http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3J43BCLMC&live=true Avenue of the Americas: Aloha! Now go home Published: May 11 2001 03:43GMT | Last Updated: May 11 2001 03:44GMT
Not since Hawaii Five-O graced our television screens in the 1970s has the Honolulu Police Department attracted this much attention.
The department's warnings that the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Honolulu this week would be disrupted by thousands of possibly violent protesters is beginning to look somewhat overdone.
Led by a small coterie of Hawaiian nationalists - noisily demanding independence for America's 50th state - a group of about 400 protesters gathered outside the town's conference centre chanting "ADB it's time to go" and "No Aloha to the ADB".
A somewhat bemused Taduo Chino, president of the ADB, emerged from the conference centre to receive a petition from the protesters and was greeted with multicoloured banners demanding a 16-hour working week, the closure of Wal-Mart shopping stores and a stop to cultural genocide.
Conscious of the potential for such gatherings to provoke trouble after the anti-World Trade Organisation demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and more recent kerfuffles in Davos, Prague and Quebec City, the ADB wisely changed the venue of this year's conference from Seattle to Honolulu.
With hindsight, the bank's hunch that protesters might not be able to afford the air fare looks prescient.
Meanwhile, Honolulu's police force has an extra $500,000 worth of riot equipment on its books.
It seems that they know just what it takes to make a petition succeed.
Rob who?
The world's big industrialised powers have been on tenterhooks waiting to see whether conservatives in Washington had persuaded President George W. Bush to withdraw support for an international drive to crack down on tax havens.
On Thursday, Paul O'Neill, Treasury secretary, at last spoke on the matter.
Or, at least, that was what he was intended to do in a column in the Washington Times.
The newspaper, known for its ultra-conservative leanings and readership, seemed the ideal place to broadcast the US's withdrawal of support for the parts of the plan that did not sit well with its Republican opponents.
Somehow, though, things got a bit tangled along the way and the piece was published under the name of Rob Nichols, a lowly deputy assistant secretary, and not his boss.
In the article, the author said he had had an opportunity to "re-evaluate" the US participation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development working group that targets "harmful tax practices" and concluded that "in its current form, the project is too broad and it is not in line with this administration's tax and economic priorities".
For several hours, confusion reigned in Europe's capitals.
Who was this Nichols fellow who claimed to have schmoozed with G7 finance ministers? What's more, who cared what he thought?
Later, the intended author's identity was made clear - but only after anxious calls to Washington and a hastily issued public statement from the Treasury that corrected the attribution.
Hindsight
Now that the European Central Bank has finally cut interest rates, the pundits are lining up to say that the move wasn't such a surprise to them after all.
Some point to a supposed hint given earlier this week by Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an Italian ECB board member.
He suggested that the US economic slowdown might affect the euro-zone more than had initially been expected.
Others say it was Otmar Issing, the ECB chief economist, who gave a clue on May 3 when he said the medium-term outlook for price stability had improved.
But those with the longest memories recall what Wim Duisenberg, the ECB president, said way back in December 1998, when the ECB co-ordinated a surprise Europe-wide interest cut less than a month before the launch of the euro.
"As regards the so-called lack of transparency, don't you mean rather that it [the rate cut] was so totally unexpected by the markets and the media?" Duisenberg said cheerfully at that time. "We are rather pleased about the unexpectedness of the move."
To judge from his broad smiles in front of the cameras on Thursday, he was no less pleased about catching everyone out this time.
One question remains, though.
If he is enjoying his job so much, will he really want to keep his promise, so reluctantly given in 1998, to retire next year only halfway through his eight-year term?