crisis - Arabica Robusta on Diigo

22 Dec 09

12 Dec 09

Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis

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development africa international industry governance china news bank pambazuka world economic crisis

The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
6 more annotations...
- The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
- The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
- a multi-stakeholder forum convened in Tunis at the end of November that brought together leading economists, government officials, and civil society representatives.
- The forum was the first high-profile event of the newly formed Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), chaired by Botswana's former President, Festus Mogae.
- CoDA is driven by African institutions and carves out greater space for civil society to set the agenda. At the forum, Professor Fantu Cheru of the Nordic Africa Institute urged support for "knowledge production on the continent." The establishment of CoDA is a big step in that direction.
- We must, as the Tunis Forum convener Abdoulaye Bathily, Senegalese academic and former minister of environment, urges "redefine Africa's development paradigm, and above all, support the emergence of new practices and citizen actions in Africa's public space."

10 Dec 09

Pambazuka News : Issue 459

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security pambazuka international foodsecurity food development crisis agriculture agribusiness biofuels

Food sovereignty entails transforming the current food system to ensure that those who produce food have equitable access to, and control over land, water, seeds, fisheries and agricultural biodiversity.

27 Nov 09

Pambazuka - Land grabs: Africa's new ‘resource curse’?

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food security international crisis development pambazuka foodsecurity agribusiness biofuels agriculture mozambique resource curse

Studies by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) revealed, ‘Many countries do not have sufficient mechanisms to protect local rights and take account of local interests, livelihoods, and welfare. Moreover, local communities are rarely adequately informed about the land concessions that are made to private companies. Insecure local land rights, inaccessible registration procedures, vaguely defined productive use requirements, legislative gaps, and other factors all too often undermine the position of local people vis-à-vis international actors.’[1]
In Madagascar, a 99-year lease on 3.2 million acres of land – 50 per cent of Madagascar’s arable land, granted to multinational Daewoo ‘ensuring food security’ for South Korea, lead to a coup. ‘In the constitution, it is stipulated that Madagascar’s land is neither for sale nor for rent, so the agreement with Daewoo is cancelled,’ said current president Andry Rajoelina, a baby-faced former DJ, backed by the army – and allegedly, the majority of Malagasys, 70 per cent of whom depend on farmland for income. ‘One of the biggest problems for farmers in Madagascar is land ownership, and we think it’s unfair for the government to be selling or leasing land to foreigners when local farmers do not have enough land,’ an official from Madagascar’s Farmer’s Confederation revealed to Reuters.
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- The mentality of ‘grabbers’ could not be more different. ‘We are not farmers…’ stated an official from SLC Agricola, Brazil’s largest ‘farm’ corporation. ‘The same way you have shoemakers and computer manufacturers, we produce agricultural commodities.’
- But with Africa losing an estimated US$148 billion in development finance each year, 60 per cent as a result of multinational mispricing, in addition to the direct servicing of odious debts – (amounting to a global figure of US$560 billion per annum of an outstanding US$2.9 trillion), little or no rents derived from the liquidation of exhaustible resources is redistributed in intangible capital. This is precisely because across Africa citizens are not required to finance the state budget – as occurs in high-income countries through intangible capital – they lack the political representation necessary to influence policies and usurped power structures.
- The terms differ from country to country, with the bulk of Ghana’s leased land allocated for export, in contrast to Ethiopia’s mixed status, but the issue remains one of control and exploitation, whether it is over local food monopolies or exported crops.
- over 100 known specialised land funds and investments firms have embarked on ‘private sector’ land grabs, including well-known entities such as Morgan Stanley. Facilitating this process is the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank group, ensuring for investors the ‘enabling environments’ and positive ‘investment climates’ required for the extractive industries, such as repatriation of profits and tax ‘competition’. From 1991-2002, deregulation proposed by IFIs composed 95 per cent of changes implemented in host countries.
- development finance siphoned from Africa, whether through the extractive industries, or land grabs, are unlikely to be revealed as the IMF scrapped mandatory information exchange. Global watchdogs, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) remained beholden to high-income nations as a ‘subsidiary’ unit in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Meanwhile, the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB), founded and finance by the ‘big four’ accounting firms – maintaining units in secrecy jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands – prefers multinationals to self-regulate trade via arms length transfer. What this effectively does is enable multinationals, conducting 60 per cent of global trade within rather than between corporations, to determine the future of entire continents such as Africa, where primary commodities – extracted by corporations, account for 80 per cent of exports.

