vrijdag 30 oktober 2009
Falling fertility
Astonishing falls in the fertility rate are bringing with them big benefits. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
A joyless recovery
THE American government reported on Thursday October 29th that gross domestic product rose at an annualised rate of 3.5% in the third quarter compared with the second. This was the first increase since the second quarter of 2008. It backs up other evidence that the recession ended in the third quarter or just before, though the official decision, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists, is still some way off. Robert Gordon, a member of this group, is confident that the recession, which began in December 2007, ended in June. But at 18 months that would still make it the longest since 1933. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
donderdag 29 oktober 2009
Household saving rate at 16.5% in the euro area and 14.4% in the EU 27
Read this Eurostat release here.
9 of 10 Europeans want urgent action on poverty
Read the Eurobarometer Survey on Poverty and Social Exclusion from the EC here.
Interview with Charles Krauthammer 'Obama Is Average'
In a SPIEGEL interview, Charles Krauthammer, the leading voice of America's conservative intellectuals, discusses Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the president's failures and the state of the United Nations and the international community. Read the complete interview in Der Spiegel International here.
The price of cleanliness
China is torn between getting greener and getting rich
er. 
Read the complete article in The Economist here.
Financial crises are different! Refining the Reinhart-Rogoff estimates
Is the current turmoil unique? This column examines three decades of financial crises and says that it stands out. But the variation in past experiences suggests that the major economies may regain their pre-crisis levels of output by the second half of 2010.
Read this article from Cecchetti et al. on Vox.eu here.
Can renewable energy save the world?
Can renewable energy save the world from climate change, and do so at a reasonable cost? This column says we can replace some fossil fuel power with renewable power without a major cost increase, but we cannot hope to replace a major fraction of our fossil power with intermittent power sources such as wind and solar energy unless we can develop energy storage technologies.
Read the full article from G. Heal on Vox.eu here.
How to avoid a repeat of the Great Crash
The 80th anniversary of the Great Crash is upon us. This touches a nerve because we seemed to be looking into the same bottomless pit only a year ago. The chain of events, leading from a dramatic collapse in stock prices on Wall Street, beginning in late October 1929, to a Great Depression that engulfed the world economy for years, has suddenly leapt off the pages of the history books with an entirely fresh verisimilitude. Pessimists have asked, what is to stop it all happening again? Optimists have asked, what can we learn to stop it from doing so?
Read the full article in the FT here.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2009
Out of the 115 countries covered in the report since 2006, more than two-thirds have posted gains in overall index scores, indicating that the world in general has made progress towards equality between men and women, although there are countries that continue to lose ground.
Read this World Economic Forum report here.
woensdag 28 oktober 2009
Inburgering voor dummies
Marokko haalt meer inkomsten uit de diaspora dan uit zijn eigen economie.
INTEGRATIE VRAAGT MEER DAN EEN CURSUS NEDERLANDS — Zo lang via huwelijksmigratie de deuren van België wijd openstaan voor nieuwkomers en zo lang landen als Marokko profijt halen uit de slechte inburgering van hun uitwijkelingen, zal België integratieproblemen blijven hebben, voorspelt JEAN-MARIE DEDECKER. Dat los je op met nieuwe wetten, niet met een cursus Nederlands via internet. Lees het opiniestuk hier.
INTEGRATIE VRAAGT MEER DAN EEN CURSUS NEDERLANDS — Zo lang via huwelijksmigratie de deuren van België wijd openstaan voor nieuwkomers en zo lang landen als Marokko profijt halen uit de slechte inburgering van hun uitwijkelingen, zal België integratieproblemen blijven hebben, voorspelt JEAN-MARIE DEDECKER. Dat los je op met nieuwe wetten, niet met een cursus Nederlands via internet. Lees het opiniestuk hier.
Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics (and climate change)
Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.
Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or one of his little helpers.
The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years. Read the complete article in the WSJ here.
Efficient Market Theory and the Crisis
Neither the rating agencies' mistakes nor the overleveraging by financial firms was the fault of an academic hypothesis. Read the complete article in the WSJ here.
dinsdag 27 oktober 2009
maandag 26 oktober 2009
U.S. Considers Reining In ‘Too Big to Fail’ Institutions
Congress and the Obama administration are about to take up one of the most fundamental issues stemming from the near collapse of the financial system last year — how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble. Read the complete article in the NYTimes here.
Do not ignore the need for financial reform
The philosophy that has helped me both in making money as a hedge fund manager and in spending it as a policy oriented philanthropist is not about money but about the complicated relationship between thinking and reality. The crash of 2008 has convinced me that it provides a valuable insight into the workings of the financial markets. ....
Read this article in the FT here.
Adjustments to the accountability and transparency of the European Central Bank
Governments are restructuring their financial supervision systems. This column warns that the proposed new structure for European financial supervision is poorly coordinated and will not help in a systemic crisis. It discusses how the ECB might coordinate macro-prudential supervision in the euro area.
Read the full article on Vox.eu here.
