Tag Archives: countries

The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

by MollieUrquhart Posted on March 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I post here periodically about declining European inflation and rising European unemployment, and today Paul Krugman draws our attention to an IMF blog post about the threat of actual deflation in Europe. The bottom line is that there’s no actual deflation—yet—in most of Europe, but there is in three countries, and there’s persistently low inflation across the continent:

Although inflation—headline and core—has fallen and stayed well below the ECB’s 2% price stability mandate, so far there is no sign of classic deflation, i.e., of widespread, self-feeding, price declines.
But even ultra low inflation—let us call it “lowflation”—can be problematic for the euro area as a whole and for financially stressed countries, where it implies higher real debt stocks and real interest rates, less relative price adjustment, and greater unemployment.
Along with Japan’s experience, which saw deflation worm itself into the system, this argues for a more pre-emptive approach by the ECB.

The chart on the right illustrates one of the big problems with “lowflation,” even if it doesn’t turn into outright deflation: the countries with the lowest inflation are also the ones with the highest debt levels and the biggest growth problems. They need to reduce wages relative to other countries, but with low inflation that’s very hard to do. It requires actual pay cuts, something that’s historically difficult, rather than simply freezing wages and allowing them to erode via inflation. As a result, it’s hard for their economies to recover, and that in turn makes it all but impossible to fix their debt problem. It’s a vicious spiral.

Krugman warns that without more aggressive policy from the European Central Bank, the EU risks following Japan into economic stagnation: “When people warn about Europe’s potential Japanification, they’re way behind the curve. Europe is already experiencing all the woes one associates with deflation, even though it’s only low inflation so far; and the human and social costs are, of course, far worse than Japan ever experienced.”

In related news, I’ll also draw your attention to China’s latest woes: “China’s leaders kept the growth target for their giant economy unchanged but signaled that they are more concerned than ever about reaching it, giving themselves the option of letting credit flow freely to keep from falling short.” In the long run, China’s slowdown was inevitable as wages rose and demographic realities intruded. But it’s bad news in the short term. With the economy still flat in the US; European recovery threatened by debt and deflation; Chinese growth getting harder to come by; and the developing world seemingly running out of steam—with all that happening at once, there aren’t very many bright spots in the global economic picture. At best, it looks like we have fairly gray times ahead of us. At worst—well, it might be worse.

This article is from: 

The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

Most big countries have climate laws

by BetseyStark Posted on February 28, 2014

Most big countries have climate laws

By

Shutterstock

It’s easy to get depressed about the lack of global progress in fighting climate change. But most large nations are at least taking some action.

GLOBE International, a London-based legislators’ group, surveyed climate- and energy-related laws and policies in 66 big countries, which together produce 88 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. It found that that 62 of the countries have a flagship climate law or regulation, 61 have laws promoting clean energy, and 54 have energy-efficiency laws. In all, there are 487 climate change–related laws or policies in the 66 countries — a sharp increase from decades past:

GLOBE InternationalClick to embiggen.

“Overall, we report substantive legislative progress [last year] in 8 of the 66 countries, which passed flagship legislation, and some positive advances in a further 19 countries,” the report notes. 

But GLOBE International President John Gummer, a climate adviser to the U.K. government, warns that much more action is needed: “We should be clear that the legislative response thus far is not yet sufficient to limit emissions at a level that would cause only a 2 degree Celsius rise in global average temperature, the agreed goal of the international community.”

The following map shows which countries have the most climate-related laws and policies. The light green color of the U.S. indicates that it lags behind global leaders on tackling global warming. But at least it’s ahead of Canada.

GLOBE InternationalClick to embiggen.


Source
The GLOBE Climate Legislation Study, fourth edition, GLOBE International

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Original article – 

Most big countries have climate laws

Posted in alo, Anchor, Dolphin, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Most big countries have climate laws

India plans world’s biggest solar project, but money is a hurdle

by LottiePonder Posted on February 10, 2014

India plans world’s biggest solar project, but money is a hurdle

By

Ashley Coates

The sun sets over the parched Indian state of Rajasthan, where the world’s biggest solar array is planned.

India has just 2,200 megawatts of grid-connected solar power — less than a quarter of the capacity in the U.S. But four years ago, the heavily coal-dependent country had only 18 megawatts, so it’s been quickly upping its game. 

