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Gene Ellis

'Run For Your Lives': Printing Money with the IMF - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...of-last-resort-a-796280-3.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Most European leaders have nothing against using the central bank's reserves as a source of financing, as became evident at the Cannes summit. Important politicians like European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and French President Sarkozy proposed making IMF "special drawing rights" available
  • It appears that the euro crisis is approaching its endgame. Many promises made when the common currency was introduced have already been broken. The initial stipulation that only stable countries be allowed in, for example, quickly proved illusory once Italy and Greece were accepted.
  • German taxpayers were also promised that they would never be held liable for the debts of other countries in the euro zone. But then came the first and second bailout packages for Greece and the European bailout fund.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The question the German government now faces is whether to preserve the monetary union or have a stable currency.
Gene Ellis

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ICPINT/Resources/270056-1255977007108/110428_ICP-PRE... - 0 views

siteresources.worldbank.org/...110428_ICP-PREM_Final.pdf

worldbank resources ppp

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 13
     
    PPPs for countries, p.138
Gene Ellis

Ghana Says, Hey, Guess What? We're Not Poor Anymore! | Todd Moss | Global Development: ... - 0 views

blogs.cgdev.org/...2%80%99re-not-poor-anymore.php

ghana says guess poor todd moss development views center

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 13
     
    "soft"
Gene Ellis

In Japan, the Fax Machine Is Anything but a Relic - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-is-anything-but-a-relic.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s.
  • But its very success has made the fax a hard habit to kick.
Gene Ellis

European Union Leaders Agree to Slimmer Budget - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ropean-union-budget-talks.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Galileo, a grossly overbudget and still unfinished satellite navigation project that aims to free Europe from its dependence on the United States’ global positioning system, escaped the cuts and is to receive 6.3 billion euros from 2014 to 2020.
  • But he cheered the preservation of heavy spending on farm subsidies, of which France is the biggest beneficiary.
  • And about 1 billion euros in cuts came from the part of the budget used to employ 55,000 people, including 6,000 translators,
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • he devoted much of a postsummit news conference to boasting about his steadfast defense of British interests, particularly a multibillion-dollar rebate that Britain receives each year on its payments.
  • In the Baltic nations, for example, farmers are furious that a system of cash payments to support agriculture is skewed in favor of farmers from richer countries like France and the Netherlands. Latvian farmers say they get less than 40 percent of the European Union’s average payment level for each acre of land. Dairy farmers say they fare even worse, getting just 20 percent of what their Dutch counterparts receive.
Gene Ellis

European Union Leaders Agree to Slimmer Budget - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ropean-union-budget-talks.html

european union

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Why should a Latvian cow deserve less money than a French, Dutch or even Romanian one?
  • In a system that requires unanimous approval of budget decisions, what Latvia wants for its dairy farmers — or Estonia for its railways, Hungary for its poorer regions or Spain for its fishermen — is no small matter.
  • The colossal effort that was required to agree to a sum of about 960 billion euros ($1.3 trillion), a mere 1 percent of the bloc’s gross domestic product, exposed once again the stubborn attachment to national priorities that has made reaching agreements on how to save the euro so painful in recent years.
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  • the ordeal as “not a pleasant experience,” but said, “It only happens every seven years, so we can tolerate it.”
  • “What we’re seeing is that European integration is very important to European leaders as long as it doesn’t imply that someone has to be paying for someone else,”
  • The spectacle of European leaders haggling through the night over amounts of money representing rounding errors in their national accounts demonstrated vividly their reluctance to make collective policies that erode their nations’ sovereignty.
  • Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands were among the Northern European nations that fought hard to reduce agricultural subsidies and increase spending on research and development to bolster the bloc’s global competitiveness.
  • farm spending remained the largest single portion of the budget, accounting for about 38 percent of the total — although that was down from about 42 percent in the previous seven-year budget period.
Gene Ellis

Europe's Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-plan-limps-to-crossroads.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Galileo — first proposed in 1994, more than 20 years after America started its own system, and initially promoted as a big potential moneymaker — “can’t give a direct return on investment, but politically it is very important for Europe to have its own autonomous system,” said Mr. Magliozzi of Telespazio.
  • It is also designed to be far more precise than the American version.
  • Galileo has been financed almost entirely by the European Union since 2007. It is the first and so far only major infrastructure project managed by the European Commission.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Critics mocked it as “the Common Agricultural Policy in the sky,” a reference to Europe’s program of subsidies for farmers, which eats up nearly 40 percent of the union’s total budget.
  • A 2011 report to the European Parliament listed a catalog of troubles, noting that Galileo had been particularly blighted in its early years by a familiar problem: political pressure from individual countries to skew the project in favor of their own companies and other immediate interests.
  • It quoted the OHB chief, Berry Smutny, describing Galileo as doomed to fail without major changes and “a waste of E.U. taxpayers’ money championed by French interests.” Mr. Smutny, who disputed the comments attributed to him, was fired by the company.
  • Astrium won an initial Galileo contract for four satellites. But contracts worth $1 billion for 22 more satellites have all gone to OHB, now one of the primary corporate beneficiaries of Galileo. British companies have also done well, a boon that has helped erode Britain’s initial hostility to the project.
  • Washington also asked why, when many European nations were increasingly unable to fulfill their military obligations as members of NATO because of defense cuts, they wanted to splash billions on a project that replicated an existing system paid for by the United States.
  • They acknowledge that Galileo, most of whose services will be free like those of GPS, will not earn much.
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