I had not noticed this part in a May update (I know I am late - sorry) from Ian Bremmer but it seemed worth noting especially as it dovetails nicely with what we've been hearing about the improving business sentiment in Iraq:

Economic analyst Jassim AlSadoon's firm Alshall provides its commentary and analysis on a recent report submitted by the Tony Blair Team that was advising the Kuwaiti government on strategy and planning to develop the economy and provide a sustainable feature. Follow the link below for the PDFs:

The recent turmoil after the ostensible re-election of President Ahmedinejad in Iran prompted me to think about citizen sentiment and the general ignorance outside observers have from a macro perspective on the Middle East. One thing I've always appreciated about American politics is that you can easily get statistics and other granular data on the political climate at anytime you choose. There are giant organizations such as Gallup that are specifically focused on this service and making sure they provide accurate and illustrative information. What this gives us is a straightforward way to see who is moving where in the waves of politics and other spheres of life and use that information for personal and business use. Looking at the Middle East as well as other parts of the developing world demonstrates just how large a gap there is. Media is filled with conflicting data that is often compiled based on rumor and guesswork mostly because there are few other sources of reliable data. We've seen some interesting efforts by the likes of YouGovSiraj and Gallup to survey the region but I suspect the obstructive stance of many governments and minority interest groups prevent serious efforts from developing. One of the places where I think that polls can be conducted effectively and with possible good results is Kuwait for the simple reasons that free speech is almost universal, Kuwaitis are very outspoken and the law is lax in punishing offenders beyond a nominal fine. Add that to the relatively high internet penetration in the country and outspoken private satellite TV channels and you have an excellent polling field. Contrast that with stories such as the one where an Iranian news editor was jailed for conducting polls a few years ago and you see the divergence in attitudes related to gathering information that may be deemed sensitive especially when the autocratic powers that be are in a tenuous positions. A cursory poll of around 2000 voters standing in line in London by one of the news organizations is reported to have come up with an overwhelming majority supporting Moussavi in this year's elections but it was reported that UK voters picked Ahmedinejad. Even unorganized polls can sometimes yield interesting results although I concede that they should not be used as evidence of wrongdoing automatically but as a cause for further investigation. An underlying trend that is already changing the polling field is the growth of the internet. It's been often said that autocratic governments stand to suffer the most from the easy availability of information. While I do not think it will move at the speed most hope to see, modern communications tools have focused on the individual and taken much of the power and oversight out of the hands of governments and large organizations. The best the Middle East can hope for right now is the following: (1) Large, established, professional pollsters enter the market and do some serious ongoing sentiment checks and fold it into their regular operations. (2) Intelligent young people from the region harness their resources to develop solid polling platforms that could one day set the standard for the region.

The idea of a good real estate portal serving the Kuwaiti market keeps tugging on my mind ....

David Goldman, the associate editor of First Things, was recently interviewed by Tom Keene on Bloomberg's 'On the Economy' and the topic was mainly on his concept of 'demographics and recession' that is also the title of his piece from which the following exceprt is taken:

Part of the problem in seeing this may be that we are transfixed by the dense technicalities of credit flow, the new varieties of toxic assets, and the endless ­iterations of financial restructuring. Sometimes it helps to look at the world with a kind of simplicity. Think of it this way: Credit markets derive from the cycle of human life. Young people need to borrow capital to start families and businesses; old people need to earn income on the capital they have saved. We invest our retirement savings in the formation of new households. All the armamentarium of modern capital markets boils down to investing in a new generation so that they will provide for us when we are old. via FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

He asserts that the problem of the United States and many other OECD countries, essentially, is the growing older population relative to the shrinking productive base of youth. People are having smaller families if any and choosing to save their money to spend on their retirement. His argument that this is a time bomb makes a lot of sense and has been debated reguarly by many economists I have come across. What could save the situation is if the pace of technology allowed the increasing support base of young people improve their productivity therefore allowing more output per unit of labor. This is no fantasy and is the driving force of the virtuous cycle of technological development over man's recent history but the key question is if it can keep up with the demographic changes to countervail them? Here on the other side of the world, the rich countries of the GCC face a starkly different problem in that they have a booming base of youth that is entering the labor force in increasing numbers but without enough of the tools and engaging opportunities to realize their potential. There is much more to be done that can be done but it seems that, as in America, change can only come about by force.

well i never thought i would see the day where the government of kuwait or any of its ministries ran out of employees. according to this article from today's Alqabas (arabic) newspaper, the ministry of commerce is requiring all registered shareholding company AGMs and mandated shareholder meetings to be held at the ministry of commerce as their employees are stretched too thin to attend outside meetings.   related thoughts come to mind:

•  i know people that are getting unemployment allowances waiting for a government posting and, trust me, this is not an intellectually trying job at all.
• kuwait is about an hour tops to each border and the city is even smaller so is it that hard to get around?
• elections are ongoing so are they holding out these easy juicy political favor jobs for the new MPs and their cronies?

  Alqabas via Google Translate.

I think this one's been pretty much milked for all it's worth:

In the 1960s and 1970s Kuwait was dubbed the “pearl of the Gulf”, and laid claims to being a leader in the region in technological innovation and progressiveness.

and the last part says it all:

“From a very early age we’re teaching children to be fundamentalists and almost terrorists,” she says. “For real fundamental change in the country, we need to start by changing education.”

Aint no change happening anytime soon methinks. Somethig drastic like a game over/reset sequence is needed but god knows where that's going to come from. Sadly, until a major seachange occurs in the country's governance structure and cultural proclivities, the downward trend in aggregate formal education standards has no end in sight. The ramifications for the economy are beyond description once the black gold runs out as well. Plan wisely oh ye of little guts.

i found something a bit off in the Kuwait edition of the IHT yesterday. in a front page article about vices returning to Baghdad, the background of a bar shot from outside seemed to have some pixelated sections and, upon further investigation, i managed to find the original picture on the new york times website where, sure enough, the picture clearly showed the bottles on the background shelves. now i know that kuwait is getting to be overly aggressive in imposing a multitude of restrictions but this seems to be going beyond the reasonable. furthermore, i have never heard of it being wrong to depict a real image of alcohol bottles in the background of a photo in a news article that is not even the main focus of the said photo.

Technology's harried march of the last few years has, in my opinion, brought very little to the rather ancient field of translation. If official history is any guide, much of mankind's overall progress can be attributed to bridging cultural and lingual divides and the greatest change has occurred at those moments of inflection. If change comes from where you least expect it then its rational to consider that you lease expect change to be in another language. I just came across this interesting new website that seem to be creating an Arabic/English platform:

Meedan is bringing Arabic and English speakers together in conversation about world events using emerging machine-assisted translation technology.

I have alwasy thought that not enough information comes to non-English speakers in the Arab world from English sources and I think there's much more coverage the other way around since foreign analysts and observers are more interested in scrutinizing the Arab world's thinking while the latter is more concerned about shouting well-worn slogans at the 'agressors'. More importantly, the Arab states are not too interested in promoting so-called 'dialogue' between civilizations lest it open up the eyes of their more repressed people's to what the rest of the progressive world can offer. An initiative that makes it easy for Arab readers to acess all important english-written content (and hopefully more languauges in the future) is a great concept and one that I am hoping will greatly succeed in delivering ubiquitous acess to knowledge, analysis and opinion to those that have not had the luck to learn today's global lingua franca. The further repercussions of such initaitives is that they put in place the groundwork for the ultimately utopian ideal of pervasive communcation among all of mankind (and maybe dogs and birds while we're at it). see: meedan.net