Lost behind the news of the European Union’s budget and recovery fund is a long-awaited improvement in the eurozone’s internal balance. The convergence between north and south is such an important development that it is likely to take precedence over guaranteeing member states’ adherence to the rule of law.

NEW YORK – The second wave of COVID-19 infections has struck Europe harder than many expected. The hope of a V-shaped recovery has been replaced by the fear of a double-dip recession, implying that there will be no quick return to normal European Union budget rules. More worryingly, Europe now finds itself forced into a tradeoff between two objectives, both of which are critical to its long-term viability as a supranational political and economic bloc. Now more than ever, the EU’s commitment to the rule of law appears to be on the chopping block.

The news is not all bad. Owing to farsighted policy decisions by EU leaders, north-south relations within the Union are on a firmer footing than they have been for many years. One sign of this is that the spreads between German and Italian interest rates are at a record low, indicating that Italy’s position in the euro is now rock solid. “Spread anxiety” about the sustainability of the euro has abated across the entire southern tier of the eurozone.

Forget the political hurdles recently introduced by Central European member states with their threats to veto the EU’s budget and new COVID-19 recovery fund. Sustaining the long-awaited north-south political and economic convergence will be the EU’s top priority in the weeks and months ahead.

While the narrowing of interest-rate spreads initially reflected the European Central Bank’s quantitative-easing (QE) policies, it is the EU’s new recovery fund – dubbed Next Generation EU – that brought them to record lows. Investors have stopped selling the bonds of indebted southern countries because they realised that northern politicians, particularly in Germany, are willing to provide the support necessary (be it grants or loans) to prevent an unraveling of the euro.

Following the announcement of Next Generation EU came still more good news. In October, the European Commission’s first issuance of corona bonds with which to finance the programme was vastly over-subscribed. Investors placed bids for more than €233 billion ($276 billion), far exceeding the initial €17 billion on offer. This market reaction sent an unambiguous signal that a fully funded €750 billion recovery programme would soon be a reality.

Despite the over-subscription, Hungary and Poland have put the fund’s future in doubt by threatening to veto it unless the EU drops its demand that disbursement of EU funds be conditional on member states’ adherence to the rule of law. The fact that north-south spreads are remaining at record lows despite this fresh intra-EU political brouhaha reflects confidence that European politicians will work things out before a crucial summit on December 10-11, the final deadline for concluding a budget deal before 2021.

With the prize of north-south unity on the table, there will be intense pressure to buy off the two spoilers. Extortion is especially likely because Hungary and Poland both have the veto and the political will to use it. More to the point, both governments know that this is probably their last, best chance to forestall the imposition of conditionality on the disbursement of EU funds in the future.

The key player, as usual, is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Now in the twilight of her long chancellorship, Merkel will not allow Next Generation EU – which is sure to be a major part of her legacy – to be derailed. Jeopardising north-south solidarity and the newly achieved eurozone cohesion is simply too high a price to pay to stand up to Hungary and Poland.

Of course, there will be the usual political fig leaf. Hungary and Poland will pretend to commit to democratic principles (which they will continue to violate), and EU leaders will pretend to believe them. As such, the recovery fund will cost Europe a lot more than it should have.

Still, in thinking about the long term, the European Commission’s bond auction brought good news for the ECB, which stands to benefit from an important spillover effect from the return of robust fiscal policy. Next Generation EU’s loans to indebted member states will take some of the pressure off the ECB after years of monetary policy doing all the heavy lifting.

According to Reuters, the ECB’s governing council is discussing how it might “offer less generous support for indebted governments when it puts together a further stimulus package next month, to push them to apply for European Union loans tied to productive investments.” By reducing the centrality of QE in supporting European solidarity, this outcome would finally make the ECB governing council a less contentious body.

This development is especially promising for the long term. ECB hawks and doves’ endless skirmishes over QE are not only tiresome; they have also undermined European solidarity at a time of Russian revanchism, US unpredictability, Chinese assertiveness, and all of the disruptions implied by Brexit. Against this grim geopolitical backdrop, the recovery fund’s promise to reduce divisiveness in the governing council could not be more welcome. It is no wonder that ECB President Christine Lagarde wants EU politicians to enshrine Next Generation EU as a permanent, rather than a temporary, policy mechanism.

