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Mostrando postagens com marcador UK. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador UK. Mostrar todas as postagens

sábado, 19 de junho de 2021

O mundo precisa de uma nova Carta do Atlântico? A primeira, em 1941, era contra o nazismo. Agora é contra a China? - Richard J. Evans (The Wall Street Journal)

Essa tal de nova "Carta do Atlântico", do Biden e do Boris Johnson, é pura demagogia, aproveitando a mística da declaração de 1941, que nem tinha esse nome, e que se destinava a salvar a Grã-Bretanha numa das horas mais dramáticas da sua história, depois da Invencível Armada (destruída pelo próprio canal da Mancha) e da ameaça napoleônica (vencida em Trafalgar). Depois dos espanhóis e dos franceses, os chineses, e contra os americanos desta vez? Joe Biden está exagerando no seu populismo histórico, se rendendo ao que as esquerdas chamariam de "complexo industrial-militar": milhões de dólares canalizados pela paranoia irracional dos generais do Pentágono e pela inacreditável demência dos acadêmicos que caíram no conto de vigário de uma fantasmagórica "armadilha de Tucídides'. Pobre Tucídides, não merecia essa...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Do We Need a New Atlantic Charter?

Eighty years after FDR and Churchill pledged to defend democracy, President Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson want to reenergize the special relationship for a very different world.

President Biden at G-7 Summit: “America Is Back at the Table”
President Biden at G-7 Summit: “America Is Back at the Table”
President Biden at G-7 Summit: “America Is Back at the Table”
During a press conference at the conclusion of the summit between leaders of the Group of Seven on Sunday, President Biden discussed working together with allies, global vaccine donations and how the group plans to approach challenges posed by China. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

At a summit meeting in England last week, President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a “new Atlantic Charter,” pledging their countries to work together on a range of issues, from combating climate change and preparing effectively for future pandemics to the defense of democracy and “the rules-based international order.” The agreement intends to “build on the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago” in the original Atlantic Charter, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941, at their first wartime meeting, held at a U.S. naval base in Newfoundland.

The much-publicized agreement reflects Mr. Johnson’s determination to reorient British foreign policy away from Europe in the wake of Brexit. For Mr. Biden it represents a renewed commitment to America’s traditional allies after four years of tension during the Trump presidency, with its policy of “America First.” As Mr. Johnson said in a statement, “Eighty years ago the U.S. President and British Prime Minister stood together promising a better future. Today we do the same.” But does the new Atlantic Charter really deserve the comparison with the historic original?

In fact, the Atlantic Charter of 1941 was less about remaking the world than about fighting World War II. At the time it was signed, Britain and Germany had been at war for less than two years, and the U.S. hadn’t yet entered the conflict. But the Americans had already begun to help the British, notably through the Lend-Lease Agreement signed the previous March, which provided for the U.S. to supply Britain and its allies with war materials. A major purpose of the Charter was to prepare the American people for their likely future entry into the war by telling them what they would be fighting for. 

In this sense, the Atlantic Charter was more a propaganda statement than a program for action. Its eight clauses, echoed deliberately in the eight clauses of the 2021 Atlantic Charter, affirmed the right of peoples and nations to self-determination, the desirability of lowering trade barriers, the postwar disarmament of the “aggressor nations,” the freedom of the seas, and the necessity of social welfare measures and the alleviation of poverty.

The U.S. and U.K. also said they would not seek territorial gains after the war. Importantly, the defeated nations were to be included in the lowering of trade barriers, a conscious rejection of the punitive economic measures that followed the end of World War I. But the ambitious statement wasn’t signed by the leaders and had no formal legal power. Even the name “Atlantic Charter” wasn’t official; it was invented by the Daily Herald, a left-wing British newspaper, to describe what was formally known as the Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister.

quinta-feira, 22 de agosto de 2019

UK as a failed State? - Chris Patten

Não seria a primeira vez. A Grã-Bretanha já foi um Estado falido, nos anos imediatamente anteriores ao Governo Thatcher, quando o glorioso Império dos velhos tempos se tinha transformado num país quase que do Terceiro Mundo. Esse foi o resultado de anos e anos seguidos de um pacto perverso entre a TUC (Trade Union Congress) e o Labour, que inviabilizou o crescimento do país.
No Brasil também tivemos o nosso pacto perverso, o da CUT  com a FIESP, que acabou resultando na Grande Destruição lulopetista de nossa economia, a maior recessão de toda a nossa história econômica, com um legado de retrocessos que ainda vai durar anos para ser reabsorvido e que acabou gerando o horrendo governo que temos atualmente, certamente o mais medíocre de nossa história política.
Agora é aguentar a mediocridade e à vulgaridade até o final de 2022.
Já estou em modo resistência, sempre neste meu quilombo de resistência intelectual.
Assim permanecerei.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 22/08/2019

