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Optimism about an end to the euro crisis is wrong - FT.com - 0 views

  • Adjustment is the key to ending the eurozone crisis. The optimists are saying that this process of regaining competitiveness is now taking place.
  • This judgment is profoundly wrong.
  • In other words, the eurozone is adjusting at the expense of the rest of the world.
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  • But while the eurozone is a fixed-currency regime internally, it is nothing of the sort externally. The currency does exactly what textbooks say it should: it keeps on rising, thus offsetting the improvements in the current account. Last week the euro rose to more than $1.38 against the dollar.
  • The main problem with the rise in the euro’s external value is that it makes the internal adjustment harder. The crisis countries need to lower their export prices but the higher value of the euro raises the prices of exports to outside the eurozone.
  • It essentially says internal adjustment is not really happening.
  • Second, the prices of Spanish tradeable goods would have to fall against those of non-Spanish tradeable goods elsewhere in the eurozone.
  • Put bluntly: the scale of necessary adjustment is absolutely enormous. The IMF does not believe that this is going to happen.
  • In a monetary union adjustment is hard without any transfers and without a fiscal union.
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Multinationals beach tax bills in Spanish shells - FT.com - 0 views

  • From here a single employee presided over a company that from 2009 to 2011 made €9.9bn of net profits, all while earning an annual salary of only €55,000.
  • Exxon’s Spanish subsidiary was structured as a so-called ETVE, a type of holding company used by many multinationals, including Hewlett-Packard, Pepsi, Eli Lilly, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Vodafone.
  • According to the ETVE’s 2009 accounts, Exxon was able to transfer €3.6bn of dividends from its unit in Luxembourg to Spain. A dividend of €2.26bn was then paid on to its US parent without incurring withholding taxes that it would typically have to pay when moving money outside of the EU.
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  • ransfers from a Luxembourg company to the US would have typically been subject to a withholding tax. Last year, after attracting the attention of Spanish tax authorities, Exxon quietly closed down the operation.
  • “Normally you would have to pay a 10 per cent withholding tax at source to send profits to the US,
  • Spain introduced the ETVE in the mid-1990s to encourage foreign investment, and better compete with Luxembourg and Holland for international companies seeking tax-efficient European holding structures. It also allowed for foreign companies to take advantage of Spain’s strong network of bilateral tax treaties with countries in Latin America, such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, which can offer more favourable tax rates than other countries. Once the ETVE has been established all overseas dividends that are paid into it are exempt from tax in Spain, and can be easily moved on to a final destination, providing a small number of conditions have been met. Most importantly, corporation tax must have been paid in the country of origin on the dividends being transferred, and companies using ETVEs to house shareholdings in foreign subsidiaries must not be resident in any country identified by Spain as a tax haven.
  • In fact, Linthal is an ETVE used by Ambev, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian-based brewer, to distribute dividends from several Latin American beer brands, such as Argentina’s Quilmes and Cervecería Boliviana Nacional, to its holding company in Brazil.
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Gaps in Graduates' Skills Confound Morocco - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “It’s sad to note that the state of education is worse now than it was 20 years ago,
  • “How is it that a segment of our youth cannot realize their legitimate aspirations at professional, physical and social levels?”
  • They say that their education has left them ill-equipped for the workplace.
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  • but she is worried that the education she is getting, in a public system that she faults on quality, will not be enough to win her a place in a job market that she says is often skewed by bribery and favoritism.
  • “Students do not have an equal chance to succeed,” she said, adding that many parents had gone into debt trying to ensure that their children have some chance for a future by paying for them to study in private schools. “The quality of education all depends on the parents’ income.”
  • about one-third of the country’s civil servants work in the sector.
  • In his speech he called for mandatory foreign language training in university degree courses and a new emphasis on vocational and technical training.
  • In the 1980s, a political decision to reclaim the Moroccan identity resulted in a change in the language of instruction, with elementary and high school classes shifting to Arabic. Most higher education programs, however, remained in French.
  • Many critics attribute high dropout rates to this language switch. University students, they say, are struggling to learn in a language they barely understand.
  • Mr. Mrabet said other problems included an excessive focus in graduate training on quantity over quality; a failure to adapt courses to workplace opportunities; overcrowded lecture halls; student strikes; and school financing issues.
  • Instead of hiring graduates of the Moroccan public education system, recruiters tend to look for graduates educated abroad or the products of Moroccan private schools,
  • “Call centers are the biggest employers in Morocco with about 50,000 jobs that generally require good skills in French,” he said. “In some fields, like I.T., it is difficult to find people with the adequate training.”
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In Uzbekistan, the Practice of Forced Labor Lives On During the Cotton Harvest - NYTime... - 0 views