And now it’s talking up plans to build the world’s biggest solar power plant in the desert-dominated state of Rajasthan, which abuts Pakistan’s border.

If built, the $4.4 billion solar array would cover an area larger than Manhattan and be capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity — an amount that Nature compared with the output of four nuclear power plants. It’s proposed for an area near a government salt-mining operation.

A half dozen state-owned companies last month signed a memorandum of understanding related to the project. Financing such a mammoth project, though, will not be easy, so India is preparing to turn to the World Bank for assistance. domain-B, an Indian business magazine, explains:

The ministry of new and renewable energy has submitted a proposal to the department of economic affairs (DEA) for approaching the World Bank for loan assistance of $500 million for implementation of the 750 MW first phase of the proposed 4000 MW ultra mega solar power project to be set up on the vacant land of Hindustan Salts Ltd at Sambhar, Rajasthan, at a total estimated cost of $1.09 billion.

The DEA is evaluating the proposal and once it is forwarded, the World Bank is likely to consider financing the project, minister of new and renewable energy Farooq Abdullah informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on Friday.

The World Bank decided last year to shift away from financing coal plants, so this big solar project should be right up its alley.

India has been a prickly negotiator during climate talks, frustrating other countries by stalling progress on emissions agreements. But at least it’s starting to walk the right walk on solar and wind at home.


Source
India to build world’s largest solar plant, Nature
World Bank loan sought for Rajasthan mega solar power project, domain-B

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

This article is from:  

India plans world’s biggest solar project, but money is a hurdle

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on India plans world’s biggest solar project, but money is a hurdle

Europe wimps out on climate and clean energy

by VeronicaHawks Posted on January 23, 2014

Europe wimps out on climate and clean energy

By

Shutterstock

The European Union has long been a leader in the battle against climate change, but it’s now shying away from the fight.

New goals proposed by the European Commission, the E.U.’s lawmaking body, fall far short of what’s needed, say many activists, scientists, and leaders of poor countries. The proposal calls for E.U. nations to pump out 40 percent less greenhouse gas pollution in 2030 than they did in 1990, up from the current goal of 32 percent. That might sound pretty good, but it’s not great. Bangladesh’s lead climate negotiator said the bloc of least developed countries had been hoping European nations would commit to a 65 percent reduction.

The E.U., mired in recession and jealous of the fracking boom in the U.S., is backing away not just from aggressive emissions goals but also from an ambitious renewable energy strategy. From The New York Times:

For years, Europe has tried to set the global standard for climate-change regulation, creating tough rules on emissions, mandating more use of renewable energy sources and arguably sacrificing some economic growth in the name of saving the planet.

But now even Europe seems to be hitting its environmentalist limits.

High energy costs, declining industrial competitiveness and a recognition that the economy is unlikely to rebound strongly any time soon are leading policy makers to begin easing up in their drive for more aggressive climate regulation.

On Wednesday, the European Union proposed an end to binding national targets for renewable energy production after 2020. Instead, it substituted an overall European goal that is likely to be much harder to enforce.

It also decided against proposing laws on environmental damage and safety during the extraction of shale gas by a controversial drilling process known as fracking. It opted instead for a series of minimum principles it said it would monitor.

The looser rules on clean energy would clear the way for the U.K. and other countries to build nuclear power plants instead of new renewable energy projects.

The proposal could also make it easier for high-carbon fuels like tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to make their way into European countries.

E.U. officials say the proposal is the best compromise they could come up with. Utilities and heavy industry had been pushing for a lower greenhouse gas cut of 35 percent by 2030. Even this current plan won’t have an easy time getting approval from the E.U.’s 28 member states.

And European countries are still way ahead of the U.S., Canada, Australia, and pretty much the whole rest of the planet.

The U.N. climate chief put a happy spin on the E.U. proposal, saying it helps lay the groundwork for a new international climate treaty that is supposed to be negotiated in Paris in 2015:

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Visit site:  

Europe wimps out on climate and clean energy

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Europe wimps out on climate and clean energy

Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

by s02xc3x Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday I wrote about problems with the mortgage finance market, which are mostly due to the fact that private lenders aren’t interested in funding 30-year fixed-rate mortgages on their own. There’s just too much risk. This means that if we want the mortgage market to revive, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to start guaranteeing these mortgages again in the same volumes they used to.

