Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2022
The Great Gatsby Curve
Monday, January 31, 2022
The Precariat Society I ARTE.tv Documentary
Jan 31, 2022 • A third of Europeans live in economic insecurity: Zero hours contracts, the fear of redundancy and stagnating wages have brought more and more people into poverty and precariousness and provided fertile conditions for the political extremes.
With contributions from geographer Christophe Guilluy, economist Guy Standing, and from people struggling to make ends meet across Europe, this documentary focuses on the new working poor, the precariat.
The Precariat Society I ARTE.tv Documentary
Available until the 17/04/2022
With contributions from geographer Christophe Guilluy, economist Guy Standing, and from people struggling to make ends meet across Europe, this documentary focuses on the new working poor, the precariat.
The Precariat Society I ARTE.tv Documentary
Available until the 17/04/2022
Sunday, May 21, 2017
To Trump, Human Rights Concerns Are Often a Barrier to Trade
As he said that at a news conference, Mr. Tillerson was standing next to the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, who represents a government that does not guarantee free speech or many other rights. When Mr. Tillerson turned to leave, a reporter asked if he had anything to say about human rights in Saudi Arabia. The secretary departed without answering.
President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia underscored the calculation he and his foreign policy advisers have made when it comes to questions of human rights around the world.
Mr. Trump and his team made clear they are willing to publicly overlook repression in places like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states whose leaders are meeting here this weekend — as long as they are allies in areas the president considers more important, namely security and economics. » | Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear | Saturday, May 20, 2017
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
THE INDEPENDENT: The international economy is on the brink of a deep new economic crisis that could cost millions of jobs around the globe and trigger mass social unrest, the world's most powerful nations were warned yesterday.
As the leaders of the G20 countries prepare for emergency talks on averting a return to worldwide recession, the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO) issued a grim forecast of the social effects of the continuing economic crisis.
The UN agency warned that it could take until 2016 for global employment to return to the levels of three years ago – and that anger could erupt on the streets of Europe and other continents as a result.
The economic gloom was exacerbated yesterday by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's surprise announcement that his country would hold a referendum on the European debt deal that was struck last week. The vote could put the tortuously conceived package in jeopardy.
The Greek Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, said the announcement was prompted by popular discontent at the terms of the deal. » | NIGEL MORRIS, BEN CHU | Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Who is going to come out of the economic crisis stronger and with the whip hand - China or America, asks Niall Ferguson.
Two years ago, economist Moritz Schularick and I coined the word "Chimerica" to describe what we saw as the key relationship in the then-booming global economy: China plus America. Cheap Chinese labour was making US corporations highly profitable. Spendthrift American consumers, in turn, were keeping Chinese corporations busy with export orders. And the Chinese monetary authorities were converting export surpluses into dollar denominated reserves with the aim of preventing their own currency from appreciating. The unintended consequence was a multi-billion dollar credit line to the United States, financing America's deficit at rock-bottom rates.
It was those low long-term rates – combined with monetary policy errors by the Fed, excessive bank leverage and reckless financial engineering – that inflated the American property bubble, the bursting of which triggered this crisis.
To simplify the story, think of an unhappy marriage in which one partner does all the saving, while the other does all the spending. (We all know at least one couple like that.) But then the partner with the retail therapy habit maxes out on his/her credit cards. At the same time, the parsimonious partner finds her/his job under threat. What previously was a stable relationship is suddenly on the rocks.
In February, the People's Daily acknowledged the "global importance and influence" of Chimerica, but warned of an impending "period of chillness". Could this be one of those great turning points in history, when the balance of power tilts decisively away from an established power and towards a rising challenger? It is possible. Financial crises often accelerate the gradual shifting of the geopolitical tectonic plates; they are to history what earthquakes are to geology. >>> By Niall Ferguson | Monday, June 01, 2009
Niall Ferguson's 'The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World' is published in paperback by Penguin this week
Thursday, April 23, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Gordon Brown has been accused of launching a "class war" against Middle Britain as he introduced a new 50 per cent top rate of tax to make the wealthy pay for the catastrophic state of public finances.
