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Bassem K's Library tagged economy →  View Popular, Search in Google

Apr
18
2012

  • So there was a reason for environmentalism’s shift to the left, just as there was a reason for its blinding obsession with carbon. Meanwhile, the fact of what humans are doing to the world became so obvious, even to those who were doing very well from it, that it became hard not to listen to the greens. Success duly arrived. You can’t open a newspaper now or visit a corporate website or listen to a politician or read the label on a packet of biscuits without being bombarded with propaganda about the importance of “saving the planet.” But there is a terrible hollowness to it all, a sense that society is going through the motions without understanding why. The shift, the pact, has come at a probably fatal price.
  • Today’s environmentalism is about people. It is a consolation prize for a gaggle of washed-up Trots and, at the same time, with an amusing irony, it is an adjunct to hypercapitalism: the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy. It is an engineering challenge: a problem-solving device for people to whom the sight of a wild Pennine hilltop on a clear winter day brings not feelings of transcendence but thoughts about the wasted potential for renewable energy. It is about saving civilization from the results of its own actions: a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccupping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections. It is our last hope.
Apr
3
2012

  • "The IMF has become quite smart lately in the sense that they don't impose direct conditionality in order to give money," Adly says. "They ask the government to design the program and they have to accept it so they can release the tranches. So it is indirect conditionality because they won't give you the money unless they approve of the plan."

  • Law 4 of 2012 permits the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, the regulator of investment and companies in Egypt, to settle with investors who have committed either in person, or as an accomplice of a government employee, embezzlement, theft, illegal acquisition or misuse of public funds and property, harming the public welfare, and similar offences, while undertaking any of the investment activities covered by the law, provided they restore the disputed amounts or reimburse the state for their approximate value at the time the offence was committed. The settlement can take place any stage before a defendant is convicted by the final court of appeal.
  • the investor and a GAFI representative sign a document together with the terms of the settlement, which is subject to the approval of the Chairman of GAFI. It need hardly be stated that this presents a conflict of interest, as the Chairman of GAFI, if not actually personally implicated by the crime in question, has a strong interest in protecting unfettered investment and avoiding legal issues with foreign investors in particular.
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Feb
21
2012

  • one year after the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, nothing has changed on the economic front in Egypt
  • n the “revolution budget,” education spending dropped from 3.5 to 3.2 percent of GNP
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  • While labor law constricts the scope of issues that unions can negotiate at the workplace, it doesn’t prevent worker organizations from bargaining in the political arena
  • Imagine, for instance, that the United Auto Workers could negotiate over the environmental standards of the cars they produce instead of just wages and benefits.
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Jan
27
2012

  • Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency is telling you exactly that. In data released this month as part of the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook report, he shows that in 2010 the world spent $409 billion on subsidizing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, dwarfing the word’s $66 billion or so of subsidies for renewable energy
  • In no case do these subsidies make sense.
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Jan
23
2012

  • The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt held a conference Saturday to demand that the government leave the decision to accept the loan up to the incoming parliament
  • “The IMF was involved over the past two decades in drawing and implementing the economic and financial policies of Egypt, which led to low living standards, high poverty rates, and deterioration of public services and human resources and human development,” Amr Adly, a political economist and a founding member of the campaign, said in a statement.
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