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Sixty-four percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day, 14 percent have HIV, 40 percent don’t have access to clean drinking water. Almost 90 percent of women in rural areas cannot read or write. Name a category—schools, health care, environment—and I’ll give you statistics that will depress the shit out of you.

For more than 150 years, the only reason to come to Kitwe—to Zambia, really—was the copper.

Most of the buildings in Kitwe, the roads, the health clinics, the schools, were built by the national mining company

It got so bad that late last year Starbucks promised to pay an extra £10 million — about $16 million — in 2013 and 2014 above what it would normally have had to pay in British income taxes. What it would normally have paid is zero, because Starbucks claims its British subsidiary loses money. Of course, that subsidiary pays a lot for coffee sold to it by a profitable Starbucks subsidiary in Switzerland, and pays a large royalty for the right to use the company’s intellectual property to another subsidiary in the Netherlands. Starbucks said it understood that its customers were angry that it paid no taxes in Britain.

“It is easy to transfer the intellectual property to tax havens at a low price,” said Martin A. Sullivan, the chief economist of Tax Analysts, the publisher of Tax Notes. “When a foreign subsidiary pays a low price for this property, and collects royalties, it will have big profits.”

it is especially hard for countries to monitor prices on intellectual property, like patents and copyrights.

As clunky Soviet-era factories and mines have become more efficient or gone out of business, Ukraine’s domestic gas consumption has dropped nearly 40 percent over the past five years, cutting its imports from Russia in half, according to a report by Sberbank Investment Research.

Domestic consumption might drop further if Ukraine trims the generous subsidies it gives households using natural gas, although so few households are paying their bills that it might not matter. “People will go from not paying the lower price to not paying the higher price,” said Thane Gustafson, senior director of Russian energy for the consulting firm IHS CERA.

Even if the deals with foreign companies advance, Ukraine will need to import about half of its gas needs,

The decision by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ends months of speculation that a Greek default might not set off the swaps, a result that could have undermined their role as insurance against debt defaults.

Still, doubts about the instruments’ effectiveness may linger. European officials initially shaped the Greek debt restructuring to avoid activating them. The concern is that future restructurings could be arranged to stop swaps from paying out.

the restructuring activated the swaps only after the country made a legal move on Friday.

Nigeria reached a deal last October with the Paris Club, which includes the United States, Germany, France and other wealthy nations, that allowed it to pay off about $30 billion in accumulated debt for about $12 billion, an overall discount of about 60 percent.

Nigeria, which owed about $36 billion in overall debt, is one of the most indebted nations in the world.

Yet Nigeria had not been among the nations that have received write-offs or discounts on their debts, as several poor countries have. In part that is because of its reputation for corruption, earned by a succession of military governments that plundered the state treasury, and because Nigeria, with its oil wealth, is seen as being able to pay.

Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive

Europe’s dangerous addiction to Russian gas needs radical cure

“It really boils down to this: no nation should use energy to stymie a people’s aspirations,” Mr Kerry said in Brussels, just as Russia’s Gazprom raised the price it charges Ukraine for gas.

Bernstein Research has calculated that to do so, Europe needs to eliminate 15 bcm of residential and industrial gas demand, invest $215bn and incur $37bn of annual costs in the form of higher-priced energy. That works out as $160 for every single person in Europe.

GUINEA: Winners and losers in Guinea’s bauxite industry

“Rather than making people richer, mining has made them poorer,” said Akoumba Diallo, a mining sector researcher. “It polluted their environments so they can’t grow crops or let animals feed near mining sites. And it is hard to get water anywhere because it’s contaminated.” With mining contributing to 85 percent of the country’s external revenue, and the World Bank estimating investments of up to US$20 billion in bauxite mining in Guinea over the next decade, the government is currently rewriting and renegotiating its mining contracts - unchanged for 25 years - with 15 companies to ensure Guineans are more likely to benefit from the wealth they spawn.

Mining companies are legally obliged to pay taxes to owners of the land they mine,

The reason is not hard to fathom. Hobbled by severe damage to private and public-sector balance sheets, and with policy interest rates at or near zero, post-bubble economies have been mired in a classic “liquidity trap.” They are more focused on paying down massive debt overhangs built up before the crisis than on assuming new debt and boosting aggregate demand.

The sad case of the American consumer is a classic example of how this plays out. In the years leading up to the crisis, two bubbles – property and credit – fueled a record-high personal-consumption binge. When the bubbles burst, households understandably became fixated on balance-sheet repair – namely, paying down debt and rebuilding personal savings, rather than resuming excessive spending habits.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph

US consumers have pulled back as never before.

The Federal Reserve is well into its third round of “quantitative easing,” in which it buys longer-term assets to bring down long-term lending rates.

In March, a smaller percentage of working-age people were actually working than at any other time since 1979.

In March, a smaller percentage of working-age people were actually working than at any other time since 1979.

The crisis has also transformed the European Union into something radically different from what was originally intended. The EU was meant to be a voluntary association of equal states but the crisis has turned it into a hierarchy with Germany and other creditors in charge and the heavily indebted countries relegated to second-class status. While in theory Germany cannot dictate policy, in practice no policy can be proposed without obtaining Germany's permission first.

Italy now has a majority opposed to the euro and the trend is likely to grow. There is now a real danger that the euro crisis may end up destroying the European Union.

the monthly base salary of the most senior bloc officials is 18,370 euros, or $24,830.

European Union officials generally pay low taxes,

No, of course not. Today, we live in a currency zone that, despite everything, is significantly more stable than where the dollar or yen are used. The euro has brought growth and prosperity to Europe.

Actually, the euro was a mistake with particularly serious consequences. A monetary union requires its members to pursue the same policies and be similarly productive. The so-called convergence criteria were meant to ensure that this would happen. But -- as the dramatic developments in Greece are now showing -- they didn't.

Unfortunately, our fears have become a reality. The monetary union was launched with real self-deception.

The European Central Bank said Thursday it had agreed on a framework for buying the bonds of troubled euro-zone countries on the open market in unlimited quantities, but left the timing unclear.

The euro itself was a leading cause of this crisis by ushering in a remarkably swift convergence in interest rates, which had the effect of directing too much capital into countries that formerly had had to pay high interest rates. This undermined the competitiveness of these countries through inflation and gave rise to huge deficits in their current accounts.

The euro is not suffering from a mere confidence crisis that can be resolved by assuaging the markets; it is experiencing a profound balance‐of‐payment crisis that is being prolonged by the expansion of public financial aid.

Since autumn 2007, long before the official bail‐out initiatives began, some of the crisis‐hit countries have replaced dwindling private capital imports and capital flight with their money‐printing presses (Target credits).

it is hard to commit today to practice fiscal rectitude tomorrow. Official debt caps, such as the Maastricht fiscal criteria and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), failed because they were unenforceable.

The introduction of Eurobonds – joint, aggregate eurozone liabilities – could be part of the solution, if designed properly. There is certainly demand for them in China and other major emerging countries, which are desperate for an alternative to low-yielding US government securities.