benefited from America’s early enthusiasm for mass education as a route to social mobility; and how they hit the jackpot in the 1930s, when many brilliant academics in Germany and Austria fled to American universities (some of which had recently been purging Jews from their own academic bodies).

In the post-war era, the research universities—he reckons about 260 institutions might now claim the name, of which maybe 100 are key—became far larger and more complex. Many turned into “full service” universities, with a clutch of professional schools teaching business, medicine, law and engineering. A flood of federal and foundation funding increased the size of individual departments, bringing benefits of scale. Success bred success. In 2001, America produced a third of the world’s science and engineering articles in refereed journals, and in three of the past four years its academics received two-thirds of the Nobel prizes for science and economics. No wonder America’s great universities lure the world’s cleverest students and the finest academics, many of whom stay to enrich their new country.

Now these great factories of talent, ideas and technologies are threatened from without and within. Professor Cole makes several important points here, though his argument would have been strengthened with the addition of more statistics and tables. Increasing dependence on research funds distorts internal priorities, he says. Columbia University Medical Centre, for example, accounts for more than half of that university’s total budget, while humanities receive almost no external federal funding, and social sciences precious little.

Outside funding also breeds a sense of entitlement to interfere. Government has meddled increasingly. An especially noxious instance is the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks, which has had all kinds of adverse consequences for scientific researchers and librarians. Certain areas of study, such as climate change, stem-cell research and work on the Middle East, are particularly vulnerable to political pressure. Professor Cole tells how two respected scholars, Joseph Massad at Columbia and Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard College, were harassed by the Jewish lobby—and asks what would have happened had American universities given in to rampant institutional anti-Semitism and “resisted hiring the Jewish scientists and scholars from Nazi Germany”?

Most curious, to non-American ears, is another complaint: that the big universities are simply too big and too rich. Professor Cole frets about the growing gap between the richest (not Columbia, wealthy though it is by global standards) and the rest. The growth in Harvard’s endowment in 2006 was greater than the combined total endowment of all but the top dozen American universities. The ranking of research quality is highly correlated with the size of a university’s endowment. What if, muses Professor Cole, America ended up with four or maybe six wealthy giants with a lead so large that even the most entrepreneurial of the rest—Berkeley, say, or Chicago—struggled to compete, and became mere talent farms for the richest?

That is a worry most countries would love to have, as they see their brightest students and academics follow the money to the United States. A bigger concern should be the growing divide between research and teaching—especially undergraduate teaching—as research grows ever more complex. Professor Cole insists that one feeds the other, and so it often does. But he also notes that those hugely expensive medical schools often teach few or no undergraduate students. If the synergy between teaching and research is lost, the whole basis of America’s research universities is undermined. That, surely, is the greatest threat of all to these institutions.

lunes, 4 de enero de 2010

Reflexión de como combatir la drogadicción.

El poner a toda Wall Street en el mismo cesto, Dr. A. no es justo. Cierto, Wall Street Journal es muy conservador especialmente desde que es propiedad del Sr. Murdoch. Por ello sorprende que publique la opinión que se deba de discutir la legalización de la marihuana.

Pero otro riquísimo miembro de Wall Street, el Sr. G. Soros bajo su organización filantrópica’ Open Society’ hace décadas que financia un grupo de académicos y expertos que através de sus estudios han propuesto la legalización de las drogas. Y no solo a nivel de EE UU, sino a nivel mundial. No sirve de mucho si no incluye Colombia, el mayor productor de cocaína, Bolivia el mejor agricultor de la hoja, Afganistán como el gran productor de opio y aun más el Triangulo Dorado lugar de la mejor calidad de opio.

Esos estudios han mostrado algún ejemplo de soluciones no tan logradas: sustitución de Heroína por otra medicina en Inglaterra, venta abierta en cafés de marihuana en Holanda, receta ‘médica‘ y permiso de cultivo en California, etc.

En España yo he visto a gente inyectarse en una avenida turística principal sin que nadie se incomodara.

En Suiza han designado plazas para los adictos. Si es de nacionalidad suiza se le proporciona útiles estériles para evitar SIDA, etc.