The Telegraph On Line, Londres – 22.8.2019
Is Britain Becoming a Failed State?
Failed states used to be largely the preserve of the developing world, where the institutions of democracy do not have deep roots. But given the extent to which the Brexit campaign has undermined Britain's institutions through lies, it is reasonable to worry that the country will soon come to resemble a tinpot dictatorship.
Chris Paten

What is a failed state? Not so long ago, when I was Britain’s Overseas Development Minister, and later European Commissioner for External Affairs, I would probably have tried to answer the question by pointing to specific examples, including several countries in Latin America and Africa.
I would have highlighted tribal conflicts, military coups, economic failure, extremes of poverty, and high mortality rates. I might have referred to the failure of more prosperous societies to ensure that globalization helped everyone and did not leave some communities trapped in deprivation. In addition, I would certainly have mentioned systems of government that had ceased to deliver what they were intended to do, and certainly what outside well-wishers hoped and assumed they would do.
By these latter criteria, one no longer needs to travel to Latin America or Africa to discover failureIndeed, many of us in Britain worry that failure is increasingly evident within our own borders – which are soon to be clogged after Brexit – and particularly in the way the country is governed.
Britain’s system of government, much praised in the past, is based on parliamentary democracy and the institutions of pluralism that one would associate with an open society.
Voters elect individual members of parliament, who owe their constituents their best judgment about how to negotiate the predicaments of politics. MPs are not required to do what they are told by an alleged popular will – a system much favored by despots and demagogues. Instead, they are part of a system that owes much to the conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke, not to the French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We have always preferred caution, compromise, and evolution to disruption and appeals to fleeting public passions.
The parties to which most MPs belong represent different strands of opinion. Yet by and large, debates have usually assumed a strong relationship between evidence and assertion. Facts might be interpreted in different ways, but they were not simply denied because they contradicted an ideological assertion. Dogmatism is a bad bedfellow to democracy. Experts can be challenged, of course, but until now, expertise was never seen as something the ruling establishment would use to bamboozle and obfuscate in pursuit of its aims.
In Britain, historically, government has been accountable to parliament, whose opinions it must respect and whose conventions it should follow. And a separate and independent judiciary guarantees the rule of law to which all, including ministers, are subject.
That is how Britain has run its national affairs: avoiding political extremism, achieving a self-adjusting balance between left and right, managing change over decades in peace and war, and making the transition from imperial power to middle-sized European country. By doing this without surrendering or diluting our values, we have won approval and praise around the world.
Sadly, things look very different today.
As a proportion of its electorate, Britain has fewer political activists than most other European countries. Yet these activists and other political partisans have recently acquired growing control over their parties’ policy direction and choice of leader.
As a result, the Labour Party is now led by Jeremy Corbyn, an old-fashioned far-left socialist. And 90,000 Conservative members, whose views have become more extreme as their numbers have fallen, recently selected Boris Johnson as their new leader, and thus as the country’s new prime minister.
In doing so, they have chosen a mendacious chancer. It is no exaggeration to say that Johnson has lied his way to the top, first in journalism and then in politics. His ascent owes everything to the growing xenophobia and English nationalism that many Conservatives now espouse. Johnson is prime minister because he has promised to deliver Brexit by the end of October, recklessly assuring the world that he will take the United Kingdom out of the European Union with or without a deal, and whatever the consequences.
Johnson has chosen a government of like-minded anti-European nationalists. His principal adviser, Dominic Cummings, was described by David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister from 2010 to 2016, as a “career psychopath.” Cummings is, alongside Johnson, the most powerful figure in the new government; he is an unelected wrecker who earlier this year was ruled to be in contempt of parliament. Fittingly, if depressingly, he now is masterminding our departure from the EU with or without parliamentary approval.
Moreover, the government is scheming to win an election, yet to be announced, on the basis of a “people versus the politicians” campaign. Those who oppose crashing out of the EU without a deal are to be branded as opponents of popular sovereignty. So much for parliamentary democracy.
The Johnson government denies the truth about the consequences of a no-deal Brexit, and denounces any attempt to point these out as “Project Fear.” The EU is blamed for the failure of negotiations, even though this was almost entirely the result of choices made by the previous British government. To cap it all, the public is told that if Britain can convince the EU it is prepared to damage itself with “no deal,” then France, Germany, and others will surrender and give us what we want. Yet any damage that a no-deal Brexit causes to the EU would be dwarfed by the long-term harm it inflicts on Britain.
Johnson and Cummings are prepared to use all the methods that were successful in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, when the British public were assured that there would be no question of leaving the EU without a deal. Promises of increased public spending now rain down from a Treasury that will soon be stretched thin. The value of the pound is falling, inflation rose in July, and business investment is flat. The supposed benefits of leaving the EU are no longer touted, with the exception of a promised trade deal with US President Donald Trump that would be almost as unacceptable to the US Congress as it would be to British public opinion. What’s more, the government is simply ignoring the fact that lengthy negotiations with the EU would inevitably follow from a “no-deal” departure.
Worse still, the future of the Union of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland looks increasingly at risk. The government fails to accept that if Britain leaves the EU’s customs union, the resulting border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will imperil the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has brought more than 20 years of peace to the island of Ireland.
Are these the actions of a successful state? Those who raise the question risk being dubbed “enemies of the people.” We are in good company: this is how Brexiters previously described three British high-court judges who asserted the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in the Brexit process.
As Brexit looms ever closer, Britain’s institutions, economic prospects, constitution, and future are all at risk. But the reckless plunge into delusion and lies proceeds apace. (Project Syndicate)

