Skip to main content

Home/ Global Economy/ Group items tagged vote

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
2More

Oops: Azerbaijan released election results before voting had even started - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...before-voting-had-even-started Azerbaijan voting
shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • So it was a bit awkward when Azerbaijan's election authorities released vote results – a full day before voting had even started.
  • The data were quickly recalled. The official story is that the app's developer had mistakenly sent out the 2008 election results as part of a test. But that's a bit flimsy, given that the released totals show the candidates from this week, not from 2008.
1More

House Votes To Extend Export-Import Bank's Authority For Three Years | Fox Business - 0 views

www.foxbusiness.com/...bank-authority-for-three-years house votes bank authority fox business
shared by Gene Ellis on 10 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gene Ellis on 10 May 12
     
     Bookmark
2More

Central banks prepare for turmoil after Greek vote | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...e-crisis-idUSBRE85D0CA20120616 central banks turmoil greek vote reuters
shared by Gene Ellis on 16 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • ECB President Mario Draghi, one of many policymakers gearing up for trouble after Sunday's vote in Greece, said his bank was ready to step in and fund any viable euro zone bank that gets in trouble.
  • At best, we are going to have a situation that is extremely serious on Monday," Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told journalists. "In all likelihood, whatever the outcome, we are going to have a government which is going to find it hard to live up to the agreements they (the Greeks) have signed up to."
13More

Some thoughts on German politics and the saver's tax in Cyprus | Credit Writedowns - 0 views

www.creditwritedowns.com/...-the-savers-tax-in-cyprus.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Now, the large 82.8% German government debt to GDP ratio is a source of shame for many because Germany was a driving force in enshrining the 60% government debt to GDP hurdle into the Maastricht Treaty that set out terms for the euro zone.
  • Moreover, the interest rate policy of the ECB, geared as it was to the slow growth core, produced negative real interest rates and credit bubbles in Spain and Ireland during the last decade. German banks piled in to those countries as prospects domestically stagnated.
  • “The average German worker feels like a cash cow being sucked dry by a quick succession of reforms and bailouts that take money out of her pocket. First it was for reunification, then for European integration, then to right the economy, then to bail out German banks, and finally to bail out the European periphery. Fatigue has set in.”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The bottom line is that none of the major political parties in Germany are going to vote for bailouts for other euro zone countries unless massive strings are attached, since these bailouts are political losers.
  • The anti-bailout part of the FDP platform is the one part of their rhetoric which could successfully take them over the 5% hurdle. The FDP’s complicity in using German taxpayer money to bail out the so-called profligate periphery is a one-way ticket out of Parliament.
  • “First, the Greek reports come via statements made by Michael Fuchs, CDU deputy Bundestag head and a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party. Fuchs warned earlier today that Germany would veto further aid to Greece if the country has not met the conditions of its previous bailouts.
  • “Second, all along Germany has indicated that it is resistant to increasing funding of the ESM and EFSF bailout facilities. This presents a problem in the case of Spain and Italy because of the size of those economies.
  • Willem Buiter, Chief Economist at Citigroup, has been most vocal in predicting that these facilities will be inadequate when Spain and Italy hit the wall and that more extreme measures will have to be taken.
  • The basic dilemma here is that almost all of the eurozone governments including Germany carry high debt burdens in excess of the Maastricht Treaty. For example, Germany has been in breach of Maastricht Treaty in 8 of 10 years since 2002, has been over the Maastricht 60% hurdle in each of those ten years, and now carries a debt to GDP burden above 80%.
  • The long and short of it was that the Germans had reached the end of their ability to support bailouts.
  • All evidence is that this levy has created panic in Cyprus. After all, what is the use of having a deposit guarantee if government can arbitrarily circumvent it to impose losses on your deposits anyway?
  • One can't just blame Cyprus for this fiasco. The ECB, EC and European Union finance ministers signed off on the insured deposit grab too]
  • My view? It was inevitable that we would be in crisis again. The austerity world view of crisis resolution is completely at odds with the capacity of the euro zone’s institutional architecture to handle a crisis.
8More

Europe's Two-Speed Future by Jean-Claude Piris - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ed-europe-by-jean-claude-piris
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • relatively small size,
  • aging populations,
  • excessive indebtedness
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • insufficient investment in research and development
  • lack of energy resources
  • But the eurozone’s architecture – in which monetary policy is centralized, but budgetary and economic policies are left up to individual governments – is not viable in the long term
  • establishing a “two-speed Europe” – in which a core group of countries pursues deeper integration more quickly than the rest – is the EU’s best option for reaching the level of cooperation needed to escape the crisis intact.
  • Pursuing this option would require that the decision-making process be legitimate. In the Council, as in all cases of “enhanced cooperation,” only participating members have the right to vote. In the European Parliament, by contrast, all 27 EU members participate in the decision-making process, even concerning measures that will affect only the 23 “eurozone plus” countries (the 17 eurozone members and the six that have agreed to the Euro Plus Pact) – a method that could pose a political problem.
8More

