Rescuing the EU model; World's first 3-D gun fires; Innovation -- for basketball, and for the economy; Fashion doesn't care a damn for garment worker deaths

1 Rescuing the EU model (Joergen Oerstroem Moeller  in Khaleej Times) The Eurozone crisis has unleashed a string of buzzwords – from rating downgrade to Grexit, referring to Greece’s potential exit from the zone. Yet one word is often missing: economic equality. Distinguishing the European Union from the rest of the capitalist world is its social-welfare programmes, and the crisis threatened to upend that broadly equitable economic system. But three years into the crisis Europe seems to have bitten the bullet and found a path to reforms that could allow the eurozone to maintain its social welfare state, albeit modified.

In the tumult of crisis and escape du jour, trends defining not only the future of the eurozone, but economic globalisation, may have been overlooked. Analyses and comments seldom mention that the countries in South European used membership of the eurozone as a cover. They borrowed to boost artificially high living standards. The eurozone rescued Cyprus after investments in Greek bonds failed, but penalised the investors. Adjustment policies for the weakest member states are working. In 2007 Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece all ran substantial deficits on the balance of payments.

The Europeans should have known, but instead suppressed what the global economic recession disclosed: Revenues can no longer finance the generous welfare benefits. Restructuring the economic model with more mobility, including easier procedures for corporations to trim the number of workers, has been introduced. Trade unions once resisted such reforms. With union powers curbed, workers can merely delay or weaken proposals. Unions have begun to recognise that the wind has shifted, and they acquiesce to cuts, using what little power is left to insert conditions. 

The reform process is incomplete, in some cases half-hearted, but continues because no one has offered an alternative way to pay for generous benefits with shrinking revenues. Focus shifts now to momentum for ongoing policies to reform and restructure economies of Southern European and France, introducing a more flexible labour market, higher geographical mobility, more technology-driven industries, and an improved banking system – all at a European level. Judged by recent performance, chances are Europeans will pass the test.

2 World’s first 3-D gun fires (BBC) The world's first gun made with 3D printer technology has been successfully fired in the US. The controversial group who created the firearm plan to make the blueprints available online. Anti-gun advocates have criticised the project and Europol, Europe's law enforcement agency, said it was closely monitoring the development.

3 Innovation – for basketball, and for the economy (Adam Davidson in The New York Times) Economist Glenn Hubbard recently laid out a dystopian vision of the US’ economic future. He ticked off a series of empires — Rome, medieval China, Spain, 19th-century Britain — and argued that they fell because their leadership ossified and squashed free trade, technological progress or other forces of economic growth. 

Hubbard fears that the US is also veering away from the forces that made it grow into the world’s most powerful economy. Rather than corrupt Roman senators or courtly Spanish twits, he argued, our culprits are myopic politicians who are creating a middle-class entitlement state. If those politicians don’t make fundamental changes to lower our debt — especially by changing the rules governing increasingly expensive Social Security and Medicare policies — the US may collapse, too.

As he wrapped up, Hubbard pointed to the good news: results can change when the right adjustments are made. This is where he brought up basketball. By the 1940s, he said, the sport had become boring, dominated by extremely tall players who planted themselves next to the rim. Then a Columbia University graduate student who also coached basketball wrote a Ph.D. dissertation arguing that the game could be saved by innovations, like the 3-point shot, which created an incentive to move action away from the hoop. It took decades for the NBA to adopt the 3-pointer, but since its implementation, it has helped make basketball one of the most popular and lucrative sports on earth. The US economy, in other words, desperately needs to find its own 3-point shot. 

4 Fashion doesn’t care a damn about garment worker deaths (Lucy Siegle in The Guardian) A week on, the Rana Plaza catastrophe in Bangladesh is now the deadliest catastrophe in the history of the garment industry, with the death toll exceeding 500. The gruesome accounts of rescuers cutting off limbs from trapped workers (sometimes without anaesthesia) surely leaves a stain on brands that no new collection, celebrity endorsement or micro-trend can wash away? Doesn't it?

When you're part of the Cut Make and Trim (CMT) army, as we might call the estimated 40 million producing fast fashion around the world, 3.5 million in Bangladesh alone, there's simply no let up. It's indicative of the chaos of today's fashion supply chain that many brands don't know where they are producing. It remains to be seen whether consumers will tolerate the usual excuses from brands.

Perhaps the most pernicious of all – I paraphrase – is: "We don't own the factories so we can't help what happens in them." This is usually followed by devolving responsibility to the host government.
The window to demand change is closing. Wednesday marked the mass burial of unidentified garment workers in a large pit in Savar. Thursday marked the reopening of garment factories across Bangladesh. By Friday the Bangladesh finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, was playing down the significance of the tragedy. If we don't act now, it'll be business as usual followed by shopping as usual. We cannot let that happen.