Jean Monnet, one of the early exponents of European integration after World War II, famously observed that the European project “always moves forward through crisis.” In this sense, the pandemic represents a unique opportunity to advance European integration like never before. Even if Europe’s illiberal populists in Hungary and Poland appear to avoid accountability yet again, their position may be more tenuous in the future. An EU that no longer needs to worry about the euro’s collapse will have much more time, energy, and resolve to take on its enemies within. (Project Syndicate)

•Melvyn Krauss is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

The General Services Administration has ascertained that President-elect Joe Biden is the “apparent winner” of the November 3 election. President Donald Trump, who had refused to concede the election, said Monday that he is directing his team to cooperate on the transition but is vowing to keep up the fight.

The move clears the way for the start of the transition of Trump’s administration and allows Biden to coordinate with federal agencies on plans for taking over January 20.

An official said administrator Emily Murphy made the determination after Trump’s efforts to subvert the vote failed across battleground states, most recently in Michigan, which certified Biden’s victory Monday.

“Please know that I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts. I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official —including those who work at the White House or GSA — with regard to the substance or timing of my decision,” Murphy wrote in a letter to Biden.

Trump tweeted shortly after her letter was made public: “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good … fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”

Earlier Monday, retiring Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who has repeatedly called for the transition to begin, released a new statement saying that Trump should “put the country first” and help Biden’s administration succeed.

“When you are in public life, people remember the last thing you do,” Alexander said.

Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio on Monday called for the head of the General Services Administration to release the money and staffing needed for the transition. Portman, a senior member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, also said Biden should receive high-level briefings on national security and the coronavirus vaccine distribution plan.

Alexander and Portman, who have both aligned themselves with Trump, joined a growing number of Republican officials who in recent days have urged Trump to begin the transition immediately. Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also urged a smooth transition, saying in a statement Monday that “at some point, the 2020 election must end.”

Separately, more than 100 Republican former national security officials — including former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte — said in a statement that Trump’s refusal to concede and allow for an orderly transition “constitutes a serious threat” to America’s democratic process. The officials signing the letter worked under four Republican presidents, including Trump.

The statement called on “Republican leaders — especially those in Congress — to publicly demand that President Trump cease his anti-democratic assault on the integrity of the presidential election.”

Among those signing the letter from business leaders were Jon Gray, president of the Blackstone private equity firm; Robert Bakish, president and CEO of ViacomCBS Inc.; Henry Kravis, co-chief executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., another private equity giant; David Solomon, CEO at Goldman Sachs; and George H. Walker, CEO of the investment firm Neuberger Berman and a second cousin to former President George W. Bush. (AP)

Abuja (Sundiata Post) – The United States President-elect, Joe Biden has publicly apologised to the daughter of George Floyd, a black American who was murdered by racist white American policemen.

Biden who knelt before the young girl to apologise said, “On behalf of the entire American Government and Citizens, I hereby apologise for the untimely death of your dad”.

Federal lawmaker who represented Kogi West at the 8th Senate, Senator Dino Melaye revealed this when he took to his twitter handle and tweeted as follows;

The 2020 US presidential election followed a pattern very similar to the contest in 2016, with narrow margins in a few key counties determining the outcome in battleground states. And the record-breaking turnout on both sides was a sign not of a healthy democracy but of an anxious one.

MILAN/PALO ALTO – In the US presidential election this year, President-elect Joe Biden received 79.8 million (51%) votes, Donald Trump received 73.8 million (47.2%), and the remaining candidates received 2.5 million (1.7%). Though votes are still being counted in California, New York, and Illinois, this year’s turnout has reached a record high for the post-war period.

Yet, owing to America’s Electoral College system, which allocates more electors per person to states with smaller populations, the outcome of this election was much closer than the popular vote would suggest. Though Biden ultimately won a significant number of battleground states, he did so by very thin margins, effectively reversing the outcomes that gave Trump his victory in 2016. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, just enough moderate Republicans, Democrats, and independents shifted toward Biden to make the difference.

