Analysis
Profiting from crisis
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- Written by Cecilia Olivet and Pia Eberhardt/TNI
Corporations, backed by lawyers, use international investment agreements to scavenge for profits by suing Europe’s crisis countries. While speculators making risky investments are protected, ordinary people have no such protection and – through harsh austerity policies – are being stripped of basic social rights.
A must-read report on the power of corporations
European Parliament votes to pierce secrecy of trusts in anti-money laundering bill
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- Written by Nikolaj Nielsen/EUObserver
A draft bill designed to crack down on money laundering and fraud was backed by a vast majority of MEPs in Strasbourg on Tuesday (11 March).
With only 30 MEPs opposed, the anti-money laundering bill requires companies, trusts and foundations to list the names of people who own them in inter-connected public registers set up in each member state.
Read more: European Parliament votes to pierce secrecy of trusts in anti-money laundering bill
Understanding the relationship between corruption and illicit financial flows
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- Written by Ann Hollingshead/GFI
In many ways, both illicit financial flows and corruption are undefined and relative. For that reason, they’re both notoriously difficult to measure. The difficulty in measuring them in the first place may be part of the ambiguity surrounding their connection. Ambiguity aside, however, these concepts are highly interrelated. Here’s how.
Read more: Understanding the relationship between corruption and illicit financial flows
Debt is back in developing countries
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- Written by Bodo Ellmers/Eurodad
The World Bank’s 2014 International Debt Statistics report, released on February 12, unveiled a worrying new trend. In 2012, the last year covered by the report, all relevant debt indicators worsened – reversing the essentially uninterrupted trend of improvement since the early 2000s. Although developing country debt levels remain low when compared with their historical levels and with crisis struck countries in the global north, in the absence of sufficient other sources of income, developing country governments increasingly turned to issuing large volumes of sovereign bonds to be sold on private capital markets. The boom in sovereign bond issuance poses severe challenges for the international financial architecture, which is not well equipped to restructure this category of debt if needed.
Corporate influence in the post-2015 process
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- Written by Global Policy Forum/Brot fuer die Welt/Misereor
As Global Social Justice already noted when analyzing the first report of the Open Working-Group of the UN on sustainable development goals, the influence of corporations is becoming more and more significant.
Read this timely and important report on the corporate influence in the post-2015 process. This is a major part of the neoliberal agenda.
Is the 'European social model' in danger?
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- Written by ILO
“The European Social Model has been subjected to stress and unprecedented challenges - and it's still facing these huge challenges”, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder stated at the opening of the joint ILO-EU conference on 'The European Social Model in times of Economic Crisis and Austerity Policies'.
European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion László Andor stressed that "our social model is struggling, and in some parts of the EU often failing to fulfill its mission”.
(executive summary of the book on this topic)
Tsetse flies, spirit mediums and Western “science” of development
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- Written by Yash Tandon
In the 1980s and 1990s, I was working as a rural development "expert" in north Zimbabwe bordering Zambia - an area called “Lower Guruve”, so called because it was on the lower part of a 1000 meter escarpment which separates the Zambezi Valley from the rest of Zimbabwe. Human settlements have taken place around the relatively fertile areas below the escarpment and along the valleys of rivers flowing through the area right up to the mighty River Zambezi that runs through Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The colonial government had damned the Zambezi River and had created one of the world's largest artificial lakes - Lake Kariba. Traditionally, people had lived off the resources of the river and the forest. There was plenty of food. People lived off fish, kudus, buffaloes and other wild life and fruits. But after the dam was built, they were uprooted and removed from around the Lake and pushed further south towards the escarpment. They were thus denied access to fish and wild life - physically and by law. These were now reserved for tourists from the West who came to the Zambezi for fishing and hunting.
Read more: Tsetse flies, spirit mediums and Western “science” of development
Increasing the Minimum Wage Can Actually Create Jobs—If It’s Enforced
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- Written by Polly Cleveland's ZSpace
Back when I first studied economics, we “proved” in class that a minimum wage causes unemployment. You just draw supply and demand curves for labor, add a horizontal line for a wage above the “market clearing” competitive equilibrium wage, and—bingo!—a gap appears between labor supply and labor demand. Q.E.D.
Read more: Increasing the Minimum Wage Can Actually Create Jobs—If It’s Enforced
IMF Conditionality and its discontents
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- Written by Bretton Woods Project
Popular resistance to the IMF’s role and influence appears to be growing in significance. A December study published by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University and German political foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, World Protests 2006-2013, found that of the 843 protests examined in 87 countries, the IMF was a target of 168 protests overall, 20 per cent of the total. The report reveals that hostility to the Fund is not restricted to richer or poorer countries; 25 per cent of IMF protests occurred in high-income countries and 24 per cent took place in low-income countries. The study found that where the IMF is targeted, it is “for promoting a ‘new Washington Consensus’ that favours the interests of corporations, wealthy investors and the financial sector”.
Africa and GM crops
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- Written by John Vidal/The Guardian
Africa is expected to be the next target of GM food companies, as European scientists and policymakers travel to Ethiopia to boost the prospect of growing more of the controversial crops on the continent.
