The work year...

For many people the new work year has already begun. For academics like myself it will begin in earnest on Monday week, when courses at my own University (www.richmond.ac.uk) recommence. However, a return to the routine of work starts tomorrow, with the usual slew of pre-semester meetings and correspondence. While I have enjoyed the past several weeks of relative peace and quiet, enabling me to engage in some productive reading and writing, I am also excited about the return to the classroom.

Although there is a great deal of satisfaction to be derived from reading and writing research papers and books, it does not have the same "buzz" that comes from meeting a new set of students for the first time as the new semester gets underway. Although there are bound to be a few students with whom I am already familiar, the chance to meet afresh some new, curious and inquiring minds offers a great deal of promise. With any luck the students will be good enough to fulfil their own promise, and also to ensure that the promise of new intellectual relationships bears enough fruit to fulfil that promise.

Of course, for students it may appear that the relationship with an instructor is entirely one-sided, with the passage of knowledge and skills to them from the instructor. But that is not the way I like to think of it; neither is it a view which I find healthy. I like to think that while I am able to educate my students by providing them with an introduction to certain formal skills, knowledge and techniques of analysis, equally I am able to learn a great deal from them. At the very least I am able to learn about the places from which they come, often countries with which I have little more than a passing knowledge. But each student is a fascinating individual, to whose talents and characteristics I need to tweak my methods of teaching. From them I take away changes to my own methods, and to how I relate to each and every one of them. I genuinely believe that the day I become blasé about my relationships with my students is the day I should retire or seek another professional challenge.

And then there is the real world. As an Associate Professor in Finance and Economics the real world provides the backdrop to everything I teach in the classroom. And the real world is never short of surprises and challenges for the professional in Finance and Economics. The real world influences both my teaching and, more directly perhaps, my research. For some months I have been working in a research paper dealing with the 'crisis' in the eurozone. But the changing background has made it difficult for me to write the last few concluding paragraphs. Every time I think I have written something which will stand up regardless of facts "on the ground", circumstances change and I am forced to rethink and rewrite. This is both frustrating and exciting; it is the vivacity of the real world with which professionals in my area are engaged. However, the existence of a looming deadline means that I will need to take a stance and no longer sit on the wall!

In recent years my first blog of the year has been one of looking forward to see what might happen in the new year. This year I am avoiding that perspective, largely because it is either a thankless task—the predictions are wholly wrong—or because the predictions themselves turn out to be trite and banal—the predictions are apparently true and seem obvious in hindsight. I hope you, dear reader, will continue to read my musings during 2013, and offer your own views by way of return.

Politicians: a thin line between love and hate?

Don't you just love politicians? It doesn't matter who we vote into office, it seems they just don't get it. They appear to have no idea about nor connection with the lives led by those who put them in office and pay their salaries. I don't know if this comes form mixing almost entirely with other politicians, and only coming into very limited contact with ordinary mortals when a photo-opportunity is required, or if there is some other factor at work. Despite this I do not wish politicians harm; in a democracy we will soon have an opportunity to vote this lot out and the other lot in at the next election, and we all have the right to stand ourselves for office if we don't like any of the alternatives on offer.
So, who is he referring to, I hear you ask yourself? The above could apply in any major democracy. I could be referring to yesterday's mid-term review of the UK's coalition government, or even the Obama administration in the USA. The same sentiments would apply equally to both, as well as the French, German and other governments currently in office. Politicians have a penchant for spewing out statistics which they think shows them and their policies in a good light, while ignoring the statistics thrown out by the other lot to show them in a bad light. Politicians are rarely able to give a straight, honest and direct answer to a simple question. But then, their primary objective is to get re-elected, so they perceive disingenuousness and obfuscation as the path of least resistance. Objective truth is seen as being hurtful to their objective. Or, more accurately, they don't think that we, the public, who vote for them and pay their salaries, can handle the truth.
It is was not yesterday's mid-term review by the UK coalition which has exercised me recently, but rather the European authorities. I am currently finishing up some research on the eurocrisis, with a particular focus on the eurozone. My main objective was to compare the eurozone with an Optimal Currency Area (OCA), its theoretical version. Or that's what it should be. In practice, the eurozone is as close to being an OCA as the Earth is to Proxima Centauri: a matter of some light years. That the eurozone as an institution needs some re-engineering is something that even the most ardent of eurocrats seems to recognise. But in reading the thoughts of Jörg Asmussen, Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank, in his "Agenda 2013 - the next steps in completing EMU", the profound distance between politicians and the general pubic became even more stark. Unlike our MPs and local councillors, we cannot elect someone else to replace too many of our European politicians.
Let me state for the record that I am a supporter of the European Project in principle. I do not wish to see the UK outside the EU. However, I have major issues with the current structure of the EU, which in my view has led to the misconstruction of the eurozone, and will prevent the latter from being rebuilt properly as an OCA. The biggest issue is that of accountability: the European Parliament does not properly function as a parliament. It is time to remove the Commissioners and rebuild Parliament as a a true representative body of the European peoples. Until this occurs it will not be possible to have a fiscal transfer mechanism (one of the requirements of an OCA), which would require cross-border EU taxation of some form or other. And there should be no taxation without representation, a concept so basic that it was first expressed nearly 250 years ago. Unless and until there is root-and-branch reform of the EU institutional setup there will be no serious and workable attempts to deal with the eurocrisis in our time. The Great Contraction could end up as the 21st century's Great Depression. A restructuring of the EU could prove the be the engine for growth that the world needs desperately, and make the EU more attractive to its detractors. Who knows? If they can manage to do this, maybe one day we will learn to love our politicians!