t*******h
发帖数: 2882 | 1 大意：
世界粮农组织警告，中国干旱将迫使世界最大小麦生产者（中国）大量进口谷物，使得
市场价格创纪录的攀升。
埃及起义的根本原因，是中国：亚洲的繁荣造成了对谷物的空前需求。
40%的埃及人每天生活费低于2刀--甚至比加沙地带的人害穷。
食品的上涨加重了埃及人对现政权的不满。
埃及不能像中国在1949年一样搞土改，一切已经太晚了。
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB10Ak02.html
Chinese weather on Tahrir Square
By Spengler
The late novelist James Clavell had a tiresome habit of driving the plots of
his potboilers into cul-de-sacs, whence he would extricate them with a
natural disaster.
Egypt had its Clavell moment on February 8 when the Food and Agricultural
Organization warned that drought in China might require the world's largest
wheat producer to import vast amounts of the grain, forcing the market price
to levels never seen before.
While protesters continued to fill Cairo's Tahrir Square, and Washington
swung between urgent calls for President Hosni Mubarak's departure and
admonitions not to rush things, and
Egypt's elite wondered whether to take their money and run, the weather in
China pre-empted all these petty calculations.
Not until June will we know the extent of the damage to China's winter wheat
crop, virtually all its production. Extremely low rainfall this winter
parched more than 5 million hectares of 14 million hectares planted, and the
next few weeks' weather will determine if the world faces a real shortage
of the staff of life.
Hoarding on the part of North African countries, starting with Algeria, has
already pushed up the wheat price in the Mediterranean to a 20% premium over
the price shown on the Chicago futures market. The immediate risk is that
pre-emptive purchases of wheat will price the grain out of the reach of poor
Egyptians, not to mention Pakistanis and Bengalis.
And if reserve-rich China, usually self-sufficient, goes into the world
market to buy millions of tons of wheat, the price of wheat can rise to an
arbitrarily high level.
There is a root cause to the Egyptian uprising, as I wrote last week (Food
and failed Arab states,February 2), and it is not Israel, but China:
prosperity in Asia creates inelastic demand for grain, such that a minor
supply disruption such as the 2010 droughts in Argentina and Russia causes
huge price increases. American economist Larry Kudlow observes as well that
ethanol subsidies artificially inflate grain demand as well, contributing to
the present price spike.
About 40 million Egyptians live on less than US$2 a day - far poorer than
the Gazans who are now selling the food they received through Western
largesse to Egypt. Amid all the blather about democracy and human rights,
some pundits have taken notice.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the February 5 New York Times:
Of course, China per se is not fueling the revolt here - but China and
the whole Asian-led developing world's rising consumption of meat, corn,
sugar, wheat and oil certainly is. The rise in food and gasoline prices that
slammed into this region in the last six months clearly sharpened
discontent with the illegitimate regimes - particularly among the young,
poor and unemployed.
Since then, the impressionable Friedman has made his way to Tahrir Square,
where he now writes odes to the spirit of freedom sweeping Egypt. On
February 7, he wrote that "the truth is now gushing out of here like a
torrent from a broken fountain".
The trouble is that people want to eat almost every day. Pundits and
political scientists talk of a choice of political models as if they were at
a Ford dealership rather than the scene of a national catastrophe. New York
Times columnist Roger Cohen titled his February 7 offering, "Tehran 1979 or
Berlin 1989?"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Iran wants "a new Gaza
in Egypt". Swiss Tariq Ramadan wrote in the Huffington Post on February 8
that "Democratic Turkey is the Template for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood". (
Ramadan is the grandson of Brotherhood founder Husan al-Banna, whom he
praises without mention of al-Banna's allegiance to the Nazis during the
1930s and 1940s).
Automobile models and political models, though, have one thing in common:
you can't have them unless you can pay for them. Iran in 1979 pumped 6
million barrels of oil a day, and petrodollars can pay for a lot of
stupidity. Germany was in 1989 and remains one of the world's most
productive economies. Turkey is the only Muslim country that produces large
numbers of first-rate university graduates - I had the privilege to work
with many of them in the financial industry - thanks to founding father
Kemal Ataturk's emulation of the German university system starting in the
1930s.
Egypt has no oil, insignificant industry, small amounts of natural gas, and
40 million people who are about to become very, very hungry. Without
figuring out how to feed the destitute bottom half of the Egyptian
population, all the talk of "models" is window-shopping.
That is also why an Iranian outcome is less likely than Iran's exultant
leaders seem to think. A radical Islamist state is like J P Morgan's yacht.
If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. Iran wants "
another Gaza in Egypt", Netanyahu warned on February 2. That might be true.
But there's a difference between a Gaza floating in foreign aid, and the
bankrupt failed state that Egypt is about to become. The difference will be
measured in starvation.
The United States alone has pledged $580 in annual aid per Gazan, slightly
less than the annual per capita income of the bottom half of Egypt's people.
The Palestine Authority (PA) transfers $1.2 billion a year to Gaza, mostly
in salaries for the 77,000 PA employees still on the payroll. The United
Nations throws in about $250 million. Iran subsidizes the Hamas government
with at least $100 million a year, although the PA claims that the flow is
much greater.
