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Gene Ellis

Dani Rodrik reviews the fundamental lessons about emerging economies that economists ha... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...onomists-have-refused-to-learn

shared by Gene Ellis on 11 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Death by Finance
  • First, emerging-market hype is just that. Economic miracles rarely occur, and for good reason. Governments that can intervene massively to restructure and diversify the economy, while preventing the state from becoming a mechanism of corruption and rent-seeking, are the exception.
  • the rapid industrialization that they engineered has eluded most of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
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  • We have long known that portfolio and short-term inflows fuel consumption booms and real-estate bubbles, with disastrous consequences when market sentiment inevitably sours and finance dries up. Governments that enjoyed the rollercoaster ride on the way up should not have been surprised by the plunge that inevitably follows.
  • It is true, but unhelpful, to say that governments have only themselves to blame for having recklessly rushed into this wild ride. It is now time to think about how the world can create a saner balance between finance and the real economy.
  • They must resist the temptation to binge on foreign finance when it is cheap and plentiful.
  • Third, floating exchange rates are flawed shock absorbers. In theory, market-determined currency values are supposed to isolate the domestic economy from the vagaries of international finance, rising when money floods in and falling when the flows are reversed. In reality, few economies can bear the requisite currency alignments without pain.
  • Death by Finance
Gene Ellis

Squash Seeds Show Andean Cultivation Is 10,000 Years Old, Twice as Old as Thought - New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...29squash.html

Science Archaeology

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - Cached
  • Seeds of domesticated squash found by scientists on the western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru are almost 10,000 years old, about twice the age of previously discovered cultivated crops in the region, new, more precise dating techniques have revealed.
  • The excavations also yielded peanut hulls and cotton fibers — about 8,500 and 6,000 years old, respectively
  • Their research also turned up traces of other domesticated plants, including a grain, manioc and unidentified fruits, and stone hoes, furrowed garden plots and small-scale irrigation canals from approximately the same period of time.
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  • The article also noted that 10,000-year-old cultivated squash seeds had recently been reported in Mexico, along with evidence of domesticated corn there by 9,000 years ago. Scholars now think that plants were domesticated independently in at least 10 “centers of origin,” including, in addition to the Middle East, Mexico and Peru, places in Africa, southern India, China and New Guinea.
  • In the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, an arc from modern-day Israel through Syria and Turkey to Iraq, wheat and barley were domesticated by 10,000 years ago, and possibly rye by 13,000 years ago. Experts in ancient agriculture suspect that the transition from foraging to cultivation had started much earlier and was not as abrupt a transformation as indicated in the archaeological record.
  • The distribution of building structures, canals and furrowed fields, Dr. Dillehay said, indicated that the Andean culture was moving beyond cultivation limited to individual households toward an organized agricultural society.
Gene Ellis

China's Economic Empire - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...chinas-economic-empire.html

Chinese lending

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • China has also invested heavily in building infrastructure, undertaking huge hydroelectric projects like the Merowe Dam on the Nile in Sudan — the biggest Chinese engineering project in Africa — and Ecuador’s $2.3 billion Coca Codo Sinclair Dam. And China is currently involved in the building of more than 200 other dams across the planet, according to International Rivers, a nonprofit environmental organization.
  • China has become the world’s leading exporter; it also surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest trading nation in 2012.
  • annual investment from China to the European Union grew from less than $1 billion annually before 2008 to more than $10 billion in the past two years. And in the United States, investment surged from less than $1 billion in 2008 to a record high of $6.7 billion in 2012, according to the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm. Last year, Europe was the destination for 33 percent of China’s foreign direct investment.
Gene Ellis

Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...c-shipping-soars-led-by-russia

russia artic shipping

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Although the Arctic provides a shorter route around the world than the traditional course through warmer waters, it is not necessarily cheaper.
  • The ships were expensive to build and operate,
  • The first commercial Chinese vessel and first container ship to transit the NSR, the Yong Sheng, commissioned by state-owned Cosco shipping, arrived in Rotterdam on September 10 laden with steel and industrial machinery. Its 33-day journey from the Chinese port of Dailan was nine days and 2,800 nautical miles shorter than the conventional voyage through the Suez Canal
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  • The Arctic Council's 2009 report estimated that the NSR offers from a 35 percent to 60 percent savings in distance for ships traveling between Europe and the Far East. Ships also can circumvent regional conflicts and the risk of piracy near the coast of Africa or in the Straits of Malacca off Malaysia.
  • Hiring charges for mandatory escort by Rosatomflot's icebreakers vary, but the average cost is about $200,000,
  • the cost of escort through the NSR is roughly equivalent to that of passage through the Suez Canal.
  • Because "container" shipping of goods, (as opposed to bulk shipping of raw commodities like ores and fuel), relies heavily on on-time delivery, Carmel thinks it unlikely the NSR ever will become a major pathway for this kind of global commerce.
  • primary focus on the 22 percent of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and natural gas resources to be found in the far north.
  • Just last month, Novatek signed a deal to supply China National Petroleum Corporation for 15 years with fuel sent from Yamal by tanker
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