What the EU has done right

It was a redeeming week for me as a student of European studies and follower of the European Union. I was presented with two rather compelling examples of how the Europeans are not only doing things right, but should be emulated. And they didn't come from Europeans. The EU is not without its downfalls and failures, but it is also not without its enourmous successes in the face of interminable challenges. The Union is in all senses radical and revolutionary. Nothing like it existed in the world prior to its formation, and nothing has yet to come close to resembling its supranational structure. And as it gains influence it will gain an ability to shape the world in such ways as presented here.

So what has me so giddy about Europe?

John Judis wrote a brilliant article in this past issue of The New Republic on NAFTA. The genesis of the article was the scapegoating of the trade agreement by the Democratic presidential candidates when campaigning in Texas and Ohio. In pandering for votes, both Clinton and Obama were rather quick to blame NAFTA for the current economic woes and more specifically for the death of the manufacturing industry in Ohio. But the real trouble with NAFTA is that it has hurt Mexico WAY more than it hurt the U.S. or Canada, particularly Mexico's agricultural sector (the U.S. and Canada have actually done just fine under the agreement). And the real threat to the U.S. economy is not from Mexico, but from Southeast Asia and China. I wholeheartedly thank Mr. Judis for injecting some truth into the misinformed debate that goes on in the U.S. about NAFTA.

But NAFTA does in fact need improvement and renegotiation, just not on the terms suggested by either candidate (this is where I get excited). Instead of using the free trade model, the U.S. and Canada should do what the early EU did for Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Namely, employ a more developmental model that provides structural funds to Mexico and temporarily protects Mexican industry to upgrade its economy and infrastructure. After that, you can consider full liberalization. But as of now, the playing field is so incredibly uneven that any free trade agreement is inherently unfree. Judis quotes Princeton sociologist Doug Massey, which I will reiterate because the implication are so profound - "If the money devoted to U.S. border enforcement were instead channeled into structural adjustment in Mexico, as was done by the EU for Spain, unauthorized migration would likely disappear as a significant demographic and political issue in North America."

It should also be pointed out that this is the model that the EU is using for North Africa and the Middle East to decrease illegal immigration. The MENA presents a whole other dynamic of issues, so the jury is still out on whether this will work for the source of almost all of the EU's immigrants, legal and illegal.

The other source of praise for the EU came from former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. He was the chair of a high level panel commissioned by the African Development Bank to set a strategic vision for the bank's future. I saw him present the findings of his report at a conference sponsored by the Center for Global Development . Amongst his findings, he spoke of the need for Africa to integrate in the same way that Europe integrated after WWII. The EU is a unique creature born out of a specific time, place, and set of circumstances. So in a policy sense, there have always been questions of transferability of the EU model. But PM Martin was correct to point out that the EU started with an economic union between France and Germany, which was later turned into an economic union, and much later still a political and social union. The foundation was economic interdependence, which Africa can and should emulate.

After the Gold Rush

I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst through the sky.

Clearly Neil Young was not thinking about investing in gold when he wrote these lyrics. The next line goes,

There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high

But his words are no less fitting for a time when financial markets are at best volatile, and at worst going down the proverbial shitter and commodities such as gold are a last vestige of hope for the speculator.

We are in the midst of a modern day gold rush. Obviously, no one is fleeing to Northern California and setting off into the wilderness panning streams for gold nuggets. You don't even have to purchase actual gold these days to participate in the gold rush. There are a handful of derivatives and futures trading markets to enable us to never have to wield a pick axe or climb down a mine. You can even buy gold on the U.S. stock market (ticker symbol - GLD). But the profits to be made are no less significant. In January 1980, gold hit the record price of $850 and ounce. It again hit that price again 28 years later in January 2008. It has continued to sore and reached over $1,000 and ounce in March 2008, before just last week falling below the $1,000 mark. You may think this is crazy and due for a crash.

But consider the evidence to the contrary. As James Turk blogged on goldprice.org, the inflation adjusted price for $850 of gold in 1980 is $6,255 in 2008 prices! Just let that one sink in for a minute...

Now you can understand why everyone, including myself, is investing in gold. Gold hitting $1,000 is rather miniscule to the potential price it could garner. But this begs the question, why is the price of gold rising so rapidly? There are several answers to this question. The demand for gold based jewelry in emerging markets is skyrocketing. You can hardly find a man Moscow that doesn't have several ounces, or kilos, hanging around his neck. According to the World Gold Council, the people who keep track of this stuff, gold demand in 2007 rose 37% from the previous year. Supply is decreasing at the same time. South Africa, which only 40 years ago produced about 80% of the world's gold, only produces 11% now.

