On Pirates and Debts
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- Category: Analysis
On what Greece can learn from the Argentinean debt crisis and the way the IMF (and the troika) are working
On October 1st 2012 ‘pirates’ snatched the beautiful Libertad, the Argentinean training frigate, when it arrived in Ghana. This is only one asset Argentina’s creditors are trying to get hold on after its debt default of 2001.
But wasn’t Argentina constantly presented as a model for Greece to follow? Did many economists not say that debt-ridden Greece should also default and in this way get rid of all its debts?
Global Wage Report 2012:13
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- Written by ILO
- Category: Documents
Interesting new report showing the growing disparities in the world and the deteriorating situation of workers
The World Bank and Social Protection
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- Category: Analysis
The World Bank plays a major role in the global spreading of new ideas and discourses. While many people might think the UN, UNDP or the ILO have more interesting things to say on development, more often than not, it is the World Bank which succeeds in promoting anew ‘order of discourse’.
In 1990, it was the World Bank which put poverty on the international agenda. While the ‘human development’ concept of UNDP was launched in that same year, five years later UNDP also adopted the priority of reducing extreme poverty.
In 2000, the World Bank proposed a strategic framework for social protection, and while this ‘risk management’ strategy did not have immediate success, it now has been re-launched and probably will influence the new way of thinking on social protection.
The reasons for this success are quite simple. The World Bank has willing media for its economic (neoliberal) messages, and it has huge resources to implement its ideas in countries all over the world.
In June, the ILO adopted a Resolution on a Social Protection Floor, which it is now trying to implement. The European Commission published in 2011 its Development Report on Social Protection, and in 2012 a Communication for a social protection strategy in its development cooperation policies[1].
What exactly does the World Bank propose?[2]
Global Governance of Health and the Requirements of Human Rights
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- Written by Gorik Ooms and Rachel Hammonds
- Category: Analysis
“…….As globalisation increases interdependence health becomes a subject of global governance, posing new challenges to the present global governance mechanisms.
The authors explore two areas in which new mechanisms of global governance of health have emerged in the first decade of the 21st century: firstly, international assistance to finance healthcare and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; and secondly, the Social Protection Floor which aims to ensure basic social guarantees for all.
Published in Global Policy - Volum 3, Issue 4, November 2012
Read: http://bit.ly/QZudOE
Dances of death: macabre mirrors of an unequal society
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- Written by Johan Pieter Mackenbach, Rolf Paul Dreier
- Category: Analysis
“…..Between 1400 and 1800, Dances of Death were a popular art form depicting a metaphorical encounter between Death and representatives of a stratified human society. We review the thematic development of Dances of Death and study the development of social critique.
Read: http://bit.ly/Y2zGHb
Read more: Dances of death: macabre mirrors of an unequal society
Aidwatch 2012
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- Written by Concord
- Category: Documents
The Aidwatch Special Report assesses the Busan Partnership agreement and looks at the effectiveness of EU development cooperation
HEALTH: NOT CHARITY, NOT MERCHANDISE: A HUMAN RIGHT. (part 1 of 2)
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- Written by Claudio Schuftan
- Category: Analysis
-Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. (Martin Luther King)
-Health is not a matter of merely personal interest, but a universal concern for which we all share some responsibility. (Dalai Lama)
-When the right to health is debated in national elections, we know this is an issue whose time has come. (Mary Robinson and Andrew Clapham)
The ultimate purpose of health systems is the health of the population; it cannot be anything other…and this we have to repeat to ourselves every day and have to dream it every night. (A. C. Laurell)
Read more: HEALTH: NOT CHARITY, NOT MERCHANDISE: A HUMAN RIGHT. (part 1 of...
A scheme designed to net trillions from global tax havens is being scuppered
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- Written by Nicholas Shaxson (The Giuardian)
- Category: Analysis
Switzerland and other offshore specialists are doing their best to frustrate international transparency in taxation
The world is seeing the first stirrings of an emerging new architecture of global transparency in taxation which could, if pushed forwards, help governments for the first time raise serious revenues from the estimated $21-32 trillion sitting offshore.
Read more: A scheme designed to net trillions from global tax havens is being scuppered
Does Third World Growth hurt First World Prosperity?
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- Written by Paul Krugman
- Category: Analysis
As the fears of Japan's economic prowess fade, economic writers and corporate executives foresee a new threat: Third World economic growth. In this article, Stanford economist Paul Krugman argues that such fears about the impact of Third World competition are questionable in theory and flatly rejected by the data.
Read more: Does Third World Growth hurt First World Prosperity?
A crisis of Solidarity
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- Category: Analysis
Due to technical problems the monthly newsletter could not be sent to all usual readers. Apologies for this. In return, herewith the brief note that accompanied it.
It is just one more crisis to add to the long list of financial, economic, social, political, environmental crises we are living in.
What is happening?
On the one hand, countries that have built, fifty years ago, a political and economic union with solidarity mechanisms – however limited they were – between rich and poor countries, rich and poor regions, are now fighting in order to avoid payments to the budget of the European Union. The EU budget barely amounts to 1 % of national GDPs, but for some countries, it is too much. The US federal budget amounts to 23 % of its GDP.
Progress on IMF Conditionality
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- Written by Iolanda Fresnillo - Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
A first reading of the press statements and overview paper from the IMF’s review of conditionality, completed in September 2012 might give the impression that the IMF has made a 180 degree turn in its conditionality policy, one of the most controversial aspects of the Fund’s role. However, the transformation doesn’t seem as complete as the IMF argues. Harmful conditions are still being imposed, not only to developing countries, but also in Europe, and the IMF claim to have increased its focus on poverty reduction and social protection seems uneven, both throughout countries and time. Has the IMF really change the way it sees and implements conditionality?