Nepal es el paraiso del fumador de maruhuana.

O sea que los Benchmarks existen para formular una política del siglo XXI.

De todas formas, para los traficantes de drogas el problema logístico mayor es el del dinero. Un kilo de coca es como un kilo de harina para tortillas. El dinero que eso genera de los consumidores- billetes de U S $ 10 y 20 - requiere una maleta de viaje mediana. Durante la época dorada de la construcción se podía convertir en casas ese dinero…y así ‘legalizar‘ ese dinero cuando se vendia la casa pagada toda en efectivo en su fase de erección. Eso ahora no es ‘racional’ ya que las casas no se venden … Así que vuelve el viejo problema de cómo poner en circulación las maletas de dinero…El impuesto de 3% por deposito de efectivo por encima de los 15000 pesos no muerde mucho a ese trafico.

El Colegio de México o aun uno que otro de sus investigadores podría fácilmente participar en las investigaciones que el Sr. Soros paga y de su propio bolsillo. No como se acostumbra en México, a través de las empresas controladas por los magnates superriscos…para mejor descuento fiscal y repartición de la carga entre los accionistas- a los que no se les pregunta si están de acuerdo. Pero si esas empresas usan en sus membretes eso de ‘empresa socialmente responsable’. Ah ¿si?

El Sr. Soros es de izquierdas. Su profesor más influyente de la London School ya lo era.

Buckley, el comentarista- fundador de Front Line y de New Republic así como creador de la nueva ideología conservadora de EE UU también ya abogaba - sin éxito – por la legalización de la droga.

Si se logra la legalización, se resuelven muchos otros problemas, Bajaría la criminalidad necesaria para poder obtener la droga. Desalojaría gran parte de la sobrepoblación de las prisiones y reduciría las cargas de procesos judiciales. Y sobre todo, reduciría mucho la corrupción del sistema político democrático. ¿De donde sacan en los municipios y en los estados esos muy amplios recursos para las campañas y las compras de votos? El I F E es generoso y costoso, pero no tanto…

No pretendo proclamar que la legalización de las drogas curara todos los males sociales, pero si eliminara' muchos. Y ¡eso seria ya un gran beneficio!

domingo, 13 de diciembre de 2009

Ranking

Logros y su transparencia.

En un evento reciente el director de un plantel de educación enumerò los muchos y grandes logros de sus estudiantes.
Eso es de esperar de la administración de una institución.
Son pocos los que tiran piedras a su propio tejado de tejas.

Pero hay que crear mayor transparencia y verificación. Comparaciones independientes son – en el resto del mundo – muy bien arraigadas.

Si la muy venerable y bien establecida Universidad de Oxford en Inglaterra publica en su 1ª pagina de acceso a través de la red su ranking internacional, lo podrían hacer también otras instituciones. Y nos dicen que están entre las 20 primeras – lo que significa que es 18ª o 19ª en postgrado. Están mucho mejor en licenciatura. Pero no temen en ir con la verdad por delante.
Y si necesitan guías: la UNAM es a nivel internacional la mejor universidad de México, pero está en el lugar 100… hay 99 por delante. Decidan si eso es poco o mucho…
Universidades de élite forman a los que se les otorga Premios Nobel en ciencias…y también ¡emplean Premios Nobel! O sea que tienen posibilidades de investigación…discusión… publicación...

¿Cuando se difundirán esta clase de estadísticas aquí? ¿Cuando tendremos verdadera transparencia? No nos lo darán hasta que no deban hacerlo y no hay muchos que se preocupan y menos los que lo exigen.

Pero eso es muy importante. Otra vez pocos quieren saber que los mexicanos ya tienen que competir con los chinos por trabajo… claro que no vamos a ir a Pekín solo para cortarnos el pelo. Ni dormiremos todos los días en Shangai si nuestro trabajo es en B. C.
Y aun a esto hay ya excepciones: una página Web se puede confeccionar en Hong Kong y domiciliar en Tijuana.

