Burmese democrats still need to watch their back

Burma is back in the news, with the looming opening on Monday of a kangaroo legislature in the isolated capital of Naypyitaw. This is the poisoned fruit of a manipulated  election by which the ruling junta of what calls itself Myanmar aimed to buy some rare legitimacy.

The generals followed on their opposition-light vote by granting a relaxation of strictures on Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the prime symbol of dissent in a sad land. But any real popular resistance seems destined to be crushed anew.

The New York Times Sunday described the latest video evidence of repression, a documentary about a lapsed member of the 400,000-strong military that tightly rules the country. This follows on an earlier work, Burma VJ, which was nominated for an Oscar award last year. That production used smuggled footage to capture the 2007 Saffron uprising led by Burmese monks. I viewed the film after meeting at a New York reception three of the monks who helped lead that revolt. The trio, who escaped from Burma and reached the U.S., now live in Brooklyn and are trying to maintain their vows while pressing for reforms in their homeland. (An article about them, in the January 2011 issue of First Things magazine, is behind a paywall.)

It is through diligent monitoring and campaigning, mostly by outside non-governmental organizations that furtively keep tabs, that the  predations of Burma’s military rulers are kept in the public eye. Certainly officials organizations ranging from the United Nations to the ASEAN group of Southeast Asia nations (which admitted Burma to membership in 1997) have been of limp use in supporting Burmese democrats and ethnic minorities at odds with the generals. Cyclone Nargis in 2008 was a reminder of how useless these bodies have been rendered.

Burma has suffered through nearly 50 years of this brand of dictatorship. An earlier military group seized power in 1962, and resisters have been outflanked or beaten down ever since, particularly in a 1988 uprising and the one followed it (also beginning on Sept. 18) in 2007. In reining in an admittedly splintered populace–with resistance movements that themselves can be violent–the Burmese regime has mixed ruthless muscle with the pretense of democracy.

It held the bogus elections Nov. 7 to set up the next stage of the tyranny (rumor is that ruling Gen. Than Shwe will appear Monday as president before the new legislature) and, having done that, let Aung San See Kyi free of house arrest in Rangoon. (Her surprise victory in a 1990 vote was what triggered the latest 20 years of harsh order.) How many of her fellow Burmese she can now reach in a society where electronic communication is stifled is anyone’s guess–probably few.

The general case for continued despair over both the plight of the Burmese and the unhelpful actions of outside parties is made in this recent posting by veteran Southeast Asia journalist Bertil Lindner, and buttressed by the latest country report from Human Rights Watch.

For now, the civilized world will simply watch how this ruse plays out, and what part international entities, especially the governments of China and India, play in it.

UPDATE: Electoral manipulations by the rulers continue. On Jan. 28 a special court ruled that Suu Kyi’s party would not be reinstated for legal activity in the new sham democracy.

The Wall Street Journal today features a front-page report on one fallout of Communist Cuba’s worldwide medical missionary program–the defection of many of the doctors to freedom. Cuba uses the program to gain favored access to commodities and to gain diplomatic points. The program is most advanced in Africa and Latin America but also reaches a poor Asian spot like East Timor.

Much of what is described in today’s Journal story was laid out in Forbes more than five years ago, in a piece by Susan Kitchens that I edited. (The text but unfortunately not the accompanying photos can be found here.)

The thing about Castroite Cuba is that, just as with the old cars and building facades in Havana, you can revisit the scene years later and even in this dynamic world, things are pretty much the same.

The old and gnarly can still be sturdy.

Japan is struggling mightily with its budget deficits–the ruling party shuffled the Cabinet again today–but in combatting the national accounting nightmare, it has a few advantages that indebted Europe lacks. For one thing, Japan has a good stockpile of hard-currency reserves, and its people are willing to save domestically at virtually zero interest rates.

So, even as the Japanese population ages and starts its decline, there’s plenty in the till to draw on. But beyond that, Japan’s older workers, especially the men, keep working. From 2008 data, we see that 92.5% of males age 55-59 are still in the labor force–vs. 74.2% in the EU-15 countries. The gap gets wider at age 60-64: 76.4% vs. 42.0%. Even at ages 70-74, 30.5% of Japanese men are still employed, vs. 5.4% in the E.U.  (It helps that Japanese have longer than average lifespans, but Western Europe does well there, too.)

A 2007 academic paper fretted over this phenomenon in Japan, seeing bits of social and economic desperation in the acts of these graying geezers. Alternatively, maybe these men are simply more industrious than their counterparts lollygagging on Spanish beaches. (South Korea’s septuagenarian set, as it happens, is even more inclined to keep laboring.)