But the real reason for surging gold prices is the floundering of the American economy. Gold prices are denominated in dollars so as the dollar continually loses value, the price of gold has to go up because it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gold. This is essentially true of other precious metals, oil, and to a certain extent agricultural commodities such as wheat. As U.S. financial markets continue to have liquidity problems and the Fed keeps cutting interest rates, the dollar's prospects continue to look grim. The only movement in the near future is down or sideways, so the only way for gold to go is up up up! Unless of course, the world decides to denominate gold in another currency. In which case, I am screwed. The ironic part about all of this is that as I, or any other American, invests in gold, we are essentially betting against the American economy, or at least against the dollar. Seems like a pretty smart bet at this point.

So grab a pan, or an Etrade account, and git yerself some gold. More demand will drive the prices higher even still.

What does this have to do with DC? I first starting investigating gold when I was working at The Globalist. As with most things I did there, I did the research and wrote the column and it sat around in a pile of paper for several months. I don't think it has been published yet, 9 months later. The incompetency of the editor-in-cheif, Stephan Richter, is in the end, my gain.

As Neil Young later sings,

I was thinking about what a Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.

My First Food Blog: A DC Downer

I love food. I have a self-described discerning – some would say snobby – opinion of the foods I put in my mouth. So it seems only right that I rant on the subject as it presents itself in Washington, DC.

Tom Seitsma, food columnist for the Washington Post, has an unenviable job. You may ask, how can a food critic have an unenviable job? He gets to eat the best foods for free at any restaurant in the city, which is obviously better than having to pay for it. Certainly the position itself is not the bad part - it’s the fact that he has to do it in DC. For someone with as discriminating of taste buds as himself, it must be extraordinarily frustrating to be in one of the most disappointing food cities I have ever been to – let alone lived in.

I should be forthcoming in saying that a recent trip to Chicago spawned this blog. The trip wasn’t the genesis of this opinion – I have had my doubts since the first day I moved here – but Chicago certainly crystallized my opinion. Chicago is an amazing food city, which made me realize how uninspiring an eating experience DC really is.

I think at the core of this opinion is the fact that DC doesn’t do ONE thing the best. There is always another city can do better than DC does it. This greatly hurts the average value of DC food as a whole. There is not one genre of food that everyone in DC can do better than other cities – a category that can carry a city to the upper echelon of food cities. I have heard the argument that DC has more diversity in choice than anyone else in the United States. Even if this is true (which I don’t think it is), a diverse array of crappy food doesn’t help the cause. It only makes it worse. One could also make the argument that DC has exceptional Mediterranean region inspired fusion cuisine. The sheer number of restaurants that can qualify as “Mediterranean-esque” would give credence to this argument. The problem with that is that so many things qualify as Mediterranean that the term has become meaningless. Is it Italian? Spanish? North African? A specific Middle Eastern country? Or even the Middle East as a whole? It doesn’t seem that DC has a culture of producing numbers of high quality restaurants in any of these categories. How could it be possible, then, that DC could organically create a genre based on all of these without having each individually? It can’t…and it hasn’t. The term Mediterranean has become so convoluted with associations to sub-standard eateries and foods spanning more than a dozen countries that the term is useless.

Take two restaurants for example. Tabaq Bistro on U Street serves up “Mediterranean tapas.” Some of the dishes are decent, although severely overpriced, but the average tapas plate is unedible. Or take Rosemary Thyme Bistro on 18^th street for another example. Their dinner menu ranges from lamb shish to seafood ravioli to chicken alfredo (which is neither Italian nor Mediterranean). I prefer to eat their omelets for brunch. The amalgamated Mediterranean genre that encompasses these two restaurants is an exercise in the 80/20 principle – a guarantee of mediocrity (80/20 can be interpreted many ways, but for purposes here, it means that 20% of the menu yields 80% of the profits).

Or take, for example, the ubiquitous market-cafes that riddle the mid-town to downtown zone. What is a market cafe? There is no specific definition, it is more of a know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing. But they do have two common traits to help you identify them. It will have a buffet where you pay for food by weight. And they have a griddle where you order burders and sandwiches. Any other city, or college campus, might call it a cafeteria. DC has gone out of its way to change the name, but not the concept, in order to glorify it for the pant-suited lunch crowd.

