Analysis
Chinese Capital Flows
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- Written by GFI/The Economist
IS CAPITAL fleeing China? The recent crackdown on official corruption might suggest that fat cats are busy whisking their money out of the country to avoid scrutiny. That impression is strengthened by the apparently endless flow of Chinese money into luxury goods, penthouses and other trophies in London, New York and Paris.
Lots of money is undoubtedly leaving China, despite the country’s strict currency controls. However, a close look at the official figures suggests that, on balance, more hot money (meaning capital flows other than foreign direct investment, both above board and under the table) has been flowing in (see chart).
The Inequality Nightmare
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- Written by Donald Kaberuka
“The poor cannot sleep, because they are hungry,” the Nigerian economist Sam Aluko famously said in 1999, “and the rich cannot sleep, because the poor are awake and hungry.” We are all affected by deep disparities of income and wealth, because the political and economic system on which our prosperity depends cannot continue enriching some while it impoverishes others.
The War on Poverty at 50 (US)
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- Written by Sue Sturgis/ZSpace
Date on which President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty in the United States: 1/8/1964
Percent of Americans who were living in poverty at that time: 19
Percent living in poverty in 1969: 12.1
Percent living in poverty today: 15
Trading Away Human Rights
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- Written by O. De Schutter & K. Cordes
Trade negotiators in Singapore recently failed to finalize a deal on the long-awaited Trans-Pacific Partnership; they will soon have another chance to complete what would be the world’s largest regional free-trade agreement. But, given serious concerns that the TPP will fail to consider important human-rights implications, that is no cause for celebration.
Human Rights and The World Bank
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- Written by G.A. Sarfaty & J. Winegar
Established in 1944, the World Bank has become the largest lender to developing countries, lending more than $20 billion per year. The Bank is probably the most well-known symbol of economic globalization, capitalism and Western imperialism. Its more than ten thousand employees are engaged in the Bank’s official mission of poverty reduction, which it carries out primarily through development lending. Its legitimacy depends on fulfillment of the mission, which is inextricably linked to human rights.
A new way to look at the climate crisis
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- Written by Kjell Kuehne
We are all trying to find a way out of the climate crisis. But we seem to be trapped in a fossil world where burning fossil fuels is good and economic growth is the measure of things. I would like to propose a simple goal for our climate movement:
Let's shut down all coal mines, oil and gas wells in our lifetimes, and guarantee the right to life.
That is the one responsibility that we, as a climate movement have. You can call it "ending the fossil age", "putting fossil technologies into the museum", "the global energy transition", "zero emissions" or "leaving it in the ground". But I find it helpful to focus on shutting down the mines and wells that we have in our countries and that feed our countries.
Critics target World Bank poverty projects
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- Written by Global Post
Watchdog groups question the bank’s new plan to give the private sector a central role.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has set some very ambitious, specific goals for his institution: He aims to promote income growth among the bottom 40 percent of the world's population and reduce extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030.
To achieve that, he’s expanding the role of the bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, or IFC, as set out in a new long-term strategy approved in October.
The private sector has a key role in the fight to end extreme poverty, Kim argues.
Talkin' 'bout a global revolution
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- Written by Adam Parsons/Sharing the World's Resources
As the global financial crisis now enters its seventh year, it is time to start asking difficult questions about the right priorities for popular protest if we want to realise a truly united voice of the world’s people. There can be no genuine revolution in a moral or global sense until the critical needs of the extreme poor are prioritised and upheld, which will require mass mobilisations in the streets like we have never seen before.
At the onset of 2014, many people are now anticipating the prospect of a ‘global revolution’. The intense revolutionary fervour of 2011 may have dissipated in North America and much of Western Europe in the past couple of years, but a new geography of protest continues to shift and transmute in different countries and world regions - the million people on the streets of Brazil in June last year; the earlier defence of the commons in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park; the indigenous uprising and student protests across Canada; the Ukraine demonstrations that are still under way.
World Protests 2006-2013
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- Written by I. Ortiz, S. Burke, M. Berrada, H. Cortès
Mapping exercise of hundreds of social protests all over the world, covering 87 countries and looking at movements' grievances, achievements and repression. Impressive.
Measuring OECD Responses to Illicit Financial Flows from developing countries
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Fascinating report on how rich countries are failing to effectively tackle illicit financial flows ...
