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Journalism and other myths.

Ukrainiana

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Ukraine heated up this weekend when Russian troops invaded Crimea and backed the unrecognized Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov, who has declared the province is now independent from Ukraine.  The situation essentially pits all of Europe against Russia, with the Ukrainian people caught in the middle.  It feels like the way something like World War III might start for good reasons.

Russia cannot let Ukraine go over to the West for many reasons and has been playing every card in their deck.  This situation started on 21 November when Ukrainian President Yanukovych backed out of a deal to join a European Union “Eastern Partnership” under Russian pressure.  Russia then sent a $15B emergency loan to Ukraine, more or less paying Ukraine to be their friend.   The people of Ukraine rose in protest, eventually ousting Yanukovych and declaring an interim government with limited legitimacy.

There is a lot of background necessary to understand this from a Ukrainian, Russian, and European Union perspective.  Much of this is unfinished business from the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the tortured history goes back much further.

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Union, Yes! (maybe)

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The workers at the plant are voting on whether or not to join a union. The vote is controversial, setting the company and local politicians at odds with each other in a bitter struggle playing out in the press and even on billboards around town. If you think you’ve seen this story before, hold on a moment.

In Chattanooga Tennessee the workers are finishing up voting to possibly join the United Auto Workers (UAW) today. Volkswagen, the owner of the plant, has no official position on the vote but were the ones who initiated the process last October. The opposition comes from local officials who are terrified of unions coming in. They’ve made it clear that if the UAW successfully organizes the plant they will cut off all future tax breaks and generally make life difficult for VW. Welcome to a new world of global companies meeting the strange cultural war of the USA in 2014.

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New Boss, Same as Old Boss

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Janet Yellen completed her first day of testimony on Capitol Hill as Chair of the Federal Reserve. While the event was historic, it was remarkable mainly for how unremarkable the actual testimony was. There is a great deal of continuity in the Fed from Bernanke to Yellen, who both have very similar approaches to both policy and communication.

What was left unsaid was probably more important, however. We live in a time with a very active Fed which is taking a bigger role in the economy than any central bank in US history. But congress appears to be very comfortable with that role and very willing to let Yellen do what she does best – place a firm hand on the tiller and guide the economy as close to full speed ahead as it can chug along.

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What Do You Expect?

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Another week, another crippling cold. It is January, after all, and numbing cold is only to be expected. But expectations are the key to surviving Winter, especially one as brutal as this one. As long as you expect it will be deadly cold, the few days spent actually above freezing turn into a blessing. And there is always the greatest expectation of all – that this can’t last forever and some day it will be Spring.

Expectations are also the key to understanding predictions and the sinking feeling of disappointment when they don’t come true. Barataria has come under some fire for insisting that predictions are the key to a worthy blog’s identity, so it’s only natural that we should deal with three stories of expectations gone horribly wrong in today’s news.

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Exit the Eurocrisis – Slowly

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Now that the Eurozone Crisis is over, we can all breathe a little easier. Right? While it’s good to not be loping along from one crisis to the next, the aftermath of the flood that lasted from 2008-2012 in drips and drops is still being mopped up. The hits are just being absorbed by the banks and growth is going to be sub-par through 2014, meaning that the lingering unemployment problem is not going away.

There are two parts left to this clean-up – what comes next and what can we learn? They are both important and will dominate 2014 in Europe and the developed world.

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