Een andere soort van staatshervorming
Luckas Vande Talen wil komaf maken met een rist overbodige instellingen. Lees het volledige opiniestuk in De Standaard hier.
vrijdag 23 oktober 2009
donderdag 22 oktober 2009
Lessons of the lat
The European Union should ease the way for small, troubled currencies to join the euro. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
Betting on bytes
Optimism that tech firms will help kick-start economic recovery is overdone. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
Exporters (good ones) don’t pass-through
The prices of tradable goods are remarkably insensitive to exchange rate movements. This column provides a firm-level explanation. In response to a depreciation, high-performance firms raise their mark-ups rather than their export volumes, and their choices dominate the aggregate export variables.
Read this article from N. Berman et al. on Vox.eu here.
« Les Etats-Unis n'échapperont pas à un second plan de relance », Kenneth Rogoff
Professeur à Havard et ex-chef économiste du FMI de 2001 à 2003, Kenneth Rogoff, qui est également l'auteur du livre « Huit Siècles de folie financière » (Princeton University Press), analyse les conséquences du déclin du dollar et les limites du plan de relance américain.
Lisez l'interview dans LesEchos.fr ici.
woensdag 21 oktober 2009
Les 14 points clés du Rapport « Sortie de crise : vers l’émergence de nouveaux modèles de croissance ? »
Lisez cet utile résumé du Centre d'Analyse Stratégique ici.
THE WORLD IN 2025
The recent development of the world context and the strong European commitments to a regulated globalisation argue in favour of a prospective analysis of the trends which will shape the international environment, the tensions which will structure its development in the coming decades and the transitions that Europe could contribute to promote it. Read the complete report (25p.) from the European Commission here.
Why the euro is not the next global currency
The explosion of debate on the demise of the dollar has been instructive, though vastly premature. What is striking, however, is the absence of the euro from talk of alternatives as the global currency. Currency baskets, SDRs, even internationalisation of the renminbi, have been mooted, but not the obvious alternative. ....
Read the full article in the FT here.
Rising Debt a Threat to Japanese Economy
How much debt can an industrialized country carry before the nation’s economy and its currency bow, then break?
The question looms large in the United States, as a surging budget deficit pushes government debt to nearly 98 percent of the gross domestic product. But it looms even larger in Japan.
[...]
Just paying the interest on its debt consumed a fifth of Japan’s budget for 2008, compared with debt payments that compose about a tenth of the United States budget.
Read the complete article in the NYTimes here.
The question looms large in the United States, as a surging budget deficit pushes government debt to nearly 98 percent of the gross domestic product. But it looms even larger in Japan.
[...]
Just paying the interest on its debt consumed a fifth of Japan’s budget for 2008, compared with debt payments that compose about a tenth of the United States budget.
Read the complete article in the NYTimes here.
dinsdag 20 oktober 2009
Energies : vers une période de transition cahotique, par Michael T. Klare
La période de transition entre énergies fossiles et renouvelables s’annonce agitée, avertit Michael T. Klare. Faute d’une conversion massive et rapide aux énergies nouvelles - qui paraît aujourd’hui peu vraisemblable - nos sociétés en seront réduites à compter de plus en plus sur des gisements « extrêmes », coûteux à exploiter, difficiles d’accès, certains situés dans des zones dangereuses, d’autres extrêmement polluants, dévastateurs pour l’environnement, et qui feront l’objet pour la plupart d’une compétition internationale acharnée, source de tensions géopolitiques.
Lisez l'article complet sur le site Contre Info.info ici.
Five Technologies That Could Change Everything
As the world tries to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels, technological breakthroughs in these five areas could be a huge help. Read the complete WSJ energy report here.
Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels
Of the nine people who shared this year's Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, eight are American citizens, a testament to this country's support for pioneering research. But those numbers disguise a more important story. Four of the American winners were born outside of the United States and only came here as graduate or post-doctoral students or as scientists. They came because our system of higher education and advanced research has been a magnet for creative talent. Read the complete opinion piece in the WSJ here.
Gratis begrotingstip? Bel Olaf
Nu de Belgische regering de strijd tegen fiscale en andere fraude weer eens uit de kast haalt, om gaten in de begroting dicht te rijden, geef ik de ministers van Justitie en Financiën graag een gratis tip: bel eens met Olaf. Hij is weliswaar pas tien, maar gespecialiseerd in fraudebestrijding. Met succes. Lees het volledige opiniestuk van Bart Staes in De Tijd hier.
The Coming Energy Revolution
Electric cars, intelligent washing machines, mini power plants in your basement: Germany is on the verge of an energy revolution. SPIEGEL ONLINE looks at the latest developments in the smart grid and how it will change the relationship between consumers and energy suppliers.
Read the full article on Spiegel International (14/10/2009) here.
Démographie, l'exception française
Quel est le secret du "modèle français" ? Depuis quelques années, les démographes, les sociologues et les responsables politiques étrangers se penchent avec perplexité sur le cas de la France : à l'heure où l'Europe est touchée par un recul des naissances, ce pays est devenu le champion d'Europe de la fécondité.
Lisez l'article complet dans Le Monde ici.
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