Casting aside more than a decade of New Labour ideology, the government broke a key election manifesto promise by announcing an increase in income tax for those earning more than £150,000.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, also announced that the highest earners will lose valuable tax breaks on pension savings, as part of a package of measures that will see the tax grab from high earners raising up to £5.5 billion a year - an average of £18,333 annually per person.
The surprise new measures - which mean Britain will have the highest top rate of any major economy in the developed world - came as Mr Darling was forced to lay bare the true extent of Britain's levels of borrowing in his Budget.
In the worst economic forecast since the Second World War, he said he planned to borrow another £700 billion over the next five years, taking the national debt to £1.4 trillion.
Mr Brown and Mr Darling were accused of indulging in party politics at a time of national crisis by seeking to exploit the divide the Tories' on tax policy.
It was also suggested that the Prime Minister was returning to Old Labour policies designed to shore up Labour's core vote ahead of an election next year that he is on course to lose.
Labour MPs in the party's heartlands will welcome the move and ministers will argue that taxing those on very high salaries is popular among many voters.
But in raising the top rate of tax the government risk alienating the middle class voters that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997. >>> By Andrew Porter, Political Editor | Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
THE GUARDIAN: Nine of the top 10 recipients of controversial bonuses at the insurer AIG have pledged to hand back the money following a public and political outcry over multimillion-dollar rewards at the crisis-stricken company.
New York state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, revealed last night that most of the biggest winners from a controversial "retention scheme" at AIG have succumbed to pressure by forsaking their awards.
Of those working at AIG's financial products division, which ran up vast losses on toxic derivatives, 15 of the 20 top bonus winners are giving back the money.
Cuomo said: "A number of them have risen to the occasion and I applaud them."
The money being returned amounts to $30m out of the bonus scheme's total payout of $165m. Cuomo, speaking on a conference call, revealed that about $80m of the total went to Americans. Some of the rest is likely to have gone to British staff at AIG's key financial products office in London.
He expressed a hope that more bonuses would be returned and said he expected his office to recoup about $80m. >>> Andrew Clark in New York | Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
BBC: Almost exactly 100 years ago at 4.45 in the morning of a November day on the corner of Madison and 35th Street in New York a group of some 50 or so exhausted men stumbled out into the street.
Some had not slept for days.
Behind them, on the other side of the monumental brass doors that closed behind them, they left a piece of paper which pledged them collectively to a loan of some $25m - about $10bn (£5bn) in today's money.
Beside it stood a large gentleman with a walrus moustache, who had forced them into the deal which ended a two-week financial panic that had come close to destroying New York's financial system. That man was J Pierpont Morgan.
From 1903 to 1906 the global economy had boomed and the Dow Jones had doubled.
But the global supply of gold to which all hard currency was pegged had not kept pace, and hard cash was increasingly scarce.
A hundred years later our credit squeeze had its genesis in the infamous sub-prime mortgage market of the US. 100 years after the 1907 credit crunch (more) By Jamie Robertson
Financial crises: Lessons from history By Steve Schifferes
Mark Alexander
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
BBC: Fifty-seven Iranian economists have launched a scathing attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
They have accused his government of ignoring the basics of economics.
The university professors say mismanagement is inflicting a huge cost on the economy, the brunt of which will be borne by people with modest means.
This comes as the price of housing has almost doubled in the last year and food is getting more expensive by the week in Iran.
In an open letter to the media, the economists warned that the government of Mr Ahmadinejad had been making hasty and unscientific decisions, and that if this continued Iran would be pushed into a complex economic crisis.
They say instead of analysing the situation, the government just argues official statistics are wrong, and presents its own questionable figures to say the economy is prospering. Economists attack Iran policies (more) By Frances Harrison
Mark Alexander
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