My years as Gaddafi’s nurse – Oksana Balinskaya ‘…what will ultimately replace today’s dollar-centric international monetary and financial system is a tripolar system organized around the dollar, the euro, and the Chinese renminbi’ – Barry Eichengreen ‘The left love being provoked by me … they think I’m a reactionary imperialist scumbag’ Niall Ferguson Why about 75% of… Read More »
From WSJ: Foreign consumer-goods companies including Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé SA and Unilever PLC have been in Africa for decades without much competition from local players. Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population. Examples? Among the most prominent of these consumer upstarts: African retailers… Read More »
1. Ignoring Africa’s present or the West’s past? – Wronging Rights 2. London faces battle to stop trading shift to eurozone – Financial Times 3. Europe agrees on Greek safety net with IMF role – Reuters 4. Scouring blogs for useful information – The Economist 5. Winner of the world’s oddest book title award –… Read More »
is the title of a Reuters report on Africa. Read this excerpt: The International Monetary Fund believes growth in sub-Saharan Africa will be 1 percentage point above the global average, and puts eight African countries in its top 20 fastest-expanding economies in 2010. Oil-rich Angola and Congo Republic will lead the charge with growth rates… Read More »
From a policy brief from the United Nations University: We have already witnessed over the past year brave and even imaginative efforts by many developing countries in order to cope. Developing countries with the largest and strongest economies, such as China, India and Brazil, have shown encouraging early signs of recovery after implementing timely countercyclical policies.… Read More »
NYTimes A Balanced Global Diet: Global imbalances — roughly defined, the different emphasis the world’s leading economies place on savings, spending and debt — is a phrase much used and little acted upon. Well before the current financial crisis began, world leaders pledged to address this disconnect. At an International Monetary Fund meeting in 2007,… Read More »
Maybe a fallout of the current global crisis is a kindler, gentler IMF. The Fund just published a staff position note titled Fiscal Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa in Response to the Impact of the Global Crisis The executive summary: The global financial crisis poses significant challenges to fiscal policies in Sub-Saharan African countries. Growth will… Read More »