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

sábado, 19 de janeiro de 2019

Uma livraria para dormir dentro, no Pais de Gales

You Can Sleep Over in This 130-Year-Old Library

terça-feira, 8 de janeiro de 2019

A Gra-Bretanha ja nao é mais o que era - Simon Johnson


Os contornos do séculos XIX e começo do XX foram definidos em parte por uma série de decisões britânicas importantes de política externa e de economia. Ainda em 2007–2009 a política britânica tinha consequências mundiais: apesar de a desregulamentação da City de Londres ter contribuído para a gravidade da crise financeira mundial, a liderança britânica presente na cúpula do G–20 em Londres, em abril de 2009, mostrou ter, em última instância, uma influência estabilizadora. Atualmente, no entanto, apesar de todo o teatro político e da dramática retórica, a saída iminente do Reino Unido da União Europeia (UE) – conhecida como Brexit – na verdade não tem importância para o mundo.

A economia mundial pode ter alcançado um período de incerteza, mas isso se deve mais à volubilidade dos atos do presidente Donald Trump, o autoproclamado "Homem das Tarifas", que parece determinado a minar a credibilidade do Federal Reserve (Fed, o BC dos EUA), ao desestabilizar cadeias de suprimentos e ao negociar por meio de pronunciamentos aleatórios. A zona do euro enfrenta dificuldades para se livrar de suas prolongadas agonias, mas o problema fundamental continua sendo as más práticas bancárias e as finanças públicas potencialmente insustentáveis ostentadas por alguns países–membros. Embora o Brexit possa talvez se mostrar uma ideia infeliz para muitos habitantes do Reino Unido, seu provável impacto é uma queda do crescimento britânico, não uma desestabilização significativa do comércio regional, menos ainda do mundial.

É difícil exagerar a influência britânica sobre os assuntos mundiais após o país ter se tornado o berço da Revolução Industrial. A partir de cerca de 1750, as invenções britânicas criaram uma onda de inovação tecnológica que transformou a maneira pela qual a energia era gerada e o metal trabalhado. As ferrovias e os navios a vapor revolucionaram os transportes. Mesmo quando o centro da inovação migrou para o outro lado do Atlântico, o capital e a emigração britânicos sustentaram a industrialização no mundo inteiro.

Nada em torno da perda de influência mundial pode ser atribuído à filiação à UE. A maior parte da elite política britânica parece distante da realidade mundial. O mundo foi em frente. Um Brexit caótico pode causar grande prejuízo às pessoas comuns

Nem todas as contribuições britânicas foram positivas, é claro. A ascensão do Reino Unido como potência mundial foi acompanhada pelos horrores do tráfico de escravos no Atlântico e pelos abusos do domínio colonial.

Mas não há dúvida de que os atos britânicos – bons e ruins – foram relevantes para muitas pessoas, algumas das quais viviam em terras muito distantes. As alianças e a disposição britânicas de intervir militarmente moldaram as guerras europeias, desde Napoleão até as invasões alemãs da França em 1870, 1914 e 1940. A política de conciliação de Neville Chamberlain – inclusive sua estratégia e suas decisões pessoais na Conferência de Munique, em 1938, com Adolf Hitler – tiveram um grande impacto sobre a escolha do momento, a natureza e talvez até o resultado final da Segunda Guerra Mundial.

