Eurozone crisis
I wish to comment on a recent article in the Taipei Times on the eurozone crisis (“Perng offers suggestions for handling eurozone crisis,” Oct. 6, page 11).
While I do agree that the eurozone urgently needs a common economic government to handle the crisis, let us not forget that the present eurozone crisis is more than just a sovereign debt crisis. It is also a currency crisis and a banking crisis, the complexity of which has bred confusion and has political consequences.
The EU’s various member states have formed widely different views and their policies reflect these rather than their true national interests. The clash of perceptions carries the seeds of serious political conflicts.
Given differences in economic growth and development, politics, banking systems, public debt management and so on, the euro was an incomplete currency to begin with. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 established a monetary union without a political union. The euro boasted a common central bank without a common treasury so that when it comes to sovereign credit, each member country is on its own. It was exactly this lack of sovereign backing that was missing and obscured until the European Central Bank’s recent willingness to accept member state’s sovereign debts as riskless and on equal terms at its discount window. That is why the euro has become the focal point of the current crisis.
The European banking system has not been properly cleansed since the 2008 financial crisis. Bad assets have not been marked to market, but are being held to maturity. When markets started to doubt the creditworthiness of sovereign debt, it was really the solvency of the banking system that was being questioned, since they were loaded with the bonds of the weaker countries that are now selling below par.
The fact that the Maastricht Treaty criteria were so massively violated shows that the euro has deficiencies that need to be corrected.
What is most urgently needed now is a political union that will form a coalition government for the entire EU. The question is how and which political party or parties within the EU are prepared to form a coalition government. However, with each political entity in the respective member countries holding different political views instead of prioritizing national interest, it seems that there is still a long way to go before an EU coalition government can be formed.
Andrew Michael Teo
Singapore
Nuclear power fallout
It is indeed socially significant and environmentally justifiable for tens of thousands of Japanese to march in central Tokyo to call on Japan’s government to abandon atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster (“Japanese protest nuclear power,” Sept. 20, page 1).
Over recent decades, nuclear power has been regarded by many as an efficient way to generate energy and many countries have built nuclear reactors for this very reason. However, why have people in Japan now protested violently against nuclear power?
The answer is because if a nuclear crisis is to arise, it would cause the extinction of all creatures. We should learn a lesson from modern history.
The worst nuclear accident was the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, which caused mass evacuations, long-term health problems and agricultural and economic distress. It was a disaster that affected not just the Ukraine and Russia, but the whole world. A large amount of radioactive material was released into the atmosphere. There are many reports concerning the number of people that have suffered from various illnesses because of exposure to nuclear radiation. Now, more than 20 years later, many areas around Chernobyl are still uninhabitable.
In March, after the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami hit Japan, sparking that country’s nuclear energy crisis, there were fears about the long-term impact of radiation leaked from the Fukushima power plant. Tens of thousands of people called on Japan’s government to abandon atomic energy as a result, saying that they wanted the future to be safe for their children and grandchildren.
In spite of the fact that new technology can make nuclear power plants safer than ever, there is still the serious problem of what to do with radioactive waste, thus it is essential that we find affordable and workable alternative sources of energy. By employing state-of-the-art technology, we should be able to find alternative ways of generating energy to develop an industry that would have a low environmental impact. Protests by Japanese against nuclear power plants have resonated with people worldwide, as it should with Taiwanese as well.
Wendy Shin
Taipei
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS