Group items tagged

The clothing needs to be labeled correctly so that it travels smoothly through a large retailer’s distribution centers

The process requires formidable numbers of skilled workers who can oversee quality control as well as labeling and shipping of garments.

Bennett Model helped pioneer the exporting of garments from China in 1975, the year before Mao Zedong died,

Western executives are checking on potential new suppliers in southern Vietnam, central Cambodia and the hinterlands of Java in Indonesia.

The big ships — known as “Post-Panamax” and even “Super-Post-Panamax” — are already in heavy use worldwide, making up 16 percent of the container fleet but accounting for 45 percent of its capacity, according to a July report by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Port of Virginia, in Norfolk, is ready to receive the big ships today. And New York is also prepared, thanks to a massive dredging project that began 13 years ago.

But nearly every port in the game still faces major challenges and expenses —

Besides, he added, costs and fees can shift; Panama can be expected to raise rates for canal passage, and “the railroads are not going to sit idly by” and let the water route undercut their business.

After Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi trumpeted plans for a “port of the future” at Gulfport with a 50-foot-deep channel, redirecting some $600 million in federal housing disaster funds on a project he pledged would spur the economy and create bountiful jobs.

Investors Seek Yields in Europe, but Analysts Warn of Risk

Once again, foreign investors are piling into the government bonds of Ireland, Spain and Portugal — countries that got into such debt trouble that they required bailouts. Now these countries are able to sell their bonds at lower interest rates than they have seen in years, renewing hope that Europe has turned a corner.

Claus Vistesen, the head of research at Variant Perception, a London-based economic research group, sees the ratio of debt to economic output as a continuing threat to a euro zone recovery.“People think growth is coming back,” Mr. Vistesen said, “but at the end of the day, debt is still going up.”

The problem with TTIP

The TPP is a deep international integration arrangement between the US and 11 other Pacific states, which would cover 40% of world GDP and over 30% of world trade. It seeks to address as series of issues that 21st century commerce, but arguably its most obvious feature is that it excludes China – the world’s largest international trader and before long the world’s largest economy. There are, of course, the ritual genuflections towards ‘open regionalism’ – China can join if only it will agree to the necessary policy requirements – but this is about as much use as saying the Chief Rabbi can dine with you while insisting that the menu contains pork.

By signing TTIP Europe would be tying itself to a static rather than a dynamic part of the world economy and substantially reinforcing the US’s exclusionary policies.

Rent-seeking” is what economists call a special type of money-making: the sort made possible by political connections. This can range from outright graft to a lack of competition, poor regulation and the transfer of public assets to firms at bargain prices. Well-placed people have made their fortunes this way ever since rulers had enough power to issue profitable licences, permits and contracts to their cronies.

Capitalism based on rent-seeking is not just unfair, but also bad for long-term growth.

It identifies sectors which are particularly dependent on government—such as mining, oil and gas, banking and casinos—

Tullock’s insight was that expenditures on lobbying for privileges are costly and that these expenditures, therefore, dissipate some of the gains to the beneficiaries and cause inefficiency. If, for example, a steel firm spends one million dollars lobbying and advertising for restrictions on steel imports, whatever money it gains by succeeding, presumably more than one million, is not a net gain. From this gain must be subtracted the one-million-dollar cost of seeking the restrictions. Although such an expenditure is rational from the narrow viewpoint of the firm that spends it, it represents a use of real resources to get a transfer from others and is therefore a pure loss to the economy as a whole.

For India in 1964, for example, Krueger estimated that government regulation created rents equal to 7.3 percent of national income; for Turkey in 1968, she estimated that rents from import licenses alone were about 15 percent of Turkey’s gross national product.

International students are allowed to seek part-time employment off campus after six months of full-time study, as a way to help them defray costs. They can also obtain foreign work credentials: After earning a four-year undergraduate degree, they can apply to work in Canada for up to three years.

Other nations are not as generous: In the United States, international students are eligible to work only on campus, and many struggle to stay in the country after graduation. Tough visa rules have led to a foreign student “brain drain,”

In Britain, international students can work no more than 10 hours a week and need an endorsement from their school to work after graduation.

For starters, the European Central Bank’s “outright monetary transactions” program has been incredibly effective: interest-rate spreads for Spain and Italy have fallen by about 250 basis points, even before a single euro has been spent to purchase government bonds.

But, perhaps most important, Germany’s attitude toward the eurozone in general, and Greece in particular, has changed. German officials now understand that, given extensive trade and financial links, a disorderly eurozone hurts not just the periphery but the core.

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.

As for equity levels, in many cases a foreign bank might simply have to convert loans it had made to the American operation into equity investments. Suddenly the American operation would appear to be better capitalized.

European regulators who trusted Iceland to regulate its own banks wound up paying off depositors even though there is little hope Iceland will ever reimburse those payments.

It turns out that in the financial crisis, big banks with high leverage ratios — that is, more capital relative to assets — were significantly more likely to survive without needing bailouts.