Breadline on Pennsylvania Ave. aside (ok, Marvelous Market too), none of them are worth their weight in the subsequent excrement they produce. Yes, they can make a burger, or turkey sandwich. But the point is that not a one of them goes out of their way to produce something exceptional. A dish that would make one return there for the food, not for the convenience of it being right outside the office. Again, Breadline is an exception to this, but the exception that proves the rule.

In comparison, I went to a place in Chicago called Milk and Honey Cafe. It is a small, unassuming cafe on Division between Buck Town and Wicker Park. The menu features less than 20 items - about 6 sandwiches, a few salads, maybe 8 breakfast items, and a variety of fresh baked goods - and they all looked amazing. The baked juevos rancheros and the walnut and banana pancakes stole the show. By focusing on a few dishes - by removing the market and focusing on the cafe aspect - they make all of them exceptionally well. Spreading resources too thin on an overabundance of variety pretty much guarantees that all of them will be mediocre. Not a market-cafe, but Dickey's on Eye Street takes this approach with their sandwiches, and it works well.

I refuse to eat sushi or Mexican food here, so I won't even pursue those lines of reasoning. Lets just say I don't trust either here. It needs to be pointed out, though, that Central American food posing as Mexican food does not count as Mexican food. Even though I have had some pretty good pollo saltado in DC, it is only Mexican by some overstretched and irrelevant definition.

I will also admit that most of my experience is in the actual district, not in the surrounding provinces. But since I don't plan on going to Silver Spring or Fairfax, I don't really care.

I will give credit where I believe credit is due. In any city as large as DC, there are bound to be some gems. The city's two Belgian restuarants - Belga Cafe and Brasserie Beck - are both phenomenal. Casa Oaxaca does an admirable job of serving traditional Oaxacan and Southern Mexican cuisine. The various sandwiches, snacks, cheeses, and breakfasts inside Eastern Market are of varying quality, but I do love the deli case at the end of the row with pulled meat sandwiches, homemade tortillas, salsas, and empanadas. Casa Blanca on 15th and K Street serves excellent traditional Salvadorean dishes (although they completely miss on their attempts at "Mexican" food). El Khartoum, La Fourchette, and Mandu get honorable mentions.

These spots do help me at least survive. But the point here is the average restaurant, not the few and far between. Its about what I can expect from walking into any given eatery, and about what restauranteers believe they can get away with when they sacrifice quality for variety and quantity.

Before this article turns too whiny, it will wrap it up. My intent is not to complain, but to spark a debate. I truly hope there are people out there that disagree and can prove me wrong with some great suggestions. You can start with telling me where I can find a Thai restaurant that serves pad thai for less than $10. I had never paid more than $10 before I moved here, now about $12 seems to be the norm. Seriously, what the fuck...

Democracy and Sovereignty in Kosovo

Last week in my comparative democracies class we discussed the different conceptions of constitutionalism, how constitutions develop, and what they mean for democracy. Basically, people typically confuse the two terms democracy and constitutionalism. But they are not they same and in an academic context, are actually polar opposites. Democracy is rule by popular sovereignty, consent of the governed, and implies majoritarian politics. Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th and 19th century were actually not to keen on the idea of democracy - it implied instability and tyranny of the majority over individual rights. Constitutionalism, then, is the institutionalized limits to pure democracy. It basically guarantees civil rights and protects individuals from majority mobs, irrational sways in public opinion, and arbitrary government action. The term consitutional democracy is somewhat of a contradiction, but it actually enables democracy to function better.

All of this got me thinking about the situation in Kosovo. As a newly independent state, they surely must have a constitution. And they do. You can read the highlights here. After reading through it, the things reeks to high heaven of the omniscient hand of international advisers. It starts, "we the people" as do almost all constitutions. Funny, I didn't know that Bruce Hitchner of Tufts University, who helped write the constitution, is Kosovar. For an independent country, Kosovo seems awfully dependent on their Western backers for just about everything. Consider the entrenchment of Camp Bondsteel, the U.S. military base in Kosovo. It houses about 7,000 U.S. troops, many NATO forces and just happens to sit next to an oil pipeline pumping Caspian Sea oil to the Mediterranean. I also heard, but have not been able to confirm, that the U.S. military is the single largest employer in Kosovo. It makes one wonder how sovereign Kosovo really is, and ever will be. Especially without the assistance of their nearest neighbor and dearest enemy, Serbia.