El mensaje que quiero transmitir y muy en claro: el mundo es ya un mercado universal. Como consumidor queremos lo bueno, barato y hermoso: el iPhone se diseñó en EE UU, pero se compone de elementos de muchos países; asiáticos principalmente. El Nano, un carrito nuevo que en su versión minima cuesta menos de US$ 2 500 - funcionando. Lo diseñaron los Tata de India. En 2010 se venderá ya fuera de India.

Así que el que vive de su trabajo tendrá que competir a nivel global, le guste o no.
Por ello hay que estar educado y preparado como lo están los mejores si se quiere competir en este mundo.
EL RANKING ES PUES MUY RELEVANTE.
Si no sabemos donde estamos, cualquier camino es bueno. Pero si queremos llegar al D.F. mejor saber en que dirección está Para mi ahora ¡está al SUR!
Además, está muy claramente establecido que un país se desarrolla según su capacidad humana. Si, también hace falta dinero…pero dinero viaja muy fácilmente. Si se tiene muy buena capacidad productiva, viene solito el dinero…ya que quiere multiplicarse…
Así, no busquemos mas excusas: comparémoslo con el mundo y utilicemos lo mejor para adelantar. Eso se llama Benchmarking – no es robar. Es aprender y hacerlo mejor.

Para las escuelas el sitio a ir para aprender es a Finlandia o... a Arizona, pero a una charter school en especifico. También hay éxitos con hispanos en Bronx….y si buscan encontraran más.

Que la educación en México es deficiente y tiene que mejorar muchísimo lo señala la OECD, el club al que México se unió y que nos compara principalmente con solo los otros 29 miembros. El mundo consiste de + de 200 países…

Aquí unos datos recientes
Los dineritos para Elba Esther. Cuadros resumen
(pesos mexicanos) dividan por 12.5 para u s $

Educación Básica
Min Max
2007 4.633.939.186 238.163.947.289
2008 10.865.992.013 263.222.178.614
2009 11.942.571.611 283.927.129.738
Total 27.442.502.810 785.313.255.641

ISSSTE
Min Max
2007 80.919.900.000 100.330.655.016
2008 79.218.800.000 95.040.139.048
2009 88.358.000.000 150.637.237.787
Total 248.496.700.000 346.008.031.851

Partido Nueva Alianza
Min Max
2007 189.054.882 189.054.882
2008 193.478.527 193.478.527
2009 255.178.627 255.178.627
Total 637.712.037 637.712.037

Transferencias de la SEP al SNTE por cuotas
Min Max
2007 98.053.497 98.053.497
2008 102.214.782 102.214.782
2009* 42.826.085 42.826.085
Total 243.094.364 243.094.364

Educación en estados
Min Max
2007 20.073.937.529 136.699.373.243
2008 19.000.511.801 150.588.774.119
2009 19.759.469.703 169.535.730.476
Total 58.833.919.033 456.823.877.838

Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública
Min Max
2007 1.153.966.211 6.203.966.211
2008 4.226.258.933 11.542.818.900
2009 ? ?
Total 5.380.225.144 17.746.785.111

Lotería Nacional
Min Max
2007 1.242.953.991 1.323.442.180
2008 1.759.359.826 1.827.268.651
2009 1.748.979.371 1.847.102.025
Total 4.751.293.188 4.997.812.856
Presupuesto ? GDP ?
Resumen total
Min Max Gasto Neto Total % Min % Max 2007 108.311.805.296 483.008.492.318 3.151.511.071.585 3% a 15%
2008 115.366.615.882 522.516.872.641 3.565.000.838.121 3% A 15%
2009 122.107.025.397 606.245.204.739 3.953.815.215.377 3% a 15%
Total 3 años345.785.446.575

Fuente: Elaboración propia con datos de cuadros básicos 1, 2, 3 y 4 mencionados en Reforma 13 Dic.09
Por Sergio Aguayo y Alberto Serdan Edicion: JMV

martes, 17 de noviembre de 2009

Los 67 poderosos del mundo.

1er Plano del 16 de Nov. 09. Los 67 poderosos del mundo.