The numbers are slippery, but according to a study for the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy published in the January 13 Jerusalem Post,
the Hamas government in Gaza takes in several thousand dollars for each of
the strip's 450,000 residents.
Being such a statelet is great work, if you can get it. The misplaced
fixation of the major powers on Israeli-Palestinian peace gives Hamas (the
Palestine offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) an enormous claim on foreign
aid. The Brothers back in Egypt won't be so lucky. There are 178 Egyptians
for every Gazan, and not much aid to go around.
Columnist Roger Cohen's February 7 article concludes, "Obama, if he embraces
1989 over 1979, as he must, should twist the arms of Gulf allies. He should
ensure Egyptian democracy delivers by preparing an oil-money-funded
Marshall Plan for a democratic Arab world." There won't be enough money for
emergency food aid, let alone a "Marshall Plan". Cohen should invest in a
pocket calculator.
What happens next? Egypt's stock market has collapsed, and its pound has
fallen to the lowest level since 2005, with some brokerage-house analysts
warning of a 20% decline during the next several weeks. Foreign investors
have deserted the market for Egyptian treasury securities, so the central
bank will print money to give to the banks to buy government debt.
After half a century of military rule since the 1952 Free Officers' coup,
Egypt's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the old regime and its family
and friends. If this regime is overthrown, and the corrupt nexus of army
and business faces expropriation, the entire liquid wealth of Egypt will
make a run for the border, along with its current proprietors.
This is a formula for a classic currency breakdown and galloping inflation,
which invariably means panic purchases of commodities and hoarding: a
collapse of the Egyptian pound, uncontrolled capital flight, inability to
finance a current account deficit in the $15 billion range, and chaos in the
Egyptian economy. Egypt might appeal to the international community for
help, but the largesse offered to 450,000 Gazans will not extend to the 40
million Egyptians living on less than $2 a day.
Egypt's rulers had a good run as an American client. They have not yet
absorbed the enormity of Washington's abandonment of a reasonably faithful
and consistent ally. Accustomed as they are to hypocrisy in all public
discourse, the rulers did not quite grasp President Barack Obama's obsession
with the salvation of the world of his father and stepfather, the world
which his anthropologist mother labored her whole short life to defend
against globalization.
America's president really is prepared to gamble core American interests on
the sketchy proposition that Egypt can turn into a Muslim democracy.
Washington alternates between sentimental blather and diplomatic backsliding
. Shlomo Avneri, a senior Israeli diplomat in the government of Yitzhak
Rabin, wrote in the Financial Times on February 8:
Many in Israel have been shocked and dismayed by the inconsistency,
bordering on amateurism, of the US response to events in Egypt. First the
president, then Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, then again the
president's special envoy to Hosni Mubarak, have oscillated between
distancing themselves from one of America's staunchest allies and calling
for him to step down, further calls for him to do it as soon as possible and
then, taking a U-turn, endorsing an "orderly transition" headed by Omar
Suleiman, his intelligence chief.
Oh, for the good old days of American power, when the likes of Jimmy Carter
still had the will and means to cut America's friends off at the knee! Obama
's ability to inflict damage is limited by the contempt which the world
displays for American policy.
If Obama succeeds in forcing the Muslim Brotherhood into a new Egyptian
regime, Mubarak's cronies really would be better off in London exile. That
implies a tsunami of capital flight and the disappearance of Egypt's
managerial class who, feckless as they might be, nonetheless keep the
economy working day by day. As I noted last week, Egypt's $12 billion a year
in tourist revenue has gone to zero and would take years to restore under
the best of circumstances.
At this point, Egyptians will begin to starve. The government's immediate
response is to spend more. Egypt's new Finance Minister Samir Radwan
promised on February 5 that government subsidies would offset the rise in
the world market price of food. The government budget would help to "achieve
social justice", Radwan told reporters.
The trouble, as the rating agency Standard and Poor's explained, is that the
government deficit will climb into the teens, from the 8.1% deficit
registered last year.
How long Egypt can finance its external deficit, or its internal deficit,
without recourse to the printing press, depends less on internal events than
on the weather in China.
The Times' Friedman writes rapturously that Egyptians "want to shape their
own destiny". Unless Egyptian intelligence has secretly mastered weather
modification, Egyptians have very little say about their own destiny.
The New York Times on February 8 quotes Mohamed ElBaradei, the figurehead
opposition leader, complaining that the Arab world is "a collection of
failed states who add nothing to humanity or science" because "people were
taught not to think or to act, and were consistently given an inferior
education. That will change with democracy."
It's too late. A country that still practices female genital mutilation
cannot undertake a grand leap into modernity (by way of comparison, China
began to abolish foot-binding in 1911 and eradicated it entirely shortly
after 1949).
In this case, Oswald Spengler's motto applies: Optimism is cowardice. Memo
to the temporary residents of Tahrir Square: pray for rain in China.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. Comment on this article in
Spengler's Expat Bar forum. |
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