A maior influência mundial do Reino Unido revelou–se, talvez, em 1940–1941, quando o país foi essencialmente o único a confrontar o poder aparentemente incontível da Alemanha nazista. Ironicamente, o ingresso dos Estados Unidos na guerra ao mesmo tempo configurou o equilíbrio de forças decisivamente contra Hitler e não tardou em levar a uma reformulação completa da economia mundial.

A Conferência de Bretton Woods, de 1944, deixou claro que a era do império europeu tinha acabado. Também deixara de existir o comércio privilegiado no âmbito de zonas econômicas fixadas por ondas anteriores de expansão imperialista. Os acordos de comércio exterior pós–Segunda Guerra Mundial foram determinados pelas preferências americanas. Com as empresas, a mão de obra e os políticos americanos unânimes em seu desejo por acesso a todos os mercados, seguiram–se sucessivas rodadas de liberalização comercial.

Em 1945, o Império Britânico abarcava mais de 600 milhões de pessoas, cerca de 25% do total da população viva da Terra, o que o tornou (por um curto intervalo) a entidade política mais populosa de todos os tempos sobre o planeta. Nas décadas seguintes, o impacto mundial do Reino Unido foi sentido principalmente por meio de uma combinação de fiascos da descolonização, entre os quais a humilhação espetacular sofrida durante a Crise de Suez de 1956 [também conhecida como Guerra do Sinai], e a flagrante má gestão macroeconômica. Em 1976, o Reino Unido se tornou o único país a emitir uma moeda internacional de reserva que foi obrigado a tomar empréstimo do Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) durante a era (pós–1973) das taxas flutuantes.

Nada em torno dessa perda de influência mundial pode ser atribuído à filiação do Reino Unido à UE. No geral, o Reino Unido se saiu bem com o comércio do pós–guerra, metade do volume do qual é atualmente controlado pela Europa. O total do comércio exterior do Reino Unido (exportações mais importações) alcançou aproximadamente 40% do PIB durante a década de 1950; está mais próximo, atualmente, de 60%, com a maior parte desse aumento tendo ocorrido após o país ter ingressado na Comunidade Econômica Europeia, em 1973. De maneira mais ampla, a participação intensa na economia mundial observada durante as últimas quatro décadas contribuiu para superar a diferença (em termos de PIB per capita) com os EUA.

Talvez exista uma versão tresloucada do Brexit que poderia ter ramificações que extrapolassem as costas britânicas, mas isso parece absurdo. Ao contrário de Trump, nenhum político responsável do Reino Unido quer, de fato, reconduzir as tarifas protecionistas aos níveis da década de 1930. Também ao contrário dos EUA, nenhuma destacada autoridade do governo britânico está interessada em pôr mais uma vez em risco o futuro do país por meio do enfraquecimento da regulamentação financeira.

A maior parte da elite política britânica parece tão distante da realidade mundial quanto seus antecessores em 1938, 1944 e 1956. O mundo foi em frente, mais uma vez. Um Brexit caótico pode causar grande prejuízo às pessoas comuns – como aconteceu com a autoejeção britânica do Mecanismo de Taxas de Câmbio do Sistema Monetário Europeu, em 1992.

Só que essas pessoas comuns serão, na esmagadora maioria, britânicas. Os tempos em que o Reino Unido era capaz de mover o mundo ficaram, há muito, para trás. (Tradução de Rachel Warszawski)

Simon Johnson, professor do MIT Sloan, foi economista–chefe do FMI.

sábado, 17 de novembro de 2018

Brexit: uma solucao simples, rapida e eficiente: no agreement at all - Gary North

Em 1846, ao abolir as famosas Corn Laws, a Grã-Bretanha fez exatamente isso: aboliu TODAS as tarifas e decretou o livre comércio, o livre intercâmbio universal.
Uma solução, aliás, que deveria servir ao Brasil também: esqueça qualquer negociação de novos acordos comerciais, qualquer um. Decrete o livre comércio: todo mundo estará bem, sobretudo nós, os consumidores...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 17/11/2018

