Sarah Slaymaker had the best finish among Berkeley-based runners, taking 31st overall. Sarah Smith carried the banner for Piedmont as the 68th overall finisher. Slaymaker and Smith were first and third among women 35-39 with Berkeley's Grethe Petersen between them in second place.

I had the unusual experience of atttending a race as a spectator rather than a participant, as I was still nursing the bruising and bleeding from crashing my bike on the way to the start of the San Francisco marathon.

1. "Ghana is allowed to sell raw cocoa beans to the European Union, but if it exports finished chocolate it gets hit by big tariffs."

2. "Each European Union cow gets $2.40 a day in subsidies, more than what 1bn people each have to live on."

3. "The World Trade Organisation is undemocratic and secretive.

4. "No economy ever got rich without using tariffs to industrialise."

5. "Cutting rich countries' farm subsidies and tariffs will be a big boost for the world's poorest."

The truth behind the top five trade myths and why it matters

By Alan Beattie

Published: July 1 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 1 2006 03:00

Perhaps it is the astonishing complexity of trade negotiations such as the "Doha round", the latest iteration of which will occupy several dozen trade ministers in Geneva this weekend, that makes the subject so susceptible to myth and legend. As a public service I present below, in a convenient cut-out and keep form, the current top five myths on the trade negotiations circuit:

1. "Ghana is allowed to sell raw cocoa beans to the European Union, but if it exports finished chocolate it gets hit by big tariffs."

No it does not. Chocolate from Ghana has a zero tariff into the EU. (Some sweetened cocoa powder is taxed but generally only when it contains more sugar than cocoa.) As a member of the poor "Africa-Caribbean-Pacific" grouping of countries, Ghana gets special trade access. Check for yourself at http://export-help.cec.eu.int.

The real, rather banal reason

Ghana tends only to export small amounts of high-quality premium chocolate is that it has neither the infrastructure nor the capability to scale up. It does not help that chocolate melts in the tropical heat and maintaining a temperature-controlled manufacturing, trucking and shipping chain is expensive.

Incidentally a common, equally false variant of this myth is that Uganda (or Ethiopia or Rwanda au choix) exports raw green coffee beans free, but instant or roasted and ground coffee is taxed. Again, not so.

2. "Each European Union cow gets $2.40 a day in subsidies, more than what 1bn people each have to live on." Not really. The $2.40 number comes from taking the "producer support estimate" (PSE) for the dairy industry and dividing it by the number of cows in Europe. The PSE shows how much taxpayers and consumers transfer to farmers because of subsidies or other market-fixing practices. But at present the EU delivers the vast bulk of that support to dairy farmers not by handing out cash but by maintaining artificially high milk prices, mostly by taxing cheaper foreign imports.

This distinction matters for two reasons. One, if we are going to count import tariffs as subsidies, it is only fair to say that sauce for the rich protectionist goose is sauce for the poorer protectionist gander. If Europe's cows have it easy, each Indian grain of rice must also be living the life of Riley.

Second, the myth appears cunningly designed to imply that the "subsidy" money could be better spent elsewhere, perhaps on foreign aid. But that money does not pass through the government's hands. It goes straight from consumer to farmer at the point of purchase. If governments wanted to redirect money from farming to aid they would have to come out and raise taxes or cut other spending to pay for it.

Sadly, I fear I am fighting a losing battle on this one. Misleading though it is, the $2.40 cow is too good a story to give up. Bono, for example, keeps citing it even after I have explained to him why it is wrong.

3. "The World Trade Organisation is undemocratic and secretive."

Yeah, right. The WTO is so democratic it can hardly move. It has 149 member governments, any one of which can block a deal. Imagine the British House of Commons or the Japanese Diet or the US House of Representatives if every member had a veto over every bill.

As for secrecy, the negotiating papers for this weekend's talks, with some blunt commentary from the authors who are chairing the discussions, are right here. And while you are reading this I will be sitting in a press room in Geneva knee-deep in trade ministers sounding off to the world's media. It is about as secretive as the World Cup final.

