Feed aggregator

Serbie : la détresse des petits agriculteurs forcés de céder leurs terres
Nouvelle jacquerie des agriculteurs en Serbie : « ils ne veulent plus nous donner d'argent »
Serbie : les agriculteurs sont (encore une fois) en colère
Serbie : les agriculteurs bloquent les routes de Voïvodine

/ Courrier des Balkans, Serbie, Economie

In a further step towards opening accession negotiations with North Macedonia, a joint commission of historians from Sofia and Skopje reached a compromise on how to label historical figures from the common history, as well as to celebrate them jointly.

There are many things to love about France. But a stated policy of colour blindness is not one of them.

Az MTI számításai szerint mintegy 450 ezren buliztak az idei Szigeten. A nyitónap teltházas volt, további kettő, a pénteki és a szombati csaknem teltházas - mondta a fesztivál főszervezője hétfőn este az MTI-nek.

Straumann hat ein starkes erstes Halbjahr 2022 hingelegt. Der Dentalimplantat-Hersteller steigerte den Umsatz und den Reingewinn deutlich. Nebst den Zahlen gab das Unternehmen den Rücktritt von Finanzchef Peter Hackel bekannt.

Der Hörgerätehersteller Sonova gibt wegen schlechterer Nachfrage in einigen Schlüsselmärkten eine Gewinnwarnung heraus. Dies schlage auf den Umsatz, teilte Sonova am Dienstag mit. Gleichzeitig würden höhere Kosten für Transport und Komponenten den Gewinn belasten.

Dass Melanie Oesch (34) extrem gut jodeln kann, ist bekannt. Dass sie auch eine Tierflüsterin ist, beweist sie beim Lama-Spaziergang bei «Achtung, Reto, los!». Ausserdem verrät sie Reto Scherrer, in welchen Situationen sie keine Lust hat zu jodeln.

A vágsellyei városháza a helyi kerékpáros infrastruktúra fejlesztésén dolgozik. A város egy projekt keretében olyan kerékpárutakat hoz létre, amelyek az állomás előtti területet a városközponttal és három iskolával fogják összekötni.

We won't stop illegal plundering of the seas by those who don't respect the rules if the EU doesn't tackle problem of flagging and reflagging of convenience.

In einem hart umkämpften Spiel kann sich die Schweizer U20-Nati an der WM gegen Österreich durchsetzen. Ein knapper Sieg reicht für die Viertelfinal-Qualifikation.

The production floor of an apparel exporting factory in Bangladesh. Credit: ILO/Marcel Crozet

By Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Rebeca Grynspan and Pamela Coke-Hamilton
GENEVA, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

We are in the toughest period the world economy has faced since the creation of the multilateral system more than three-quarters of a century ago. A quadruple shock of COVID, climate change, conflict and cost-of-living has undone years of hard-fought development gains.

As financial conditions tighten, even countries that had seemed on track to prosperity and stability now stare into the abyss of debt distress, fragility and uncertainty about the future.

Coordinated, multilateral action is necessary to tackle the crises we face. Both aid and trade have key roles to play in reversing the impacts of this quadruple shock and putting the world back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

We head the three international agencies that comprise the Geneva trade hub – the World Trade Organization (WTO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC).

The WTO makes and monitors the rules for global trade. UNCTAD delivers research and consensus-building to guide governments. ITC helps small business go global, especially firms led by women and young entrepreneurs. We work together so that trade works better for development.

All three of us share a deep commitment to trade-led prosperity. All three of us understand that a world in crisis means no more business as usual. And all three of us want our organizations to “walk the talk” on making aid and trade deliver for real people.

To guide aid and trade towards a better world, policymakers need to pivot in three fundamental ways.

First, make trade greener. Global trade can play an important role in a transition to a low-carbon economy. Preliminary research at the WTO suggests that removing tariffs and regulatory trade barriers for a set of energy-related environmental goods would reduce global CO2 emissions by 0.6% in 2030 just from improved energy efficiency, with additional potential gains from innovation spillovers and as lower prices accelerate the shift towards renewable energy and less carbon-intensive products.

Second, make trade more inclusive. Promoting greater trade by small businesses and greater participation by women and youth make companies and countries more competitive, drives economic transformation and reduces poverty.

