Growth performance is pleasing, but then what?
Fatih Özatay, PhD
12 December 2010
Then, locomotive of growth can only be domestic demand. On Friday we heard the growth figures for the third quarter of the year. Both the industrial production figures and data related to GDP as announced before Friday implied that growth was above expectations. But the growth figure for the third quarter remained below the expectations for the first time: 5.5 percent.
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“It is not that we had Oxford in Sanliurfa but I preferred not to study there!”
Güven Sak, PhD
11 December 2010
Hüseyin Çelik, during his term as the Minister of Education, once said, "Wait for the next PISA results." I did: Nothing seems to have changed. The opportunities enjoyed by Chinese monkeys are much better than those we have here in Turkey. Then how can Turkish firms compete with Chinese firms under these circumstances? I personally think that this is the issue of the day. This is the exact issue on the agenda even though we pretend that it is not. The OECD PISA results should have disappointed all of us. Hüseyin Çelik, during his term as the Minister of Education, once said, "Wait for the next PISA results." And that day eventually came.
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This time I will not accuse Turkey’s government of incapacity.
Güven Sak, PhD
10 December 2010
The solution of the problem lies at the hands of the core countries of the European Union. Banks of those countries have to be recapitalized. They previously tortured the Greeks. Now they are doing the same to Ireland. Given the huge incapability of Europe with respect to economic policy, I will no longer accuse Turkey's government of incapacity, which in fact is correct. Nothing here is so bad, but it might have been worse. European presidents and prime ministers, predominantly Angela Merkel, miss no opportunity to make things worse. But why is that so? It is not a good idea trying to govern a country and even a continent relying solely upon public opinion surveys. It will shorten your horizon and downscale your targets. I guess this is what happens: the melting European Union project. An
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Growth disrupts estimates
Fatih Özatay, PhD
09 December 2010
Data revealed that in October industrial production regained the pre-crisis level. This is the week of two important indicators: industrial production index for October was announced yesterday. And tomorrow we will learn about the GDP figures for the third quarter.
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Julian Assange is not a bad guy
Güven Sak, PhD
07 December 2010
The impact of Wikileaks in Turkey seems to be limited for now. Turkey still has not entered the digital age. Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, which recently has been publicizing the confidential cables of American diplomats. I personally wait everyday for new leaks. It is just like Japanese cell phone novels; sort of cliffhangers. To be honest I believe that Julian Assange is not a bad guy as claimed. If Assange is a bad person, I really have difficulty in understanding how Angela Merkel can be good, for instance. Let me tell you how I feel.
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On the Spread of Industry and Movie Theatres in Anatolia
06 December 2010
'Hunting Season,' a new film by Yavuz Turgul and Şener Şen - director and the leading actor of 'Muhsin Bey,' considered to be the most important film in Turkish cinema - was released this week. The film is being shown in 325 theatres throughout Turkey. Although I was attracted by the critiques of the film in the papers, I have to admit that the list of 325 movie theaters accompanying the advertisement was of much more interest to me. So I created a data set using the list of movie theatres running the movie. Then I combined the data with the data on the 1000 largest industrial enterprises in Turkey as published by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry. If we assume that the presence of movie theatres is an indicator of life quality and that the presence of large firms is an indicator of econom
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Why the inflation rate in the USA does not rise?
Fatih Özatay, PhD
06 December 2010
Monetary expansion does not happen via banknotes raining down on the streets. I have previously mentioned that during the global financial crisis Federal Reserves (FED) has injected substantial amounts of liquidity into the system first to put out the fire in the financial system and then to make the system able to extend credits again. I underlined that from July 2007 to December 2008 FED's balance sheet grew by 2.6 times. Size of FED's balance did not change yet.
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Fight in words
Fatih Özatay, PhD
05 December 2010
Measures voiced in the debates on hot money flows should not be considered as unilateral. The news-story of two pages prepared by the Finance Service was titled 'Fight in Words against Hot Money!' Can you fight against such a phenomenon with words? It depends on the words, I believe. If you say something like 'hot money is harmful; we must all fight against it' or something, it will obviously not be much effective. However, if the words declare in advance some measures which will potentially be put in force in a month or even gives strong clues about the decisions without declaring it, it can give desired outcomes as early as today.
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What has Wikileaks taught us?
Güven Sak, PhD
04 December 2010
Diplomatic cable leaks have been quite informative in some aspects. Today let me talk about the lessons I have learned from this incident. The first lesson is for Turkey. The Wikileaks-diplomatic cable leak is not a conspiracy organized exclusively against Turkey. I believe this is the first lesson to be extracted. I personally think that we make too much of ourselves. We think that the world turns only around us. Yet this is not the reality. At this point my favorite argument was "they have written even rumors." What else were they supposed to do? Should they have collected evidence and tested the reality before communicating it? You've got to be kidding!
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Did Mehmet Şimşek actually say that?
Güven Sak, PhD
03 December 2010
Wikileaks is evidence to the fact that character assassination has turned into a tool for public management.
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