A county-level view of voting patterns in 2016 and 2020 shows a deep and consistent partisan divide. The axes represent the Democratic vote minus the Republican vote, expressed as a percentage of the total vote in 2016 and 2020. A dot on a negative number signifies a Republican victory in that county. Overall, the points are highly concentrated around the 45º line, along which the margin of winning or losing was the same in both election cycles.

Generally, Democrats gained in counties that they won or only narrowly lost in 2016. Similarly, in counties that Republicans won by a substantial margin in 2016 (of which there are many), the data tend to show an even larger margin of victory for Republicans in 2020. 

The crucial area is in the blue circle, where the margin of victory or loss in 2016 was quite small. It is here that Democrats made gains and, in some cases, won over just enough voters to flip the county in their favour.

The red outline comprises mostly Democratic setbacks. In these counties, Democrats lost outright in 2020, or won by a substantially smaller margin than in 2016, thereby reducing their total at the state level. These outliers are mostly Hispanic-majority counties in South Florida – specifically Miami-Dade – and in Texas along the border with Mexico. These negative swings for Democrats were significant factors in Trump’s victories in those two states. 

In the battleground states, both Biden and Trump benefited from higher overall turnout, but Biden clearly benefited more. Relative to pre-election polls, including YouGov polls that we analysed, neither Biden’s narrow win in these states nor the huge overall turnout was a surprise. By contrast, the polls did not fully anticipate the strong, materially relevant support for Trump in certain segments of the Hispanic community. Moreover, many commentators assumed that a huge electoral turnout would favor the Democrats, leading some to speak of a potential “blue wave.” In the event, there was a very large turnout for both sides.

In terms of absolute numbers nationwide, many more people identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but a significant share of voters identify as independents.

In battleground states, however, it is Republicans who have the advantage (with independents remaining a substantial group).

As in 2016, the 2020 election was decided by razor-thin margins in battleground states. But the bigger story this year was the massive turnout on both sides. Does this mean that both sides had unusually attractive candidates? Not exactly. While 80% of Trump voters told pollsters they were specifically voting for the candidate himself, 56% of Biden voters described their decision as a vote against Trump.

A better explanation, then, is that voters turned out in record numbers on both sides because they emphatically did not want the opposing party to win. Moreover, this “negative partisanship” is symmetric. Democrats and a few moderate Republicans and independents did not want another four years of Trump, and most Republican voters appear not to have wanted to pass the baton back to the mistrusted “coastal” elites, globalists, “biased” liberal media, and Washington insiders.

With two runoff elections still to be held in Georgia, the final Senate result is not yet decided. Democrats would need to win both races in order to control the chamber (with 50 seats and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote). As matters stand, this seems unlikely.

The Senate shares some of the characteristics of the Electoral College in a more extreme form. The number of senators (two for each state) per eligible voter is roughly inversely proportional to the population of the state. This is by design, to ensure that the interests of less populous states are effectively represented in Washington, DC. Because the nine states with populations greater than ten million account for 51% of the US population, these states would effectively control the legislative agenda if Senate seats were allotted in proportion to population.

In the face of a deteriorating public-health situation and significant economic challenges, the wise course would be for both parties to pursue some of the existing opportunities for bipartisan initiatives, such as those recently outlined by former World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick.

But the wise course is not necessarily the one that will be followed. The most glaring area of bipartisan agreement nowadays is the American public’s broad lack of trust and confidence in institutions, which has led to persistent policy paralysis.

The US has just held an election in which candidates from both major parties won seats in Congress. It is up to elected officials on both sides of the partisan divide to ensure that the country will win, too. And it is up to voters to hold them accountable if they fail. (Project Syndicate)

•Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics Emeritus and a former dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, serves on the Academic Committee at Luohan Academy, and co-chairs the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute. He was chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development, an international body that from 2006-10 analysed opportunities for global economic growth, and is the author of The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World.  

•David W. Brady is Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.