Comment, analysis and other offerings from Thursday’s FT,
John Gapper: The mobile winner will not take all
The mobile revolution has broken out and there are casualties, writes the FT columnist. Mobile technology is on the rise as hardware and software companies face a new competitive landscape. The smartphone, along with the tablet computer, is coming of age, pulling the attention of software developers and consumers away from desktop computers and laptops.
Global insight: Gillian Tett – West looks for clues in radical Rogernomics
In normal circumstances, western financial officials do not spend much time pondering New Zealand, writes the FT’s Tett. Right now, however, these are not normal times as far as harassed European and American budget officials are concerned. As 2010 wears on, bureaucrats and politicians in places ranging from California to Athens are being forced to get serious about cutting public debt.
Michael Hudson: Austerity is not the only option
As Europe’s banking crisis deepens and the US economy stalls, most discussions of how to stabilise national finances assume only two options: “internal devaluation” (shrinking the economy by cutting public spending) and currency devaluation, says Hudson, chief economist of the Reform Task Force Latvia think-tank. Both aim to make countries more competitive: the first using unemployment to lower wages and imports, the second lowering export prices.
Geoff Dyer: China’s little emperors demand their due
China’s youth can get a bad press, writes the FT’s Geoff Dyer. In most accounts, they are the “Little Emperors” or the “Me Generation”, the spoilt and apolitical offspring of one-child families who are interested in fast cars, video games and designer goods but little else. At the main Shanghai store of Louis Vuitton there is a queue to get in at weekends – young women wait patiently in the rope line, as if they were trying to get into the hottest new LA club.
Lex on the yen
A quarter of Japan’s population is more than 65 years old – three times the world average. Tax revenues have been falling since 1990. Meanwhile, total government expenditures, according to the Ministry of Finance, have leapt by $300bn or so since the financial crisis, helping gross private and public sector debt to an equivalent of five times gross domestic product. Surely, a recipe for rising bond yields and a bombed-out yen, right?
Editorial Comment: Eyes on the prize
The UK government has gambled on extremely aggressive fiscal tightening. It plans to raise £29bn of tax and squeeze £83bn out of spending by the end of this parliament. If the economy survives this invasive treatment, it should be cured of its public sector debt problem. But effective fiscal consolidation is about more than cutting this year’s budget deficit.