Tomato Imports Deal Reached by U.S. and Mexico - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ch-deal-on-tomato-imports.html tomato imports deal u s mexico
shared by Gene Ellis on 04 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The agreement, reached late Saturday, raises the minimum sales price for Mexican tomatoes in the United States, aims to strengthen compliance and enforcement, and increases the types of tomatoes governed by the bilateral pact to four from one.
  • “The draft agreement raises reference prices substantially, in some cases more than double the current reference price for certain products,
  • Florida growers contended it set the minimum price of Mexican tomatoes so low that the Florida growers could not compete.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Even though no dumping or injury to the U.S. industry was demonstrated by our competitors,
  • The new agreement covers all fresh and chilled tomatoes, excluding those intended for use in processing like canning and dehydrating, and in juices, sauces and purées.
  • It raises the basic floor price for winter tomatoes to 31 cents a pound from 21.69 cents — higher than the price the Mexicans were proposing in October — and establishes even higher prices for specialty tomatoes and tomatoes grown in controlled environments. The Mexicans have invested billions in greenhouses to grow tomatoes, while Florida tomatoes are largely picked green and treated with a gas to change their color.
  • The dispute unfolded in the heated politics surrounding the presidential election, with Mexican growers charging that the Commerce Department was courting voters in the important swing state of Florida. Instead, the timing of the negotiations ensured that the government could win those votes and bring the controversy to a conclusion satisfactory to the Mexicans after the election was over.
  • The Mexicans enlisted roughly 370 American businesses, including Wal-Mart Stores and meat and vegetable producers, to argue their cause.
6More

Nigeria Pays Off Its Big Debt, Sign of an Economic Rebound - NYTimes.com - 0 views

query.nytimes.com/...fullpage.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 15 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But Nigeria's debt was largely accumulated under civilian governments,
  • The World Bank president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, announced on Friday an important step toward providing $37 billion in debt relief to 17 of the poorest countries, most of them in Africa. He said he had enough votes from donor countries on the board of the International Development Association, the bank arm that provides very low interest loans, to approve the measure.
  • The 17 countries will begin receiving the relief, worth close to $1 billion a year over 40 years, on July 1. They are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
7More

Christopher R. Hill asks why sectarian and tribal allegiances have replaced civic conce... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...nceptions-of-national-identity
shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • As such examples suggest, political identity has shifted to something less civil and more primordial.
  • When sectarian or ethnic minorities have ruled countries – for example, the Sunnis of Iraq – they typically have a strong interest in downplaying sectarianism or ethnicity. They often become the chief proponents of a broader, civic concept of national belonging, in theory embracing all peoples. In Iraq, that concept was Ba’athism. And while it was more identified with the Sunni minority than with the Shia majority, it endured for decades as a vehicle for national unity, albeit a cruel and cynical one.
  • Sectarianism thus came to frame Iraqi politics, making it impossible to organize non-sectarian parties on the basis of, say, shared socioeconomic interests. In Iraqi politics today (leaving aside the Kurds), seldom does a Sunni Arab vote for a Shia Arab, or a Shia for a Sunni. There is competition among Shia parties and among Sunni parties; but few voters cross the sectarian line –
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • But those initial demonstrations, often lacking identifiable leaders and programs, soon gave way to old habits.
  • Egypt retains the strongest sense of nation-statehood in the region; nonetheless, it has become a shattered and divided society, and it will take many years to recover.
  • Other states are even less fortunate. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s evil buffoonery in Libya has given way to Bedouin tribalism that will be hard to meld into a functioning nation-state, if Libya ever was such an entity.
  • And Syria, a fragile amalgam of Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish, Christian, and other sects, is unlikely ever to be reconstructed as the state it once was.
8More

Lethal Malfeasance in Malawi - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hal-malfeasance-in-malawi.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Lethal Malfeasance in Malawi
  • a $50 million corruption scandal
  • Government investigators believe $500 million in donor money was lost to graft during the eight-year reign of Ms. Banda’s predecessor.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Donor states started withholding aid, which makes up 40 percent of the country’s budget.
  • “For every one I have arrested,” she said of government crooks, “I have lost a whole village of votes.”
  • In February the health minister admitted that Malawi’s central medical stores held only 5 percent of the drugs they were supposed to stock.
  • Dr. Chiudzu blamed not corruption but an overcentralized state: The hospital is barred from buying supplies itself, yet the Health Ministry, which holds all the procurement power, is unable to meet needs.
  • Ms. Banda appeared to agree that poor governance was as lethal as corruption. “
1 - 12 of 12
Showing 20▼ items per page