One obvious response to this is that the 30-year fixed mortgage wasn’t handed down on stone tablets from Mt. Sinai. It was an invention of the New Deal. Other countries get by just fine without them, and so can we. We should just get the government out of the mortgage market entirely and let banks make whatever kinds of loans they want.

We could do that. But it’s well to keep in mind that although other countries might not have outfits like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they do have plenty of government regulation of the mortgage loan market. If you’re curious about how mortgages work outside the US, Michael Hiltzik provides a useful rundown of Canada here. Other countries work differently, but the principle is the same: there’s always supervision of some kind. Getting rid of Fannie and Freddie is a defensible option, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of government regulation. You’ll just end up with different government regulation.

Read more:

Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Everywhere in the World, Governments Heavily Regulate the Home Mortgage Business

Here’s the Worst Part of the Target Data Breach

by yq7izr Posted on December 22, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

You know what the most infuriating part of the massive data breach at Target is? This:

Over the last decade, most countries have moved toward using credit cards that carry information on embeddable microchips rather than magnetic strips. The additional encryption on so-called smart cards has made the kind of brazen data thefts suffered by Target almost impossible to pull off in most other countries.

Because the U.S. is one of the few places yet to widely deploy such technology, the nation has increasingly become the focus of hackers seeking to steal such information. The stolen data can easily be turned into phony credit cards that are sold on black markets around the world.

There’s really no excuse for this. The technology to avoid this kind of hacking is available, and it’s been in real-world use for many years. Every bank and every merchant in American knows how to implement it. But it would cost a bit of money, so they don’t. And who pays the price? Not the banks:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Saturday told debit-card holders who shopped at Target during a 20-day data breach that the bank would be limiting cash withdrawals to $100 and putting on a $300 daily-purchasing cap, a move that shows how banks will try to limit exposure to potential fraud.

In a letter to debit card holders posted on its website, the bank said such limitations on spending would be temporary while it plans to reissue cards. The spending restrictions don’t affect credit card users, the bank said.

That’s right: it’s you who pays the price. Oh, these breaches are a pain in the ass for card-issuing banks and for Target itself, and it will end up costing them some money. But mainly it’s a pain in the ass for consumers. And if this breach causes you to be a victim of identity theft, you can be sure that neither Target nor your bank nor your credit rating agency will give you so much as the time of day. It’ll be up to you to reclaim your life even though it wasn’t your fault in any way. It’s a disgrace.

Credit – 

Here’s the Worst Part of the Target Data Breach

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the Worst Part of the Target Data Breach

American Education: It’s Both Better and Worse Than You Think

by SheilaGellert Posted on December 16, 2013

Mother Jones

On Friday I excerpted an interview with M. Night Shyamalan in which he said that America practices “education apartheid.” If you look at just white kids, he said, “We beat everyone. Our white kids are getting taught the best public-school education on the planet. Those are the facts.”

Bob Somerby calls this “absurdly inaccurate,” and he has a point. Shyamalan is exaggerating, and I sloppily let it pass because I wanted to address what I thought was his primary point. So allow me to revise and expand a bit. Not as an excuse for a hurried post, but just to explain how I view this stuff.

For starters, when I look at international test scores, the first thing I usually do is toss out the scores from most Asian countries. Don’t worry: I don’t expect anyone else to do this, and I’m not claiming that any fair assessment should throw them out. But frankly, I just don’t care how well South Korea does, because I know how they do it. They do it by making their kids’ lives a living hell, schooling them for a dozen hours a day or more and then ruining their lives based on a single day or two of testing when they’re 17. As a result, they get high test scores. But who cares? I think we all know that you can get high test scores by cramming your brains out like that. It tells us nothing, and I very much doubt that it actually produces better-educated adults in the long run. It merely produces kids who can produce eye-popping standardized test scores at age 17.

So I toss out the fabled Asian miracle countries. Then I look at the rest. Do American kids outscore everyone else? Nope. Somerby is right about that. But that’s missing the forest for the trees. Let’s all agree that Shyamalan is both cherry picking a bit and inflating his claims. Two Pinocchios for Shyamalan! Instead, let’s just make the more accurate claim: If you compare America’s white kids to those of most other countries—aggregating all the evidence, not just one or two data points—they do pretty well. Not spectacularly well, but pretty well. I think a fair observer would conclude that these kids were getting a pretty good education. Probably as good or better than most other countries in the world.

