by Alex Evans | Aug 18, 2011 | Economics and development, UK
Jeff Sachs in the FT on how OECD countries could finally get their acts together:
An improved fiscal policy in the transatlantic economies would therefore be based on three realities. First, it would expand investments in human and infrastructure capital [especially, Sachs makes clear elsewhere in the article, low carbon energy]. Second, it would cut wasteful spending, for instance in misguided military engagements in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Third, it would balance budgets in the medium term, in no small part through tax increases on high personal incomes and international corporate profits that are shielded by loopholes and overseas tax havens.
All sounds good and sensible to me. Now read it again and reflect on the fact that Britain’s coalition flunks on all three counts. Hope Ed Miliband subscribes to the FT.
by Alex Evans | Aug 18, 2011 | Economics and development, Global system
Never mind deckchairs on the Titanic. Vinay Gupta (find him here on Twitter) has come up with the perfect metaphor to describe governance breakdown in the face of systemic global risks:
When is soon, probably. We could keep rolling sixes and spin it out another 22 years, but we’re getting to the point where relatively small system shocks could propagate uncontrollably like a fat man falling through ice on a pond. I can’t tell you when, but I can tell you that the US is in trouble, Europe is in trouble, they’ve printed insane amounts of money and it hasn’t stabilized things, assets are being devalued in complex processes which hide inflation and still there are no new jobs. People kick around terms like “stagflation” but what’s happening is simple and subtle: nothing.
We’re treading water. We’re like a shark that’s stopped swimming. We’re a cartoon character, all flailing legs, hovering above the abyss.
And at the bottom of it are those poor bastards in Africa, in rural India, South America, Asia, eating rice and bugs because there’s nothing else to eat. And you’ve ignored them your entire life as the money poured from “we know not where” into the First World Lifestyle, which squandered the wealth which could have fed and housed every human being on earth on an extractive economy which wastes 40% of the food produced and has a billion fat people, including me.
by Alex Evans | Aug 18, 2011 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrdSOrfNG1c[/youtube]
by Alex Evans | Aug 17, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Global system
Philip Zelikow nails it in the FT:
In the past foreign policy mainly consisted of adjusting relations between states – what they will do with or to each other. Now foreign policy mainly consists of adjusting the domestic policies of different states – of what they will do with or to their own people.
Conclusion:
Urgent agendas of domestic renewal on every continent turn out to be a common agenda, for global renewal.
by Alex Evans | Aug 13, 2011 | Economics and development
Lest you think international development faces a tough political context here in the UK, let’s pause for a moment to check in on the latest thinking on foreign aid over at the right-wing Heritage Foundation in the US:
Countries that receive U.S. foreign aid routinely oppose U.S. diplomatic initiatives and vote against the U.S. in the United Nations.
While linking humanitarian and security aid to support of U.S. policy priorities would undermine the purposes and effect of that aid, the effectiveness of development aid in improving economic growth and development among recipients remains dubious.
Therefore, the U.S. has no compelling reason preventing it from explicitly linking disbursement of development assistance to support for U.S. policy priorities in the United Nations.
QED!
