by Jean Abinader | Jobs and meaningful employment are demands highlighted by the Arab Uprisings that will not go away. Governments are struggling to recast technical and vocational training into effective vehicles for preparing market-ready youth.
BEIJING | In his last speech the outgoing Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, acknowledged the social challenges China is dangerously facing. The new leadership will have to deal with local governments and State Owned Enterprises ready to defend their current status quo and likely to be sceptical about any form of reform.
By Bulent Temel | Social democracy promoted by the late Harvard political economist John K. Galbraith is the future of capitalism with its emphasis on equity and responsibility alongside prosperity.
By CaixaBank research | Analysts expect domestic demand will continue to support growth in 2013.
By CaixaBank analysts | The reduction in doubtful loans, easier financial conditions and creation of households will continue to support the recovery in housing. But persistently low participation in employment is a source of risk for 2013.
MADRID | Europe is unable to deliver growth on its own. By sticking to fiscal virtue, no matter the price as Ms Merkel has recently voiced, it lacks enough stamina to get out of the current recession.
In his annual State of the Union speech, US President endorsed long awaited EU-US free trade talks that could spur growth and create new jobs.
MADRID | Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve: “Why couldn’t we grow by a higher rate? Because people still are in the middle of a deleveraging process, which makes it near impossible that consumption takes off again.”
China’s economic miracle was possible thanks to three decades of cheap manufacturing and exports. Thousands of workers left their villages to become the cheap labour force of China’s southern cities. Now this is a thing of the past.
Evgeniya Khilji | Tensions between “Russians” and “others” can be observed more closely in Putin’s Russia’s large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the concentration of legal and illegal immigrants is high. Ethnic Russians feel threatened by the large numbers of incoming ‘visitors’.