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After Bangladesh, Seeking New Sources - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...adesh-seeking-new-sources.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 16 May 13 - No Cached
  • Dozens of impoverished countries make T-shirts and other very basic clothing. But only a few countries — really just China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and to some extent Cambodia and Pakistan — have developed highly complex systems for producing and shipping tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of identical, high-quality shirts, blouses or trousers to a global retailer within several weeks of receiving an order.
  • 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.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Big retailers and fashion companies have repeatedly tried and failed to develop alternatives, experimenting in India, Africa and Latin America, only to run into infrastructure bottlenecks and shortages of skilled managers or workers.
  • India was not organized for large-scale, timely production,
  • Africa did not have enough workers with the right skills for high-volume labeling and shipping,
  • and Latin America did not have enough workers interested in operating sewing machines.
  • What may save Bangladesh from a sharp, immediate drop in export orders is simply that most Southeast Asian factories are already fully booked with orders from multinationals fleeing China’s ever-rising costs.
  • In Guatemala, the quality was excellent, he said, but, “They can’t handle big orders and they’re slow on delivery.”
  • “For this year, it’s impossible — we’re already full,”
  • Indonesia’s national training center for seamstresses — women make up 98 percent of the students — is here in Semarang, producing 12,000 graduates a year. But even that isn’t enough. Four factories with a combined employment of 30,000 are to open in the next year in Semarang, and many more factories are being built nearby.
  • “It’s going to take time, but it’s going to eventually filter out all over the place,” he said. “It’ll take two or three years.”
  • Newly opened factories have started competing for scarce seamstresses by offering free meals and free health insurance
  • Dozens of impoverished countries make T-shirts and other very basic clothing. But only a few countries — really just China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and to some extent Cambodia and Pakistan — have developed highly complex systems for producing and shipping tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of identical, high-quality shirts, blouses or trousers to a global retailer within several weeks of receiving an order.
  • He said that he and a couple of other suppliers of elite retail chains always worried about Bangladesh’s reliance on high-rise factories,
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After Bangladesh, Seeking New Sources - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...adesh-seeking-new-sources.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 17 May 13 - No Cached
  • Bennett Model helped pioneer the exporting of garments from China in 1975, the year before Mao Zedong died,
  • Buying from Bangladesh, said Mr. Model, “has been politically incorrect ever since problems started there, so a lot of major players had already been looking for alternatives.”
  • Western executives are checking on potential new suppliers in southern Vietnam, central Cambodia and the hinterlands of Java in Indonesia.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “Right now, the name of Bangladesh just gives a bad rep to a company,”
  • Bangladesh, which is the world’s second-largest garment manufacturer after China
  • Garment manufacturing makes up a fifth of the economy in Bangladesh and four-fifths of its exports,
  • “People are on the one hand looking at contingency plans in case the unrest gets worse,” said Bruce Rockowitz, the group president and chief executive of Hong Kong-based Li & Fung, one of the world’s largest sourcing companies.
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Ceiling Collapse at Shoe Factory in Cambodia Kills 2 - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ctory-in-cambodia-kills-2.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 16 May 13 - No Cached
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 16 May 13
       
      Why do you think this is a Hong Kong-based company?
  • “We visually always inspected them, but you need true engineers,” he said.
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 16 May 13
       
      Noe that he says that they always visually inspected the sites... are they the owners?  the managers?  To what degree are they responsible?  And to whom?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Multinationals have been looking to Cambodia as one of several countries that could be alternatives to Bangladesh. Cambodia has some of the lowest pay in Asia, with workers earning $120 a month in salary and benefits before overtime. That compares with just $37 in Bangladesh.
  • Bruce Rockowitz, the group president and chief executive at Hong Kong-based Li & Fung, one of the world’s largest sourcing companies,
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Carbon Dioxide Level Passes Long-Feared Milestone - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ses-long-feared-milestone.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 11 May 13 - No Cached
  • Gene Ellis on 11 May 13
     
    "there"
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Europe's Irrelevant Austerity Debate by Daniel Gros - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ogoff-in-europe-by-daniel-gros
shared by Gene Ellis on 08 May 13 - No Cached
  • But the debate about austerity and the cost of high public-debt levels misses a key point: Public debt owed to foreigners is different from debt owed to residents.
  • If foreign debt matters more than public debt, the key variable requiring adjustment is the external deficit, not the fiscal deficit. A country that has a balanced current account does not need any additional foreign capital. That is why risk premiums are continuing to fall in the eurozone, despite high political uncertainty in Italy and continuing large fiscal deficits elsewhere. The peripheral countries’ external deficits are falling rapidly, thus diminishing the need for foreign financing.
  • And the evidence confirms that the euro crisis is not really about sovereign debt, but about foreign debt.
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  • Second, if foreign debt is the real problem, the escalating debate about the Reinhart/Rogoff results is irrelevant for the euro crisis. Countries that have their own currency, like the United Kingdom – and especially the United States, which can borrow from foreigners in dollars – do not face a direct financing constraint.
  • But austerity can never be self-defeating for the external adjustment. On the contrary, the larger the fall in domestic demand in response to a cut in government expenditure, the more imports will fall and the stronger the improvement in the current account – and thus ultimately the reduction in the risk premium – will be.
  • By contrast, in the case of debt owed to foreigners, higher interest rates lead to a welfare loss for the country as a whole, because the government must transfer resources abroad, which usually requires a combination of exchange-rate depreciation and a reduction in domestic expenditure.
  • But the eurozone’s peripheral countries simply did not have a choice: they had to reduce their deficits, because the foreign capital on which their economies were so dependent was no longer available.
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Europe's work is far from over - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 04 May 13 - No Cached
  • Perhaps it should not be surprising that Europe still looks to be in serious trouble. Growth has been dismal; the euro-zone gross domestic product has been below its 2007 level for six years, and little growth is forecast this year.
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