Daily Loaf

Wishful thinking?

There's good news, mixed news, and bad news.

The good news: Statistics Finland just published revised data on GDP growth in Finland during 2002. The economy went up 2.2%, which is pretty ok for a mature European economy during a global slowdown.

The mixed news? Helsingin Sanomat puts a slightly positive spin on the decision by the European Central Bank not to lower interest rates any further, reasoning alongside the ECB that an observation period during the summer will determine whether the Eurozone economy is growing appropriately.

The bad: the number of jobs is still being reduced and Bush's tax cuts aren't having the desired effect - and many are questioning (NY Times, free registration, blah blah) i­f they ever will.

My conclusion: higher interest rates in Europe and a negative overall picture in the US will work together to keep the Euro up, hampering the growth of a more export-dependent market. The quirky thing is that the US would probably need Euroland's fiscal stability pact more than Europe, and Europe would be better off with short-term budget deficits.

As Sirkka Hämäläinen pointed out recently upon leaving the ECB Board of Governors, "Europe is slow." Her justification: European governments, companies and private citizens are less in debt than their American counterparts, so a decrease in interest rates has a smaller, and slower, effect on their investments and disposable income.

My favourite target for a public spending spree on both sides of the Atlantic? A maglev network connecting the biggest cities in densely populated areas, reducing air traffic and highway congestion. Looks like it'll be China, though, that will skip improving its traditional wheel-on-rail network and go straight to cleaner, faster and safer travelling.

Busy, rainy, lonely.

It's been a hectic couple of days here behind G-d's back. I should consider myself lucky; there's very little to do during the evenings that doesn't involve alcohol and driving around in cars, or organised religion. And now that the local public swimming hall is closed, I'm being forced to spectator sports, which in northern Ostrobothnia translates to Finnish baseball. The weather being forbidding yesterday - 12 C, rain - I couldn't even go out on a walk.

I decided to regress. When I was in lower elementary school and lived in a place called Kangasala which, albeit small with its then 20 000 people, is a metropolis compared to Haapajärvi. Back then, years before the web, the library was a place where me and my geeky friends would often hang out. We also by and large devoured the sci-fi section there. After I moved to the big city, I pretty much stopped using the library and moved over to bookstores - because they have a much selection, was the justification - which had the unfortunate effect of reducing the number of books I read.

With my positive memories of childhood in mind, I went to the library to reclaim the card for which I had applied earlier. The fact that the local card looked much like library cards used to, way back before they moved over to the credit card format, only made my regression easier. So I went over to the comics section, where I find a bonanza of Asterix books, not just in English but also Swedish and French. Some librarian must've been a huge fan, because Asterix and Tin-Tin aside they only had a few Finnish obscure books and a Calvin and Hobbes omnibus. I leave my loot downstairs (12 books, I felt like a robber) and head upstairs to the "grown-up" section.

They don't have a separate sci-fi section so I walk around looking for some decent new stuff, but they only have Star Wars novels and David Eddings' crud. I briefly consider some trippy Soviet sci-fi à la Lem, but instead I pick up 'Songs Finland Sings' by Barbara Helsingius, a few essays on Nietzche and - what is it that my old eyes see, here, in Christian fundamentalist Haapajärvi? My goodness, it is indeed the book I have been looking for, for quite a while - Out of the Closet, by Marja-Leena Parkkinen.

I rush downstairs, quickly check out (the girl at the counter doesn't so much as blink when she sees the book) and race home. For the rest of the evening, I'm hooked. Every 5 pages I cry - or at least break in to tears - and every other page I'm laughing out loud. The savvy reader will realise that every now and then I'm laughing and crying at the same time.

After about 70 pages I'm too worn out and decide to take a sauna.

Catharses are good, I just can't afford to have them too often.

I've lost my sense of left and right.

And I'm not talking about my physical ability, either. It's that recently I've been forced to redefine or at least question my position on the political spectrum. Now, some would say that the whole left-right axis is void of any meaning in post-communist thought. Certainly there are now far fewer people suggesting full deprivatisation of industries, nationalisation of banks, abolition of inheritance rights and other staples of Marx. But the removal of one extremity of the axis doesn't make the axis itself disappear, it merely shifts the center.

Where, then, does my lack of direction stem from? I believe I am suffering from the malady of multiple frames of reference. Over the course of my adult life, I have tried to closely follow the politico-economic life of three regions, namely, Europe, Brazil and North America. While this has occasionally led to not having the slightest clue about what is going on in any single one of them, on the better occasions I feel I've had occasional flashes of insight into how different pieces of the puzzle that is global politics really fit together.

As a side-effect, however, of following the lives of my friends on the one hand and political life on the other, in welfare Finland, consumerist US and confusing Brazil, I must have lost sense of where the shifting center of the left-right -axis has settled. No Finnish right-wing politico in their right mind would ever suggest reducing gun-control or selling public schools to the highest bidder and then offering education vouchers to the general population, nor would a US Senator propose increased public child allowances for children under 7 or demand a law specifying maximum waiting times in a comprehensive national medicare program. All the while the recently officiated Brazilian ex-union-leader president Lula speaks of "fiscal responsibility" and "drastic cuts in pensions". Confusing, non?

Craig suggested (referring to our discussion on the left-right -positioning of some global media) that there is a clear connection, or rather, a reduction, in our use of the words, where left can be substituted for "anti-american" and right for "pro-american". And simultaneously Jaakko, aka J-Ko, pointed out how quintessentially American the whole concept of "anti-Americanism" is - and how absurd would it be to call something "anti-European"? The thought behind this is that there is no such thing as "America", there's just the US Government, the people that live in the United States (not all necessarily Americans?), the public opinion of the majority of these people, and the American culture.

I'm not pushing the limits of propriety (or originality) here, but something similar must be true of the left-right -axis as well; that in our ridiculously complicated post-postmodern world, there is no monolithic right or left, but a web of interests at either side and filling the space between the extremities along the entire gamut. So, while I might fully agree with representatives from the Finnish Left Alliance on issues of equality between genders, since most of my economic opinions verge on the extreme liberal (in the European sense) edge, I'm right wing - but only as long as I remain in Finland.

Introducing a new axis, Authority, like the Political Compass does, clears up the situation somewhat. I do think, though, that more often than not one axis is used merely as a justification for the other. Take the test and please report your results in at the "Got Opinions?" section, below, and do tell if you agree with your result. Should be a fun read!