the widowmaker and accents

The eurozone economy is at risk of “Japanification”, a cycle of low growth and spiralling debt levels that could trigger a series of government bond downgrades, Fitch Ratings has warned. In a report published on Friday, the rating agency said the euro area’s weak growth and low inflation suggested the currency bloc could follow the deflationary path trodden by Japan since the early 1990s. According to Fitch’s analysis, the risks are most acute in Greece, Italy and Portugal. Fears of Japanification swept through Europe’s markets this summer. Government bond yields fell to record lows as investors bet the malaise would last for years. Although yields have since risen somewhat, they remain below zero for many eurozone members, suggesting investors believe a return of growth or inflation, or a rise in interest rates, remains remote. Ed Parker, head of European sovereign ratings at Fitch, said the euro area’s recent record of “lacklustre growth”, low inflation and negative interest rates — and the European Central Bank’s difficulty in exiting its vast bond-buying programme — had parallels with Japan. “An ageing demographic profile and the origin of the economic weakness in the global financial and eurozone crises, which were preceded by credit and asset price bubbles and left a legacy of weak banks, add to the similarities.” Unlike Japan, the eurozone has not experienced outright deflation, he added. If it does occur it would “materially worsen public-sector balance sheets” and open the door to “extreme downside scenarios”. Japan’s government debt level has ballooned over the past three decades, rising from 65 per cent of gross domestic product at the end of 1991 to 233 per cent at the end of last year. Fitch stripped the country of its triple A rating in 1998, and now rates Japan five notches below at A. Despite having the highest public debt in the world, Japanese yields have stayed very low, largely thanks to huge bond purchases by the Bank of Japan. According to the Fitch analysis, the widely varying performance of the eurozone’s 19 economies would complicate the policy response to a scenario of full-blown Japanification. For example, the ECB would struggle to match the scale of the BoJ’s intervention in markets, due to the political difficulty of lifting the 33 per cent limit on how much of any country’s debt it can buy. “Differences within the eurozone, fiscal and monetary policy constraints, and strains on political cohesion would make it difficult for the eurozone to escape Japanification, if it were to take root,” Mr Parker said.

FIona hill accent

Watching Fiona Hill testify before the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, many Americans noticed her gender: a woman speaking firmly to a roomful of men. But Britons also noticed her accent. Trump’s former chief adviser on Russia and Europe uses an elongated north-eastern English “A” — “informaaation” — that is rare in British public life. If Britons switched TV channels, they heard more familiar speech patterns: the old Etonian prime minister Boris Johnson saying more than he knows. Hill versus Johnson is a story of how the UK uses talent. It also explains the dismal choice facing voters in December’s election. Very unlike Johnson, Hill is a miner’s daughter who attended a comprehensive school in Bishop Auckland in north-east England. She told the inquiry that she came from a family “that had always struggled with poverty”. She also described a classmate setting her hair alight during an exam, with “very unfortunate consequences”: “My mother gave me a bowl haircut. So for the school photograph . . . I looked like Richard III.” But she and Johnson grew up with much in common: close in age (she’s 54, he’s 55), clever and good at languages. Both applied to Oxford. Visiting for her entrance interview was like “a scene from Billy Elliot: people were making fun of . . . my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had.” Notably, she said this in a public discussion between Guardian newspaper members in 2016, in which she was identified simply as “Fiona Hill, 50”. Accent discrimination is standard in Britain. In a poll by ComRes and ITV in 2013, 28 per cent reported experiencing it. Recruiters favour the 3 per cent of Britons who speak “the Queen’s English”, says Lance Workman, psychologist at the University of South Wales. Many British class migrants eradicate their accents, or even their original selves. North-eastern accents are especially low status: the comic character Alan Partridge famously interrupts his north-eastern “Geordie” sidekick with, “That was just a noise.” Johnson’s accent and dress were assets at Oxford. His “plummy speech . . . and frequent ‘aaaaghs’, ‘errs’ and ‘grrsss’ became widely imitated”, writes his biographer Sonia Purnell. His “sagging cords, ragged tweeds and haystack coiffeur [sic]” were markers of old-fashioned eccentricity. In fact, like many British displays of eccentricity, Johnson’s dishevelled dress is a class statement. It says: my privileged status is so secure that I’m free to defy etiquette. Contrast that with Hill’s sober dress and diction at the inquiry. Outsiders have to look serious or they won’t be taken seriously. Hill ended up studying at St Andrews in Scotland, but got her break in the US. Her origins and working-class accent never impeded her career there as they would have in 1980s-90s England. A Harvard PhD channelled her into Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, where an exotic accent enhances status (see also Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski). Like her Soviet-born colleague in Trump’s National Security Council, Alexander Vindman, she had to emigrate to advance. Of course, the US discriminates too — against its own working class, non-whites and women. Trump once mistook Hill for a secretary. But most Americans couldn’t identify her as working class. Tellingly, rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh mislabelled her as “either Oxford or Cambridge”. In the US, she simply sounds English. Britons fleeing their class origins have long found refuge in a country where everyone loves their accent. In Britain, north-eastern accents still impede careers. The current list of power brokers who have one barely extends beyond football manager Steve Bruce. Another contender, former Labour minister Alan Milburn, departed public life when his entire Commission on Social Mobility resigned in 2017 over the government’s inaction on fairness. One rising north-easterner, Labour’s shadow cabinet minister Laura Pidcock, said in her maiden speech to parliament: “This building is intimidating . . . built at a time when my class and my sex would have been denied a place within it.” She suggested the intimidation was “not accidental”. It scares off outsiders, much as Oxford did Hill. And so Britain wastes talent. The Sutton Trust reports that just 7 per cent of Britons are privately educated, but 39 per cent of those in leading professions are. Most are men. Yet even these lucky winners rarely maximise their talent. To borrow a line from US writer John Scalzi, being a privately educated British man is like playing the computer game of life with “the lowest difficulty setting there is”. Consequently, these men can suffer from high self-esteem or get lazy. Think of Johnson’s own teenaged brush with Richard III. Playing the king at Eton, writes Purnell, “he omitted to learn the lines so he had them pasted behind various pillars”. It’s less funny now he’s prime minister. In next month’s election, Britain must choose between two underwhelming, privately educated male party leaders. Prince Andrew’s hapless, immoral TV interview about Jeffrey Epstein was another shout from this select class. Despite my personal interest in white middle-aged men remaining over-represented, I suspect the UK needs more Fiona Hills.