24 Nov 09

As Wall Street Posts Record Profits and US Hunger Rate Grows, Robert Scheer Asks: "Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?"

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us financial crisis

22 Nov 09

allAfrica.com: Africa: Diplomat Expresses Regrets Over UN Food Summit (Page 1 of 1)

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food crisis summit news allafrica

called for the rules governing international trade to be separated from "the logic of profit viewed as an end in itself."

07 Nov 09

Pambazuka - Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale

"it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them."

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it was all summed up clearly for me by members of COPAGEN, a coalition of African farmer associations, scientists, civil society groups and activists who work to protect Africa’s genetic heritage, farmer rights, and their sovereignty over their land, seeds and food. All these knowledgeable people have shown me that the answer is quite straightforward: many of those imported mistakes, disguised as solutions for Africa, are very, very profitable. At least for those who design and make them.
These monetarist schemes have helped to make Africa poorer and even more dependent on foreign donors and capital, and thus more vulnerable to still more of the big plans, so that now, even as Africans struggle to confront the perfect storm of the global food crisis, financial crisis and climate change – all of which are the offspring of the unfettered free-market financial system – the same big planners are at it again with more sweeping solutions (profitable ones) for the problems they themselves caused.
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- So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,
- At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]
- Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.
- another big plan is buffeting Africa’s farmers. It’s the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which claims it is working in smallholder farmers’ interests by 'catalysing' a Green Revolution in Africa. Green Revolution Number Two.

25 Oct 09

Breaking the banks | open Democracy News Analysis

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financial crisis opendemocracy banks

18 Oct 09

Greenspan recommends the banks be broken up ( - Bloomberg.com

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The major question remaining, then, seems to be how such breaking apart occurs. It is in the interests of the big financial institutions to retain their power. - pickinjava on 2009-10-18

07 Oct 09

Financial innovation and the poor: A place in society | The Economist

"You might suppose that financial innovation had done enough damage. But bankers, investors and philanthropists believe it can help the world’s poor"

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05 Sep 09

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? - NYTimes.com

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18 Apr 09

Too big to save: the end of financial capitalism | open Democracy News Analysis

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27 Mar 09

IRIN Global | Asia East Africa Global Great Lakes Horn of Africa Middle East North America Southern Africa West Africa | Afghanistan Angola Bangladesh Burkina Faso Burundi Benin IRIN Blog Botswana DRC Central African Republic Congo Cote d'Ivoire Cameroon

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food crisis international development

18 Jan 09

Z Space - Patrick Bond

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international finance development south africa patrickbond economics crisis

On the other hand, the cost of market failure could at least be offset, somewhat, by ideological advance. The main gains so far were in delegitimating the economic liberalisation philosophy adopted during the 1994-2008 governments of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki (presided over by Manuel).
As for the rest of Africa, similar opportunities to contest financial system orthodoxy now arise. At this stage, it is practically impossible for staff from the most powerful external force in African economic policy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to advise elites with any credibility.

The IMF's October 2006 Global Financial Stability Report, after all, claimed that world finance showed 'exceptionally low market volatility.' Moreover, global economic growth 'continued to become more balanced, providing a broad underpinning for financial markets.'
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- For some African countries, the solution lies in an alternative source of hard currency finance. Not only does China provide condition-free loans to several of Africa's most authoritarian regimes. More hopefully, Venezuela is considering a proposal to replace and displace the IMF, as happened in Argentina in 2006, in which case repaying the IMF early or even defaulting would be feasible.
- The IMF Riots that shook African countries during the 1980s-90s often, unfortunately, rose up in fury and even shook loose some governments' hold on power. When these, however, contributed to the fall of Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia (one of many examples), the man who replaced him as president in 1991, former trade unionist Frederick Chiluba, imposed even more decisive IMF policies. Most anti-IMF protest simply could not be sustained
  
  In contrast, the former organizations are increasingly networked, especially in the wake of 2005 activities associated with the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), which generated (failed) strategies to support the Millennium Developmental Goals partly through white-headband consciousness raising, through appealing to national African elites and through joining a naïve appeal to the G8 Gleneagles meeting.
- Instead, the global elites aim, next month in New York, to refashion the world's financial architecture, likely adding to the G8 a few comprador regimes: China, India, Brazil and South Africa for legitimacy (and access to substantial dollar reserves).
  