And that claim, even though it’s more modest, is important. It means that American education isn’t, either philosophically or foundationally, a disaster area. Nor is it in decline. For most American children, it works fine and it doesn’t need radical changes. Rather, there’s a small subset of American children who have been badly treated for centuries and continues to suffer from this. We do a lousy job of educating them, but it’s not because we don’t know how to educate. We’ve just never been willing to expend the (very substantial) effort it would take to help them catch up.

Anyone who disagrees with this conclusion is welcome to argue about it. But I think it’s one of the paramount facts about education in America. If you ignore it, your diagnosis of our educational problems is almost certain to be badly wrong. In the end, the fact that Shyamalan recognizes this so forthrightly strikes me as more important than the fact that he gets a little too far over his skis when he talks about it.

As for Shyamalan’s proposed five-point plan to fix things, I’ll repeat that I don’t think they’re silver bullets or that they’re unassailable. But as a group, they struck me as pretty reasonable compared to most of the educational reforms that dominate our conversation. For that reason, I welcome his debut into the ed wars.

This article:  

American Education: It’s Both Better and Worse Than You Think

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on American Education: It’s Both Better and Worse Than You Think

M. Night Shyamalan Steps Into the Education Wars

by Nomi Steen Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This is kind of weird. M. Night Shyamalan has apparently gotten a little bored with making movies, and has instead spent the past year or so writing a book. About education. And unlike other folks who parachute into the ed debates with the usual silver bullets (more charter schools! higher standards! fewer teachers unions!), he actually diagnoses the problem correctly:

You know how everyone says America is behind in education, compared to all the countries? Technically, right now, we’re a little bit behind Poland and a little bit ahead of Liechtenstein, right? So that’s where we land in the list, right? So that’s actually not the truth. The truth is actually bizarrely black and white, literally, which is, if you pulled out the inner-city schools — just pull out the inner-city, low-income schools, just pull that group out of the United States, put them to the side — and just took every other public school in the United States, we lead the world in public-school education by a lot.

And what’s interesting is, we always think about Finland, right? Well, Finland, obviously, is mainly white kids, right? They teach their white kids really well. But guess what, we teach our white kids even better. We beat everyone. Our white kids are getting taught the best public-school education on the planet. Those are the facts.

This is true. If you compare American white kids to, say, Finnish or Polish or German white kids, we do just as well. But we do an execrable job of teaching our black and Hispanic kids. In ed conversations, this usually gets referred to as the “achievement gap”—a deliberately watery term that Shyamalan has no use for. He calls it “education apartheid,” and what it means is that our schools qua schools are basically fine. It’s mostly our inner city schools with big low-income black and Hispanic populations that fail us:

So what are Shyamalan’s solutions? He’s got five:

Get rid of the bottom 2-3 percent of truly terrible teachers.
Make the principal the chief academic and head coach. Let another person handle school operations.
Constant feedback to teachers and students.
Small schools (not small classes).
Increased instructional time. Extend the school day and do away with summer vacation.

I don’t want to pretend that Shyamalan has all the answers here, or that his five interventions are themselves silver bullets. But I’ll say this: based on my sense of the literature and the endless number of n-point plans I’ve read over the years, Shyamalan’s sounds pretty reasonable. At the very least, his book is a welcome addition to the debate.

Read the article – 

M. Night Shyamalan Steps Into the Education Wars

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on M. Night Shyamalan Steps Into the Education Wars

A Conservative Diagnoses the Decay of American Political Institutions

by Lionel4334 Posted on December 11, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Via Tyler Cowen, Francis Fukuyama diagnoses three things that are driving the decay and sclerosis of the American political system:

The first is that, relative to other liberal democracies, the judiciary and the legislature (including the roles played by the two major political parties) continue to play outsized roles in American government at the expense of Executive Branch bureaucracies….Over time this has become a very expensive and inefficient way to manage administrative requirements.

The second is that the accretion of interest group and lobbying influences has distorted democratic processes and eroded the ability of the government to operate effectively.

….The third is that under conditions of ideological polarization in a federal governance structure, the American system of checks and balances, originally designed to prevent the emergence of too strong an executive authority, has become a vetocracy….We need stronger mechanisms to force collective decisions but, because of the judicialization of government and the outsized role of interest groups, we are unlikely to acquire such mechanisms short of a systemic crisis. In that sense these three structural characteristics have become intertwined.

