With the area opening to greater human activity, the Polar region has once again caught the eye of policy makers (the region was once the site of heightened Cold War activity), who are looking increasingly northward.Will the Arctic be the site of conflict or cooperation?
BEIJING|Lan Fang and Li Yan at Caixin| Massive population remains China’s basic national condition, but structural problems of the population are daily becoming increasingly important factors affecting the development of the economy and society. The party just eased the one-child policy, but scholars and members of the public say progress should have been made years ago.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | The Fed has never been comfortable with QE3; Many thought that QE ineffective; Bernanke felt compelled to clear the path for Yellen… But it has boosted “Forward Guidance” to make up (or more than make up) for the “taper”.
MADRID|J.P. Martin Arrese|Resorting to cheap money has provided the Federal Reserve a vital support to US faltering economy. The huge stimulus has largely avoided the prospect of a downturn, but there are clear signs that a wealth-led recovery fails to deliver a robust self-propelled growth.
The Internet plays a dramatic role in the development of China’s consumption. Encouraging information products could become a new engine of growth. But the success of such an ambitious 2.0 plan will depend on the new reforms announced by mid-November at the Communist Party Central Committee plenum.
SAO PAOLO | By Benjamin Cole at Marcus Nunes’ Historinhas | Slated to be No. 2 at the Fed is Stanley Fischer, who espouses adjustable inflation-targeting more than the locally preferred shooting for steady increases in nominal GDP (Market Monetarism), who knows?—it may amount to the same thing in practice.
PARIS | By Jérôme Hourdeaux at Mediapart via Presseurop | Despite being strong advocates of competition, European institutions are bound to the US software giant through murky contracts. Any transition to “open source” software, which in theory they encourage, would be too complicated and too expensive, they claim. Excerpts.
NEW YORK | By Ana Fuentes | The debate about the minimum wage is making big headlines both in the U.S. and in Europe, although for very different reasons. In Washington, the main issue is whether to raise it, since at $7.25 per hour the richest country in the world pays less per hour to many other developed countries.In Europe, Germany has joined the minimum wage club as one of the highlights of the coalition agreement, and France is increasing it by 1.1 per cent. In Spain the minimum wage was frozen two years ago due to austerity measures, and today minimum wage workers are struggling to make ends meet. Still, they can still enjoy free health insurance, education or a paid vacation, something that their American counterparts cannot even dream of.
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | This week is tapering week, and we will see the Fed’s first step towards a reduction of the quantitative easing. There is consensus about what the economic data show: every single indicator (except inflation) are more and more vigorous.
MEXICO CITY | By David Brunat | Mexico is broadly considered as one of the most promising emerging markets. A member of the so-called MIST countries (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey), a group of economies that are soon to equal the BRICS’ influence, according to Goldman Sachs. However, Mexico still has to face several internal threats if it wants to fulfil the forecasts. Along with high-scale corruption, the North American country must solve the huge problem that crime gangs pose to economic development.