4. "No economy ever got rich without using tariffs to industrialise." This claim, generally used by developing countries to avoid cutting tariffs, has a two-word refutation: Hong Kong. Some say Hong Kong's postwar success was as a port and financial centre for China. Not true. Being the entrepot for a country under US and United Nations embargoes and ruled by an autarkic Communist was not exactly a licence to print money. Hong Kong did the same as the other Asian tigers – starting off with clothing and other labour-intensive manufacturing and moving into more sophisticated products and services later.

5. "Cutting rich countries' farm subsidies and tariffs will be a big boost for the world's poorest."

This is the one that we all really want to be true. Sadly, it is not. The poorest countries, with the important exception of cotton-growers such as those in west Africa, generally do not grow many crops that compete directly with exports from Japan, Europe or the US, and they themselves have pretty good access to those countries' markets through special preference programmes. They do not need new markets as much as they need something to sell and decent roads, ports and airports to help them sell it.

Buried in these myths are glints of truth. Rich countries do practise "tariff escalation" – charging higher taxes on finished goods than on raw materials – on poorer ones; subsidised EU farm produce can and does undercut some farmers in developing countries; the practice of convening select groups of ministers in trade talks does appear arbitrary and unfair. But that does not mean that every story you hear about trade is true.

The writer is the FT's world trade editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

(And here is the one he did write.)
 

He shows that while manufacturing employment has fallen, manufacturing output has increased.   

But we aren’t being hollowed out.  We still make lots of stuff.  Not
that that’s the key to our prosperity.  But even if you think it is,
the basic premise is false.  We’re making more stuff.  We’re just doing
it with fewer people than before, which is good.  It means we can have
more of other stuff.  Productivity along with trade is the road to
wealth.

Go read the full thing. 

"Henry VIII powers" is the Westminster slang for legislation which confers on Ministers the ability to amend Acts of Parliament by regulation. (If anybody knows why, please let us know in the comments.) 

Some Bills contain Henry VIIIth clauses to enable ministers to amend the operation of the new policy in the light of experience.  Parliament has been sceptical of any proposals to grant such powers, unless they are very tightly defined and limited, as they can provide the Executive with powers to amend legislation to implement policies which have not been scrutinized by Parliament. Such Henry VIIIth clauses are often either thrown out, or amended to limit the circumstances in which the powers can be exercised.

Presumably because they had become frustrated at their inability to sneak such powers into each piece of legislation, the government appears to have decided to go for the sledgehammer approach instead, by proposing a general Henry VIIIth power.  I am not a lawyer, but the new bill seems to me to be drawn very widely:

A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes—

(a) reforming legislation;

(b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.

There are some conditions on the use of these powers, but they do not offer much reassurance:

(a) the policy objective intended to be secured by the provision could not be satisfactorily secured by non-legislative means;

(b) the effect of the provision is proportionate to the policy objective;

(c) the provision, taken as a whole, strikes a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of any person adversely affected by it;

(d) the provision does not remove any necessary protection;

(e) the provision does not prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which that person might reasonably expect to continue to exercise.

To my eye, this seems to be the mother and father of all Henry VIII powers.  I expect we will be told that, like the abolition of local council   elections which has been floated this week, these changes will make the business of government much more efficient and streamlined.  No doubt there is some truth in that; but there are other criteria which are also important in determining the arrangements by which we want to be governed.

See more at The Last Ditch, Bishop Hill and Talk Politics

This has been the year fans have increasingly taken music into their own hands, rejecting the over-processed diet served up by many major labels in favour of something a little more homemade. In the process they have notched up numerous high-profile successes, including Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spinto Band and Nizlopi.

It does seem to me broadly right that it is in the interest of songwriters and performers that people should be able to share music, rather as many of us did with cassette tapes many years ago.

The idea is simple.  Pharmaceutical companies do not have sufficient incentive to invest in making vaccines for developing countries, against diseases like malaria and HIV, nor to produce large quantities of existing vaccines for diseases such as Hepatitis B, Hib and measles.  The reason is that the markets are too small, even though these vaccines would be a hugely cost-effective way to save lives in developing countries.  To solve this, rich countries could offer a guarantee: if a company can develop a vaccine for a disease like malaria, we will pay for it to be bought in large quantities in developing countries.  This creates strong commercial incentives for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to accelerate the development of vaccines that will save millions of lives a year in developing countries.