  • In Uzbekistan, the Practice of Forced Labor Lives On During the Cotton Harvest
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Amid Rows of Tin Shacks, a Luxury Hotel Rises - Slide Show - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Amid Rows of Tin Shacks, a Luxury Hotel Rises
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BBC News - Ukraine crisis: Yanukovych and the tycoons - 0 views

  • Ukraine crisis: Yanukovych and the tycoons
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Out of Europe's Jobs Crisis, Voices of the Young - Multimedia Feature - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Out of Europe’s Long Jobs Crisis, Voices of the Young
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How to Get a Job at Google - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • How to Get a Job at Google
  • noted that Google had determined that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything.”
  • “Good grades certainly don’t hurt.” Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage.
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  • your coding ability
  • the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.
  • The second, he added, “is leadership — in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership.
  • What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead.
  • What else? Humility and ownership. “It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in,” he said, to try to solve any problem — and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others.
  • “Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure,” said Bock.
  • You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time.
  • The least important attribute they look for is “expertise.”
  • Too many colleges, he added, “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended adolescence.”
  • For most young people, though, going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers. But Bock is saying something important to them, too: Beware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do with what you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it)
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RealTime Economic Issues Watch | Transatlantic Economic Sanctions Against Russia - 0 views

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Transatlantic Economic Sanctions Against Russia
  • First, I have recommended to government officials that US and EU negotiators give priority to energy cooperation and promotion of US exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe during the fourth round of talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that start on March 10 in Brussels. Efforts should be made to conclude this part of the agreement quickly and immediately implement the obligations on a provisional basis
  • Second, the United States and the European Union should call for special consultations in the International Energy Agency (IEA) to review current oil and gas supply arrangements and reserves in Europe. The IEA should also be called on to assess the implications of the crisis in Ukraine for member and nonmember countries and their options for dealing with potential supply disruptions. Ukraine participates in consultations with IEA members on a regular basis anyway and clearly should be doing so now.
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  • they would help inoculate European economies against the adverse effects of energy disruptions in the medium term.
  • Consideration should be given to invoking GATT Article XXI, which provides exceptions for national security reasons from rights and obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO), for example. Invoking this WTO exception would allow across-the-board actions against Russia without prior notification or even justification. The national security exception of Article XXI is that broad. In brief, the United States and the European Union could remove in one step all the WTO benefits they accorded Russia when it acceded to the WTO in August 2012. Doing so would disrupt bilateral trade and investment, possibly kicking tariffs back up to Smoot-Hawley levels of the 1930s.
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Changing Course, Russia Will Sell Rubles Instead of Buying - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Changing Course, Russia Will Sell Rubles Instead of Buying
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Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts - BBC News - 0 views

  • Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts
  • Europe's failure to pay its way in Nato is seriously worrying the US, which already provides 75% of all Nato defence expenditure (the US spends 3.8% of its GDP on defence).
  • Without any of its own maritime patrol aircraft, the UK recently had to request the help of Nato allies to search for suspected Russian submarines off the west coast of Scotland. In Germany there have been reports of serious malfunctions in military equipment.
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  • These figures are in line with earlier research carried out by the Royal United Services Institute which projected that UK defence spending could fall to about 1.7% of GDP by the end of the decade.
  • Nato has already set a target that member states should each spend a minimum of 2% of their national income or GDP on defence.
  • Contrast that with Russia's defence spending, which is rising from 3.4% of its GDP this year to 4.2% next year ($81bn or £52.2bn). Russia is also stepping up its military activity. A separate report by Ian Brzezinski for the Atlantic Council says there is also an "exercise gap" between Russia and Nato. Since 2013 Russia has conducted at least six military exercises involving 65,000-160,000 troops.
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U.S. Embassy Criticizes Pardons in Nigeria Corruption Cases - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Mr. Ribadu once estimated that between independence and the end of military rule in 1999, Nigeria had lost more than $380 billion to corruption and mismanagement. In recent years, tens of billions of dollars have been siphoned from a federal oil revenues account, with virtually no accounting for it.
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BBC News - Explore DR Congo in maps and graphs - 0 views

  • Explore DR Congo in maps and graphs
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European Borders Tested as Money Is Moved to Shield Wealth - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • European Borders Tested as Money Is Moved to Shield Wealth
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Chevron and Ukraine Set Shale Gas Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Last year Ukraine consumed about 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, most of it imported from Russia, while producing about 19 billion cubic meters, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
  • Shale gas technologies are altering the geopolitics of energy from Russia to the Middle East. Three territories — Russia, Iran and Qatar — hold about half the conventional reserves of natural gas. But shale is found in many other places, including India, China, Australia and in Eastern Europe, undercutting the power of the oil sheikhs and the Kremlin.
  • Ukraine, despite producing some domestic gas by conventional extraction, remains highly dependent on Russia’s Gazprom, which cut off its supplies in 2006 and 2009 in pricing disputes. As a result, Ukraine pays exceptionally high prices for natural gas,
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  • Europe depends on Russia for about 40 percent of its imported gas, most transmitted through Ukraine.
  • The appearance of imported cheap liquefied natural gas on the European market from Qatar and reduced demand have already led Gazprom to negotiate cuts of about 10 percent in contracts with Western European utilities,
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Companies Quietly Apply Biofuel Tools to Household Products - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Companies Quietly Apply Biofuel Tools to Household Products
  • A liquid laundry detergent made by Ecover, a Belgian company that makes “green” household products including the Method line, contains an oil produced by algae whose genetic code was altered using synthetic biology. The algae’s DNA sequence was changed in a lab, according to Tom Domen, the company’s manager for long-term innovation.
  • Unilever recently announced that it was using algae oil made by a company called Solazyme in Lux, a popular soap
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  • An ingredient crucial to malaria drugs, artemisinin, is already being produced from a yeast altered through synthetic biology. Specific brands have not been disclosed.
  • Solazyme points to substances like rennet, a key processing aid in cheese-making that requires an enzyme called chymosin to promote clotting. Traditionally, calves’ stomachs were used to provide that enzyme to curdle milk for cheese. But since the late 1990s, rennet has been generated by a microbe whose genetic code was altered with the insertion of a single bovine gene, and that process is the one most widely in use now in the United States.
  • Solazyme describes the organism that produces the oil as “an optimized strain” of single-cell algae “that have been in existence longer than we have.”
  • Ecover buys the ingredient, algal oil from Solazyme, which used to describe itself as a synthetic biology company but has taken the term off its website.
  • Solazyme pointed to the environmental benefits of its processes and noted that the World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Alliance and other environmental groups support its work. “We use molecular biology and standard industrial fermentation to produce renewable, sustainable algal oils that help alleviate pressures on the fragile ecosystems around the Equator that are frequently subject to deforestation and habitat destruction,”
  • The groups acknowledge that the Solazyme oil itself — in the Ecover detergent — does not contain genetically engineered ingredients in the conventional meaning of the term. Rather, the organism producing the oil has been genetically altered.
  • Some of the same companies are now busily churning out vanillin, resveratrol and citrus flavorings from yeast and other microorganisms that are a product of synthetic biology for use in foods.
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