I’m not entirely persuaded about Fukuyama’s second point. There’s not much question that lobbying has exploded over the past half century, nor that the rich and powerful have tremendous sway over public policy. But do powerful interest groups really have substantially more influence in the United States than in other countries? Or do they simply wield their power in different ways and through different avenues? I’d guess the latter.

Nonetheless, even if America’s powerful are no more powerful than in any other country, the fact that they wield that power increasingly via Congress and, especially, the judiciary might very well make their influence more baleful. I’m reminded of an argument from labor attorney Thomas Geoghegan along similar lines. Obviously he allocates blame a little differently than Fukuyama does, but he still concludes that the explosive growth in litigation to solve problems has had pernicious consequences. In the case of workplace complaints, for example, quick and simple arbitration has been largely replaced by scorched-earth court proceedings:

It is not so much about conduct as state of mind. The issue is no longer whether the employer fired the plaintiff for “just cause,” whatever that might now mean in a world of “employment at will.” What the plaintiff must do is show that the employer acted to harm him.

….In post-union America, this is the legal system we now have. It forces us to cast legal issues in the most subjectively explosive way, i.e., “racism,” “sexism,” to get around the fact that we no longer can deal objectively with “just cause.” Do I regret I am part of it? Yes. Are my clients often full of hatred? Yes.

In the same way that financialization has a corrosive impact on a country’s economy and its ability to produce useful goods and services, you might call this the judicialization of governance, which erodes our country’s ability to produce useful, broad-based, widely accepted policy. The best evidence of this is also the most obvious: Over the past few decades, we’ve gotten to a point where more hostility and bitterness are expended over the appointment of judges than over virtually any other legislative or executive priority.

As for Fukuyama’s “vetocracy,” that’s a sore point of longstanding, and one that’s become worse and worse over the past decade. Fukuyama puts it this way:

The United States is trapped in a bad equilibrium. Because Americans historically distrust the government, they aren’t typically willing to delegate authority to it. Instead, as we have seen, Congress mandates complex rules that reduce government autonomy and render decisions slow and expensive. The government then performs poorly, which perversely confirms the original distrust of government. Under these circumstances, most Americans are reluctant to pay higher taxes, which they fear the government will simply waste. But while resources are not the only, or even the main, source of government inefficiency, without them the government cannot hope to function properly. Hence distrust of government becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The whole essay is worth a read. And I congratulate Fukuyama for not even pretending to write a final paragraph with potential solutions. Instead, his final line is, “So we have a problem.” Indeed we do.

Link: 

A Conservative Diagnoses the Decay of American Political Institutions

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Conservative Diagnoses the Decay of American Political Institutions

We Spend a Ton on Health Care, And We Get Lousy Service in Return

by Robert0689 Posted on November 21, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The 2013 version of the OECD’s “Health at a Glance” is out today, which means that if I’d waited a day I could have posted the very latest data on the number of doctors per capita in the United States compared to other countries. Not to worry, though: nothing much has changed since yesterday. We still don’t have very many doctors, even though we pay them far more than in most other countries.

In any case, “at a glance” means 209 pages to the OECD, so there’s plenty of other stuff to chew on today. I’ll pick out two tidbits for you. First, the chart below shows the number of doctor visits per year. We’re very low. Despite spending far, far more on health care than any other country—$8,500 per person compared to about $4,000 for other rich countries—we don’t get to see our doctors very often—about four times a year compared to six for the rest of the world. So does this mean that American doctors are lightly worked compared to other countries? As the next chart down shows, yes it does! The average American doc sees about 1,800 patients per year. The average for other rich countries is about 2,500. Again, this is despite the fact that American doctors are very highly paid.

Next up is a chart brought to my attention by Paul Waldman, and it could be one of the greatest and most instructive health care charts ever made. It shows what people think about their health. And despite the fact that by any objective measure, American health is mediocre at best and our health system is both expensive and lousy, Americans think they’re in great health. They think they’re in the best health of any country in the world!

This is Stockholm Syndrome at its finest. Apparently one of the reasons we don’t mind the lousy service and high cost of our health care system is because our health care system has convinced us that it’s great and, therefore, our health must be great too. We’re Number 1, and we won’t put up with anyone who tells us otherwise.

More here: 

We Spend a Ton on Health Care, And We Get Lousy Service in Return

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Spend a Ton on Health Care, And We Get Lousy Service in Return