Una vez más no supieron de lo que hablaban. ¿Como se les puede tomar en serio a los analistas, si no saben NI ELLOS lo que presentan al público?
El tema era la lista de los poderosos de la revista Forbes. México se distingue con 2 representantes. El Sr. Slim quien posee una grandiosa fortuna y es el manda más en Telmex, American Mobil, Grupo Carso, Somborns, etc. Casi se me escapo: US $ 300 milliones en New York Times, y + . Y no se puede cambiar cada 6 años como se hace con el Presidente. Lugar numero 6 entre 67. Pero numero 2 como empresario. Solo los genios de Google le ganan!
El otro mexicano es el Chapo, numero 41. Esta 2 sitios delante del presidente de Rusia.
Es una persona que es prófugo ya por 9 años y sabiendo hasta el obispo donde se encuentra, no lo han detenido aun. Creo que eso este hecho ya muestra el poderío del personaje- o la falta de poder de México- gobierno, policía, justicia..: federal, estado y municipio. Si les interesa saber, el presidente Calderón no esta en esta lista.

Comento la Sra. Mª Amparo Cosar que trato de investigar la metodología utilizada para la confección de la lista y que ella no la pudo ver. Para ello puede haber 2 razones: que no sepa suficiente ingles o que no supo donde buscar. Yo sin gran esfuerzo vi lo que abajo cito. Cierto, hay una gran cantidad de variables y una ponderación que resulta en cierto sentido subjetiva. No soy socio de Forbes, pero si veo su estrategia. 1º no es una revista académica, donde todo debe de ser citado y reproducible. 2º como revista de finazas tiende a dar importancia a FINAZAS. 3º como empresa, se guarda algunas de sus ventajas competitivas, para que el año próximo no le puedan robar su metodología y adelantárseles a la publicación ESTA lista. 4º las revistas se venden porque muestran algo que NO es evidente. 5º que no es completamente arbitrario la ponderación de los factores – aunque la Sra. Cosar e incluso yo quizás le daríamos otra ponderación – se percibe que en Septiembre se hizo una encuesta en diferentes áreas sobre las personas relevantes para el ámbito. Abajo solo cito el área de deportes, ya que no quiero que Forbes me lleve a los tribunales por plagio.

Aquí pues la fuente y algunas de sus ponderaciones:
The most Powerful people
1 Barack Obama
2 Hu Jintao
3 Vladimir Putin
4 Ben S. Bernanke
5 Sergey Brin and Larry Page
6 Carlos Slim Helu
7 Rupert Murdoch

40 Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
41 Joaquin Guzman- el Chapo!
42 Igor Sechin
43 Dmitry Medvedev

In compiling our first ranking of the World's Most Powerful People, we wrestled with these questions--and many more--before deciding to define power by four dimensions. First, do they have influence over lots of other people? 2 Do they control relatively large financial resources compared with their peers? 3 Are they powerful in multiple spheres? There are only 67 slots on our list--one for every 100 million people on the planet--so being powerful in just one area is not enough. 4 Lastly, we insisted that our choices actively use their power.

Pope Benedict XVI, ranked 11th on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world's population, while Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) CEO Mike Duke (No. 8) is the largest private-sector employer in the United States.

Then we assessed the financial resources controlled by these individuals. Are they relatively large compared with their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at a composite ranking of market capitalization, profits, assets and revenues as reflected on our annual ranking of the World's 2000 Largest Companies. In certain instances, like New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (No. 51), we judged the resources at his disposal compared with others in the industry. For billionaires, like Bill Gates (No. 10), net worth was also a factor.
Next we determined if they are powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 67 slots on our list--one for every 100 million people on the planet--so being powerful in just one area is not enough to guarantee a spot. Our picks project their influence in myriad ways. Take Italy's colorful prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi (No. 12) who is a politician, a media monopolist and owner of soccer powerhouse A.C. Milan, or Oprah Winfrey (No. 45) who can manufacture a best-seller and an American President.
The World's Most Powerful Athlete
Tiger Woods, 25,861 Points!
Runners Up:
David Beckham, 25,165 Points
Roger Federer, 22,571 Points

Fuente: http://www.forbes.com/