Whatever, the fiscal virtues of the East Asian ways are manifest. As Thomas Sowell notes in his new fourth edition of  “Basic Economics”: “It is not just the age at which people retire that varies from country to country. How much their pensions pay, compared to how much they made while working, also varies greatly from one country to another. While pensions in the U.S. pay about 40% of pre-retirement earnings and those in Japan less than 40%, pensions in the Netherlands and Spain pay about 80% and, in Greece, 96%.”

As Professor Sowell concludes, “No doubt that has something to do with when people choose to stop working.”  Yes, it does–and also how long those pensions can continue to be paid.

UPDATE: A front-page New York Times story on Jan. 28, examining the plight of the young entering the workforce in Japan, seems to suggest that older employees are holding them back. But in a growing economy, high labor-force participation is both normal and desired. Whatever the root of Japan’s woes, it’s unlikely that people continuing to be productive into their 70s are to blame.

Don't spoil your appetite for kimchi.

Calling all impatient and impecunious fans of East Asian fare in New York City: Food Gallery 32 is cooking in the midst of Koreatown.  The three-floor emporium combines tasty meals with industrial efficiency. Most tax out at under $10.

Each of the quick-serve hot-food outlets–currently there are 7– opens to the first-floor of the gleaming white space on 32nd St just west of Fifth Ave., the main drag of this Koreatown. So, you can eyeball the prep as well as read individual menu signs (English included). But ordering is done near the front door, with a single-file line that moves right along. You’re given a beeper with which to go collect your order when ready. If you’re staying, you troop upstairs to one of the two landings to take in the eats and the scene.

It’s a mixed ethnic clientele, reflecting the fact this presentation is less intimidating to Westerners than at other spots along the block. But it’s a young and definitely New York crowd: most at lunch today were dressed in the  urban uniform (black) and barely a tourist was in sight. The food is probably Westernized but there was plenty of kimchi bite for my taste at Hanok, the stand I visited. At least one of the other choices is an indoor version of a popular Taiwanese food truck.

It all works well enough, except just yet the beverage situation is a puzzle. For now, there are dispensers for water but it comes in a pointy cone cup so you’re not going to be resting it on your tray. Better to rely on the rice to douse any mouth flames. A desert stand is on the second floor–as is an opportunistic if misplaced Metro PCS mobile vendor–but soon Red Mango will be coming to the rescue with frozen yogurt near the front door.

Image via Wikipedia

Self-professed “inflation hawk” Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pinned the responsibility for the massive monetizing of America’s public debt on fiscal policy makers in a talk in New York today.

Now rotated into voting membership on the Federal Open-Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed’s policy-setting body, Fisher in his remarks to the Manhattan Institute made it sound like he’s eager to see the end come June of Quantitative Easing II,  the big stimulus measure pushed through by Chairman Ben Bernanke. Fisher called that program, approved while he still lacked a vote at the FOMC, the “Fed’s bridge financing” until Congress and the White House could get to work reducing the U.S. deficit and in other ways galvanizing productive economic activity.

While others report divisions among the Fed officials on QE II, Fisher steered away from directly disputing the policy, although he did express discomfort over short-term interest rates of effectively zero. Instead, he pointed blame at elected office holders. “To those in Congress who say ‘End the Fed,” [the title of a recent book by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who now is in a powerful monetary oversight role], I say, ‘End the fiscal debacle…’”

Fisher also maintained that:

*His contacts in the Texas-centered Reserve district say it is not a scarcity of lending capital that is holding back renewed private-sector job creation, but apprehension over taxes and other legislative and regulatory acts.

*”Although it would not break my personal heart” to repeal the congressional mandate that the Fed take unemployment into account in its policy setting, the requirement is not currently leading to an inflationary bent. He said the Dallas Fed’s “Trimmed mean PCE” measure of price rises is only at an 0.8% annualized rate.

*There is likewise no current evidence of crowding out of private borrowing by the government, as corporate borrowing rates remain low relative to Treasury note rates.

*The Fed “cannot and will not” purchase municipal debt to head off state or local defaults in the months ahead.

The bank president underscored several times that all of his colleagues, and indeed others in the U.S. government, were acutely conscious of inflation perils and unwilling to flirt with them. He did not address the value of the U.S. dollar or the price of gold in his remarks.

UPDATE: Sure enough, at the FOMC meeting ending Jan. 26, Fisher joined in a unanimous vote to continue the Fed’s expansionary (and arguably, inflationary) monetary policies.