Yet ITC business surveys found that one only out of every five exporting companies is women-led. WTO data show that micro, small and medium-sized firms represent around 95 percent of all companies globally but only one-third of total exports.

Third, make trade more connected. In our networked world, the future of trade is through digital channels and platforms, especially for small businesses. During the pandemic, we saw how doing business online went from being useful to critical for survival. UNCTAD data shows that digitally delivered services reached almost two-thirds the level of global services exports.

These themes were discussed at the Global Review of Aid-for-Trade, which took place 27-29th July in Geneva.

The event took place one month after the WTO’s successful Twelfth Ministerial Conference, which put trade multilateralism back on track and delivered a landmark agreement on fisheries subsidies, and two months before the COP27 meeting in Egypt (November 6-18) that could determine the world’s chances to keep the 1.5C target alive.

The data shows promising signs that aid-for-trade is tilting towards greater sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity. OECD and WTO data reveal a record high of nearly US$50 billion in aid for trade disbursements in 2020, of which half were either climate or gender related, and one-third supported the digital economy.

Despite growing budgetary pressures at home, it is critically important to continue and increase these aid-for-trade flows.

Apart from a stronger thematic focus on sustainability, inclusivity and connectivity, maximizing the contribution of aid for trade to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires a resolute focus on the “where” and “how” of delivering development results.

This means a focus on those countries whose trade and development needs are highest – particularly Least Developed Countries and fragile/conflict-affected countries – and regional initiatives like African Continental Free Trade Area, to ensure they become stepping-stones to wider and more inclusive regional value chains and trade-led growth.

It means partnership across international organizations. The WTO, UNCTAD, and ITC already collaborate on initiatives like the Global Trade Helpdesk, which simplifies market research by bringing key trade and business information into a single portal, as well as on support to cotton-exporting countries in Africa.

Last but certainly not least, it means mobilizing public and private finance. The IFC estimates a worldwide US$300 billion financing gap for women, and the global trade finance gap has nearly doubled from an already-staggering $1.5 trillion. Without access to finance, firms cannot grow, diversify or formalize.

We want to end with a call to action. Creating a more sustainable, inclusive and connected future is the moon shot of our times. Aid, trade and multilateralism – working together – are part of the solution.

It is normal and understandable that governments act to shore up their own economies in troubled times. But we must act now to ensure that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable can still see a pathway to prosperity through global trade.

The joint opinion piece is authored by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UN Conference on Trade and Development, and Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director, International Trade Centre.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Levették a lélegeztetőgépről, és beszélni tudott a környezetével Salman Rushdie – közölte az indiai születésű brit-amerikai író ügynöke. Rushdie-t pénteken egy előadáson késsel támadott meg egy férfi New Yorkban.

A 75 éves szerzőt egy nyilvános eseményen tartott pódiumbeszélgetésen érte a támadás a New York-i Chautauqua Intézetben, az eseményen az üldöztetésnek kitett írók helyzetéről volt szó. Az erőszakos incidenst követően helikopterrel szállították egy pennsylvaniai kórházba, ahol megműtötték.

A támadás elkövetőjét, egy 24 éves férfit, a New Jersey-ben élő Hadi Matart a rendőrség őrizetbe vette. Emberölés kísérletével, valamint halálos fegyverrel elkövetett súlyos testi sértéssel vádolják. Védője azt közölte, hogy Matar ártatlannak vallotta magát, de együttműködőnek mutatkozott a hatóságokkal. Tettének indítéka egyelőre nem ismert. Sajtójelentések szerint a muszlim vallású férfi az iráni rezsim szimpatizánsa.

Rushdie szerzőtársa, Aitish Taseer szombaton este közösségi oldalán írta, hogy barátját levették a lélegeztetőgépről, “beszélni, és már viccelődni is tudott”. Rushdie ügynöke, Andrew Wylie megerősítette az információt, ugyanakkor közölte, hogy Rushdie állapota továbbra is súlyos. A korábbi hírek szerint a támadó 10-15-ször szúrta meg. Elsősorban a fején és a hasán érték sérülések, károsodott a mája, valamint súlyos kézideg-károsodást is szenvedett, emellett valószínűleg egyik szemét is elveszíti.