An Easy Alternative to the Brexit Agreement

Mises Institute, 11/15/2018

Prime Minister May says that she has reached an agreement with the European Union.
The agreement is 585 pages long. Every time politicians vote to implement a 600-page document that was written by high-level bureaucrats, the liberties of the citizens of that nation decline. The devil is in the details, and there are a lot of details for the devil to get into.
She got it through her cabinet. Now she has to get it through Parliament, which is going to be a challenge. The pro-Brexit people hate conciliation, and the Remainers don't want to agree to anything remotely like Brexit.
She was never a big fan of Brexit. She is going along with the whole thing grudgingly. She has stalled an agreement for almost 2 years.
If Parliament won't vote for her agreement, then Britain will depart from the EU on March 29. It's automatic.
I have a solution. Parliament does not have to accept any agreement. No agreement is necessary.
Here is my Brexit solution. Parliament votes for this law.
Her Majesty's government adopts a policy of zero tariffs and zero import quotas, beginning tomorrow.
That's it? That's it!
There would be no negotiations with foreign countries. There would be nothing to negotiate.
If exporters located in EU countries want to sell something to the Brits, good for them. If there are Brits who like the products and accept them, good for them.
Tariffs are simply sales taxes on imported goods. Anytime a government cuts taxes, that is positive.
Revenues to the government would fall. This is also good.
Import quotas don't generate any revenues. There shouldn't be any import quotas.
Would trade go up between buyers in Great Britain and sellers in the European Union? You bet it would. Everybody likes to be able to sell at a discount, and, overnight, exporters to Great Britain would find that their goods now sell at a discount. No sales taxes are tacked onto the goods.
Would this be good for British buyers? Of course. Who wants to pay sales taxes?
Would financial companies leave Great Britain? No. Why should they? All of a sudden, the whole world would want to sell goods to residents of Great Britain. The doors would be open wide. If it's good for trade, it's good for finance.
If Great Britain did this, its economy would not sink. Other countries in the European Union would figure out that the benefits of staying inside the EU don't compensate for the liabilities associated with the surrender of national sovereignty. Anyway, a substantial minority of voters in those countries would figure this out. All it would take would be a policy of zero tariffs. In other words, all it would take would be a reduction of taxes. "We're outta here!"
No nation needs to sign a 500-page agreement in order to leave the EU profitably. It simply leaves the EU, abolishes tariffs and quotas, and starts trading.
Come one, come all! Let's make a deal!

This article originally appeared here at GaryNorth.com.

segunda-feira, 16 de abril de 2018

The Globalist: China among the greatest, by volume, but also by quality

O mais recente boletim de Globalist, traz algumas matérias que confrontam resultados chineses – indicadores econômicos e sociais – com os de países atualmente na vanguarda do desenvolvimento mundial. A China já é a maior economia mundial, a despeito do fato que, em termos per capita, ela ainda vai levar décadas para se equiparar aos países mais avançados.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida



China Vs. the US: Just the Facts

China Vs. the US: The GDP Race

Who leads depends on how it’s measured. | By The Globalist

China Vs. the US: Lifespan Gains

A child born in China today can expect to live decades longer than someone born in China in 1950. | By The Globalist

China Vs. Europe: Living Standards and Costs

While much of China remains poor, some cities are now on par with EU levels. | By The Globalist

China Vs. the US: Who Has More Land?

The two countries have very similar land areas for now, but China has extensive additional claims. | By The Globalist



China Vs. The US: The GDP Race

Who leads depends on how it’s measured.
9

Takeaways


  • At market prices, China’s GDP is still only about 61.7% the size of the US economy.
  • China’s economy is also more than three times greater than that of Germany, and four and a half times larger than the economies of France or the United Kingdom.
1. At market prices, China’s GDP (the size of its economy) is still only about 61.7% the size of the U.S. economy, according to International Monetary Fund estimates in 2017.
2. China is the second-largest economy in the world in nominal terms (i.e., without adjustment for local purchasing power). 
3. China’s GDP is nearly two-and-a-half times larger than that of third-ranked Japan.
4. China’s economy is also more than three times greater than that of Germany, and four and a half times larger than the economies of France or the United Kingdom.
5. Only by measuring China’s GDP in international dollars that adjust for local purchasing power does it surpass the United States’ economic size.
6. By this indicator, the U.S. economy is 84% the size of China’s. 
7. China certainly seems destined for economic pre-eminence, if current trends continue. 
8. This would be a return to China’s previous path and position in the global economy. 
9. Back in 1820, two centuries ago, the largest productive economies in the world were China and India. 
10. Together they accounted for half of the aggregate value of the global economy at the time.
Sources: IMF, Maddison Project Historical Statistics, The Globalist Research Center