  Activists should contemplate whether to 'Seattle' the event; African social movements and a few patriotic African trade ministers were, after all, not only present but instrumental in preventing the World Trade Organisation's Seattle summit from proceeding nine years earlier.
  
  A serious danger for civil society would be to settle for a UN-sponsored event full of reformist reforms. Enormous damage to Southern finances was caused by the UN's 2002 Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico, which had as key advisors Michel Camdessus (former IMF managing director) and Trevor Manuel.

20 Dec 08

Using food as a weapon | SocialistWorker.org

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food crisis mcdonalds economics

16 Dec 08

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers: The End of the Washington Consensus

In these circumstances, what is to be done? First, countries outside the United States need to recognize how dysfunctional the neoliberalized world economy has been made, and to decide which assumptions underlying the neoliberal model must be discarded.

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development crisis washington consensus economics

Two questions. Who is "countries"? And two, how does their recognition of U.S. disfunction take place? The elite that head many countries outside of the United States went to the same schools and now go to the same meetings as those inside the United States. - pickinjava on 2008-12-16

In these circumstances, what is to be done? First, countries outside the United States need to recognize how dysfunctional the neoliberalized world economy has been made, and to decide which assumptions underlying the neoliberal model must be discarded. Its preferred tax and financial policies favor finance over industry and, hence, financial maneuvering and asset-price inflation over tangible capital formation. Its anti-labor austerity policies and un-taxing of real estate, stocks and bonds divert resources away from growth and rising living standards.

11 Dec 08

Joseph E. Stiglitz on capitalist fools: vanityfair.com

Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who's to blame. It's crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes - under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II - and one national delusion.
1. Firing Paul Volcker in the 1980s. 2. Deregulation uber alles, especially revoking Glass-Steagal. 3. George W. Bush tax cuts 4. Sarbanes-Oxley fails to deal with stock options. 5. Mismanaging the 2008 bailout package

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01 Aug 08

UPDATE 3-Biofuels major driver of food price rise-World Bank | Markets | Reuters

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biofuels food security crisis

World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels
and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and
food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent.
"The large increases in biofuels production in the U.S. and
EU were supported by subsidies, mandates and tariffs on
imports," Mitchell said in the research, which looks at rapid
rises in food prices since 2002. "Without these policies,
biofuels production would have been lower and food commodity
price increases would have been smaller."
1 more annotations...
- Bob Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association,
  said the report showed a bias by the author against biofuels
  and underestimates the impact of higher energy prices and a
  weak dollar on higher food costs.
  
  "Such a simplistic approach fails to accurately and
  honestly account for the myriad of factors driving food costs
  higher," Dineen said. "I encourage the author and the World
  Bank to revisit the issue without bias, taking into account the
  increasingly significant role biofuels are playing in reducing
  global oil demand."

27 Jul 08

Friends of the Earth Africa on the food crisis

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18 Jul 08

Doha Dealbreaker - WSJ.com

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Arabica Robusta's Library tagged crisis → View Popular

allAfrica.com: Africa: Food Production on the Rise (Page 1 of 1)

Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis

Pambazuka News : Issue 459

Pambazuka - Land grabs: Africa's new ‘resource curse’?

As Wall Street Posts Record Profits and US Hunger Rate Grows, Robert Scheer Asks: "Where Is the Community Organizer We Elected?"

allAfrica.com: Africa: Diplomat Expresses Regrets Over UN Food Summit (Page 1 of 1)

Pambazuka - Profits before people: The great African liquidation sale

Breaking the banks | open Democracy News Analysis

Greenspan recommends the banks be broken up ( - Bloomberg.com

Financial innovation and the poor: A place in society | The Economist

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? - NYTimes.com

Too big to save: the end of financial capitalism | open Democracy News Analysis

IRIN Global | Asia East Africa Global Great Lakes Horn of Africa Middle East North America Southern Africa West Africa | Afghanistan Angola Bangladesh Burkina Faso Burundi Benin IRIN Blog Botswana DRC Central African Republic Congo Cote d'Ivoire Cameroon

Z Space - Patrick Bond

Using food as a weapon | SocialistWorker.org

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers: The End of the Washington Consensus

Joseph E. Stiglitz on capitalist fools: vanityfair.com

UPDATE 3-Biofuels major driver of food price rise-World Bank | Markets | Reuters

Friends of the Earth Africa on the food crisis

Doha Dealbreaker - WSJ.com

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