Articles
TPP Risks and TTIP Opportunities
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, if completed and implemented, will cover a large portion of global trade and investment, but they will exclude the majority of developing countries. American and European negotiators also want these deals to be “gold standard” agreements that establish the new rules of trade for a new century. The biggest concern arising from these mega-regional agreements is that they will undermine the rules-based multilateral trading system. More immediately, preferential trade arrangements divert trade from outsiders and the new or expanded rules that US and EU negotiators want to establish as precedents for the global system will not always be optimal for poorer countries.
Role of the West in African Corruption
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They say it takes two to tango and yet the Western world has exonerated itself in the role it plays concerning corruption in Africa.
Together with war and poverty, 'corrupt Africa' has become a favourite cliché of Western writers when describing the desperation of the continent.
Even lauded organisations like Transparency International (TI) which publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is usually silent on the role the Western world plays in corruption in Africa.
Despite TI publishing the CPIs since 1995 ranking countries by their perceived levels of corruption as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys, very little is said about countries that keep looted money from Africa.
TI also publishes the Global Corruption Barometer, which ranks countries by corruption levels using direct surveys instead of perceived expert opinions.
Understandably, though a lean choir of critics find corruption to be a serious ill in developing countries, they feel this pardonable sin compares to failure to lump the connivance of countries like Switzerland.
The silence to condemn Western countries that connive with looters in Africa can be likened to Western countries' earlier support of the apartheid regime and slavery.
Make it count: why and how to track aid for domestic resource mobilisation
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Domestic revenue – the funds that governments raise through tax and other finance streams – will be a key driving force behind implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet many of the countries facing the greatest challenge in meeting the SDGs are those where domestic revenues are lowest (see chapter 3 of our 2015 Investments to End Poverty report). Some of the key issues the international community has been discussing are how best to support countries to increase their revenue mobilisation in progressive and sustainable ways and the role of aid for domestic revenue mobilisation (aid for DRM).
Read more: Make it count: why and how to track aid for domestic resource mobilisation
Brazen Heist of Millions puts Focus on the Philippines
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It is a financial whodunit for the digital era: More than $80 million of Bangladesh’s money vanished last month after it was electronically transferred out of that country’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As officials around the world search for the money and place blame, the caper is highlighting what looks like a weak point in the global financial system that allowed the money to get by regulators: the murky banking system of the Philippines.
Read more: Brazen Heist of Millions puts Focus on the Philippines
The Assets of the Ultrarich come closer to Earth
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After years of dizzying appreciation, the values of luxury assets are plateauing and in some cases plunging.
Last year, a Manhattan penthouse sold for $100 million and another went into contract for $200 million. Christie’s auctioned Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” for $179 million, and Sotheby’s sold the 12-carat Blue Moon of Josephine diamond for $48.4 million. A vintage Jaguar sold for $13.2 million.
For the ultrawealthy, 2015 was an embarrassment of riches.
But after years of dizzying appreciation, the values of luxury assets are plateauing and in some cases plunging. Volumes have shrunk, prices are being cut and some auction lots are going unsold.
