956 Some Good News

  • The Egyptian consul in Saudi Arabia is taking action on behalf of two doctors sentenced to jail terms and lashings for enabling a princess’ morphine addiction. News of the sentence caused a scandal in the Egyptian press. The consul says he hopes for a royal pardon. Too late for the Egyptian the Saudis executed for sorcery a year ago this time, but better late than never.
  • Gamal Mubarak has proposed giving all Egyptians over the age of 21, whether they live at home or abroad, shares in Egypt’s public companies. Al-Masry al-Youm reports:

    The project aims to raise the financial efficiency of companies, preserve workers’ rights, distribute a package of free shares among citizens and create new entities, such as the Future Generations Fund and the apparatus for managing state-owned assets.

    Alternatively, shareholders could sell immediately. This truly is “new thought.” Perhaps America could learn from Egypt and distribute GM shares among the populace. I’ll leave the question of whether the analogy holds or whether this idea would work in Egypt to the economists. I have my doubts on both scores.

  • As a side note, I’m glad to see more politic people have stepped in to express what I was too winded to say after that swift kick to the bidan. Scott MacLeod spells it out at his blog for Time. And the good Prof. Lynch says not to worry, Emanuel won’t influence policy, though the reaction to his appointment should have been anticipated and managed better.

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  1. Gamal’s “new thought” on giving shares to all citizens isn’t that new – it was tried by Russia and several former communist countries in the 1990s as part of their privatization initiatives, and dubbed “voucher privatization.” Did not work well in Russia because it was badly thought out and allowed insiders and oligarchs to capture the shares as rents without having a real stake in the companies; other Eastern European countries had better experiences. See: http://cog.kent.edu/lib/Ellerman5.htm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_post-Soviet_Russia#The_.22loans_for_shares.22_scheme_and_the_rise_of_the_.22oligarchs.22

    Comment by SP — November 12, 2008 #

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