Rushdie 1988-ban megjelent Sátáni versek című könyvét istenkáromlás miatt Iránban betiltották, 1989-ben fatvát, iszlám vallás alapú halálos ítéletet mondtak ki rá, az iráni rezsim több millió dolláros vérdíjat tűzött ki fejére, amelyet 2012-ben, egy részben állami vallási szervezet 3,3 millió dollárra emelt.

A támadást többek mellett elítélte Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, és Anthony Albanese ausztrál kormányfő.

 

The post Salman Rushdie-t levették a lélegeztető gépről appeared first on .

A Russian-backed separatist court in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk charged five foreign nationals captured fighting with Ukrainian forces with being mercenaries on Monday (15 August), saying three could face the death penalty, Russian media reported.

Während die EU angesichts des Krieges in der Ukraine derzeit versucht, engere Beziehungen zu Demokratien auf der ganzen Welt zu knüpfen, wurde eine Region bisher weitgehend vernachlässigt, obwohl sie ein großes Potenzial für eine Partnerschaft bieten würde: Lateinamerika.

Die Ellenbogen-Challenge geht auf Tiktok zurzeit viral. Eigentlich scheint die Aufgabe einfach: Die Unterarme zusammendrücken und dann die Ellbogen durchstrecken. Bei der jungen Frau in diesem Video klappt das problemlos. Ihr Freund scheint seine Mühe damit zu haben.

YB statt Brügge. Kastriot Imeri (22) steht laut Blick-Infos vor einem Wechsel ins Wankdorf. Und er verzichtet auf Geld.

Kedden az ország túlnyomó részében felhős lesz felettünk az ég. Egyes térségekben - főként a Zsolnai kerületben - esőzésekre, s akár intenzív viharokra is lehet számítani. A reggeli órákban köd is kialakulhat.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are slowing, even contracting, as prices rise again. Thus, the World Bank warns, “Surging energy and food prices heighten the risk of a prolonged period of global stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.”

In March, Reuters reported, “With surging oil prices, concerns about the hawkishness of the Federal Reserve and fears of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, the mood on Wall Street feels like a return to the 1970s”.

Anis Chowdhury

Stagflation in the 1970s
Worse, it seems few lessons have been learnt from the last stagflation episode. There is no agreed formal definition of stagflation, which refers to a combination of economic stagnation with high inflation, e.g., when unemployment and prices both rise.

When growth is weak and many are jobless, prices rarely rise, keeping inflation low. The converse is true when growth is strong. This inverse relationship between economic activity and inflation broke down with supply shocks, particularly oil and other primary commodity price surges during 1972-75.

Non-oil primary commodity prices on The Economist index more than doubled between mid-1972 and mid-1974. Prices of some commodities, e.g., sugar and urea fertilizer, rose more than five-fold!

As costlier energy pushed up production expenses, businesses raised prices and cut jobs. With higher food, fuel and other prices, rising costs, coupled with income losses, reduced aggregate demand, further slowing the economy.

Fed chokes economy to cut inflation
Years before becoming US Fed chair in 2006, a Ben Bernanke co-authored paper noted, “Looking more specifically at individual recessionary episodes associated with oil price shocks, we find that … oil shocks, per se, were not a major cause of these downturns”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

They concluded, “an important part of the effect of oil price shocks on the economy results not from the change in oil prices, per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”. Their findings corroborated others, e.g., by James Tobin.

Following Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, other economists also found “in the postwar era there have been a series of episodes in which the Federal Reserve has in effect deliberately attempted to induce a recession to decrease inflation”.

The US Fed began raising interest rates from 1977, inducing an American economic recession in 1980. The economy briefly turned around when the Fed stopped raising interest rates. But this nascent recovery soon ended as Fed chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates even more sharply.

The federal funds target rate rose from around 10% to nearly 20%, triggering an “extraordinarily painful recession”. Unemployment rose to nearly 11% nationwide – the highest in the post-war era – and as high as 17% in some states, e.g., Michigan, leaving long-term scars.

Interest rate hikes reduced needed investments. Outside the US economy, these sharp and rapid interest rate hikes triggered debt crises in Poland, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Korea and elsewhere.

Earlier open economic policies meant “the increase in world interest rates, the increased debt burden of developing countries, the growth slowdown in the industrial world…contributed to the developing countries’ stagnation”.

Countries seeking International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial support had to agree to severe fiscal austerity, liberalization, deregulation and privatization policy conditionalities. With per capita incomes falling and poverty rising, Latin America and Africa “lost two decades”.

