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The big questions for 2012 - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...16-11e1-b7ec-00144feabdc0.html

2012 outlook -

shared by Yadkin River on 04 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • With America gazing inward, some will look to China for money and leadership. This began visibly to happen in 2011, when European officials ended an EU summit by jetting straight off to Beijing, in a humiliatingly unsuccessful effort to drum up Chinese interest in buying more European debt.
  • But the leadership of China’s Communist party will also spend much of the year jostling for position. While the identities of the new president and prime minister are widely assumed to be known – with Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang slated respectively for those positions – the slots just below the top two are up for grabs. China’s urge to concentrate on domestic affairs will be accentuated by a growing nervousness about political and economic instability at home.
  • and growing social unrest in China’s manufacturing heartlands
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • But it will also ensure China has little energy to devote to elaborate international co-operation.
  • Economic inequality: Peaceful acceptance of deep differentials is coming to an end
  • The big debate of 2012 will be over the role of government in the economy,
  • Although this sounds like an economic issue, it is really about politics.
  • Public v private: The state starts to run out of time on how big it should be
  • Headlines such as this recent one in the Los Angeles Times – “Six Walmart heirs are wealthier than US’ entire bottom 30 per cent” – epitomise the new mood. Such scrutiny of the lives and deeds of the “1 per cent” will become obsessive.
  • Yet there is compelling evidence that high inequality is also bad for a nation’s health: it leads to higher political instability and more violence and it hurts competitiveness and growth.
  • This year, elections will take place in the US, France, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Egypt and South Korea. China will also change leadership.
  • In Russia, shame among educated classes that Vladimir Putin is just the latest tsar, combined with growing economic desperation and corruption in rural areas, makes another Russian Revolution plausible if not probable. And I would not be surprised to see mass protests in several central Asian countries, in Pakistan, again in Iran, in Algeria, Mexico, Venezuela or Cuba.
  • The difference from traditional technology is speed, scale and resilience. The immediacy, apparent veracity and emotional power of words and images that are instantly transmitted to thousands and then millions of people can transform existing currents of dissent into a raging flood
  • Social unrest: Technology to power rolling disruption to outright revolution
  • Energy: Fuel’s decisive shift in supply will boost security – at a price
  • Energy efficiency in the advanced countries has risen sharply, implying that their demand has peaked, and vast, commercially exploitable discoveries of oil and gas – especially gas – have been made in politically stable areas, including in the US. This suggests that in future gas will account for a much larger proportion of world energy supply. While these developments are positive for geopolitical stability, they may pose difficulties for the climate.
  • This is positive because gas is much cleaner than coal.
  • This means it will reclaim its role as the world’s biggest energy producer and, incredibly, become a net energy exporter.
  • Even in 2040, respected forecasts now envision that fossil fuels will still supply 80 per cent of the world’s energy needs.
  • However, energy security and national security for much of the world will be improved, as the influence of rogue oil states diminishes.
Yadkin River

Foreign investment in U.S. infrastructure causes security concerns | Homeland Security ... - 0 views

www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/cture-causes-security-concerns

ALCOA ownership infrastructure homeland

shared by Yadkin River on 21 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • the interest of foreign companies in buying U.S. critical infrastructure assets; that interest is now growing again, and the Obama administration is grappling with how to balance the promotion of commerce with the bolstering of security
  • The issue is coming back to the fore as foreign investors once again try to buy American industrial assets. The Obama administration has thus been forced to grapple with how to protect national security while promoting economic recovery.
  • The New York Times’s Eric Lipton wrote last month that in early December, the administration had threatened to block the proposed takeover by the Chinese government of a tiny Nevada gold mining company, according to executives for the company,
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  • Foreign investments in the U.S. are critical to economic growth and job creation here at home, but we have an obligation to prioritize national security,” the deputy Treasury secretary, Neal Wolin, said in a statement released in mid-December, in response to questions about the scrutiny of proposed deals.
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