This would be a new way of giving aid: focusing on global public goods; linking payment to results; and harnessing the energy and creativity of the private sector.   For developing countries, it offers the prospect of access to medicines that will save lives cost-effectively.  For companies, it offers larger new markets.  And for donors, there is no cost unless the policy succeeds.

The finance ministers considered a report from Italian Finance Minister Guilio Tremonti which recommended that the G-7 adopt a plan that is based on proposals made in April by a Working Group convened by the Center for Global Development (CGD), in our report Making Markets for Vaccines.   (Our work on this is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).  I am proud to say that the finance ministers welcomed the idea, and decided to pilot this approach.

The communiqué from the G7 Finance Ministers says this:

We welcome Minister Tremonti’s report, published today, on Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) for vaccines. Alongside direct funding of research, AMCs could be a powerful, market-based mechanism to support research and development of vaccines for diseases which affect the poorest countries. We agree to work with others on developing a pilot AMC next year, including continued discussions with expert bodies on the diseases to be addressed.

This is a huge step forward.  I am tired, and very proud of what we have achieved so far. Read more in my vaccines for development blog.

Chris summarizes Mrs Thatcher’s influence on privatisation, labour markets, and macroeconomic policy. He concludes:

She has given a generation of non-economists the impression that support for free markets is equivalent to support for the vested interests of the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I agree with Chris’s analysis, especially the point quoted above – and I would add a few glosses.

• We tend to take for granted some of the really good reforms and policy changes of that era, such as the abolition of exchange controls and the agreement to the Single Market Act.  Maybe they would have happened anyway; maybe not.
• It is important to distinguish the period when Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor, which was largely disastrous, from Nigel Lawson, who was pretty good (at least from 1983 to 1987).
• Howe’s budget of 1981 was a catastrophic, unforgiveable mistake, clinging to the wreckage of monetarism long after any reasonable person would have abandoned it, leading to one of the deepest (and least necessary) recessions on UK history; as was Lawson’s expansionary budget of 1988 based on the arrogant belief that he had conquered the business cycle.
• Thatcher and Lawson should be commended for persuading the chattering classes that increasing trend economic growth is primarily challenge for microeconomic policy (ie improving the supply side), whereas controlling inflation is primarily a challenge for macroeconomic policy.   This seems obvious today but it was a total reversal of the then prevailing wisdom which saw macroeconomic policy targeting growth (demand management) and microeconomic policy controlling inflation (price controls, wage freezes, hire purchase controls etc).
• Lawson should be commended for his simplification of the tax system (subsequently largely reversed, sadly).
• One of the defining features of Mrs Thatcher’s economic policy was her ambivalent relationship with the exhange rate.  I think – though without much conviction – that we should have joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the EMS sooner than we did; and had we done so we might not have suffered the humiliating ejection that occured under the Major government.  Mrs Thatcher had a largely instinctive set of opinions about the exchange rate – she believed in keeping sterling independent and "strong" – without any very sophisticated underlying analysis.
• The Thatcher Government has not got the opprobrium it deserves for breaking the link between the state pension and the growth of wages.  Allowing our old people to fall behind rising living standards of the rest of the community year after year, creating a generation of retired people living in poverty, was unforgiveable.
• I think Mrs Thatcher did, in some undefinable way, change our attitudes – largely for the better -  to the role of the state in private enterprise.  Before her, there was a widespread assumption, under both Labour and the Conservatives, that the state should step in to prevent the collapse of particular firms or industries.  That was mainly an expensive mistake, and Mrs Thatcher was robust in refusing to come to the aid of many sunset industries.  (She was, however, not entirely consistent on this: her friends in industries such as aerospace continued to receive large public subsidies.)

See also New Economist, who has some good links to further commentary.

Update 17 October: See also BrightonRegencyLabour for 20 reasons why he hates Thatcher.  Also the comments below have a lot of good stuff.

We want everyone to understand that we’re taking this hurricane very, very seriously, and the federal government has already set the machinery in motion to delivery vital disaster recovery services – including press conferences, focus groups, overnight polls and photo opportunities with selected grateful survivors – to the President just as soon as the storm has passed.