Stagflation reprise
The IMF chief economist recently reiterated, “Inflation is a major concern”. The Bank of International Settlements has warned, “We may be reaching a tipping point, beyond which an inflationary psychology spreads and becomes entrenched.”

Central bankers’ anti-inflationary efforts mainly involve raising interest rates. This approach slows economies, accelerating recessions, often triggering debt crises without quelling rising prices due to supply shocks.

Economic recoveries from the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC) remained tepid for a decade after initially bold fiscal responses were quickly abandoned. Meanwhile, ‘quantitative easing’, other unconventional monetary policies and the Covid-19 pandemic raised debt to unprecedented levels.

GFC trade protectionist responses, US and Japanese ‘reshoring’ of foreign investment in China, the pandemic, the Ukraine war and sanctions against Russia and its allies have reversed earlier trade liberalization.

Higher interest rates in the rich North have triggered capital flight, causing developing country currencies to depreciate, especially against the US dollar. The slowing world economy has reduced demand for many developing country exports, while most migrant worker remittances decline.

Interest rate hikes have worsened debt crises, particularly in the global South. The poorest countries have seen an $11bn surge in debt payments due while grappling with looming food crises. Thus, developing country vulnerabilities have been worsened by international trends over which they have little control.

Lessons not learned
Supply-side cost-push inflation is very different from the demand-pull variety. Without evidence, inflation ‘hawks’ insist that not acting urgently will be costlier later.

This may happen if surging demand is the main cause of inflation, especially if higher costs are easily passed on to consumers. However, episodes of dangerously accelerating inflation are very rare.

Acting too quickly against supply-shock inflation can be unwise. The 1970s’ energy crises sparked greater interest in energy efficiency. But higher interest rates in the 1980s deterred needed investments, even to reverse declining or stagnating productivity growth.

Raising interest rates also accelerated recessions. But similar commodity price rises before the 1970s’ and imminent stagflation episodes – involving energy and food respectively – obscure major differences.

For instance, ‘wage indexing’ – linking wage increases to price rises – enhanced the 1970s’ inflation spiral. But labour market deregulation since the 1980s has largely ended such indexation.

The IMF acknowledges globalization, ‘offshoring’ and labour-saving technical change have weakened unionization and workers’ bargaining power. With both elements of the 1970s’ wage-price spirals now insignificant, inflation is more likely to decline once supply bottlenecks ease.

But the wage-price spiral has also been replaced by a profit-price swirl. Reforms since the 1980s have also enhanced large corporations’ market power. Greater corporate discretion and reduced employees’ strength have thus increased profit shares, even during the pandemic.

In November 2021, Bloomberg observed the “fattest profits since 1950 debunks wage-inflation story of CEOs”. Meanwhile, the Guardian found “Companies’ profit growth has far outpaced workers’ wages”.

Corporations are taking advantage of the situation, passing on costs to customers. The net profits of the top 100 US corporations were “up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%”!

Meanwhile, many more consumers struggle to meet their basic needs. Interest rate hikes have also hurt wage-earners, as falling labour shares of national income have been exacerbated by real wage stagnation, even contraction.

Hence, policymakers should ease supply bottlenecks and address imbalances to accelerate progress, not raise interest rates causing the converse. Thus, they should rein in corporate power, improve competition and protect the vulnerable.

Allowing international price rises to pass through, while protecting the vulnerable, can accelerate the transition to more sustainable consumption and production, including cleaner renewable energy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• April Fool’s Inflation Medicine Threatens Progress
• When Saviours Are the Problem
• Deepening Stagflation: Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire
• Stagflation Threat: Be Pragmatic, Not Dogmatic
• Fighting Inflation Excuse for Class Warfare
• Finance Drives World to Stagflation

Die 14 Banken der Clientis-Gruppe haben in der ersten Jahreshälfte 2022 mehr verdient. Der Reingewinn stieg um 7,7 Prozent auf 31,7 Millionen Franken.

Die homophobe Aussage vom FCL-Goalie Marius Müller löst eine grosse Diskussion aus. Für Roman Heggli, Geschäftsleiter Pink Cross, zeigt dieser Fall, dass Homophobie in der Schweiz auch im 2022 an der Tagesordnung ist.