1 ADB cuts Asia growth forecast (BBC) The Asian
Development Bank has cut its growth forecast for Asia for this year and next,
as economic problems in Europe and the US hurt developing countries. The lender
projects that Asia, excluding Japan, will expand 6.1% this year, down from a
July estimate of 6.6%. It also forecast inflation would be 4.2% rather than
4.4%. The ADB said countries in Asia must reduce their dependency on exports.
2 LatAm economies seen slowing (BBC) Latin America will grow at a slower pace than last year, primarily due to weaker growth in Argentina and Brazil, a United Nations report has suggested. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) forecast the whole area would slow to 3.2% in 2012, down from 4.3% last year. It is also less than the 3.7% that ECLAC predicted in June.
ECLAC blamed the global economy,
which has been hit by the eurozone debt crisis and slowing Chinese growth. The
report, the Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean, identified
private consumption as "the main driver of regional growth, thanks to the
growth in labour markets, increased credit and - in some cases -
remittances". Brazil and Argentina are forecast to grow less than their
neighbours. Argentina's economy will grow 2% and Brazil will grow 1.6%, ECLAC
suggested. Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Venezuela are expected to
grow by about 5%. Mexico will expand by 4%. Paraguay will be the only country
to shrink, by 2%, it predicted.
3 Eurozone jobless at new high (BBC) Unemployment
in the eurozone hit a fresh high of 18.2 million in August, the EU statistics
agency has said. The number out of work rose by 34,000, but after the July data was revised up, it meant the
unemployment rate remained stable at a record high of 11.4%. The highest
unemployment rate was recorded in Spain, where 25.1% of the workforce is out of
a job, and the lowest of 4.5% was recorded in Austria. The unemployment rate in
Germany was 5.5%, Eurostat said.
Last week, the European Commission
warned of the existence of "a real social emergency crisis" due to
the fall in household income and growing household poverty. Youth unemployment
remains a particular concern, with the rate among under-25s hitting 22.8% across
the eurozone, and 52.9% in Spain.The commission repeated its call to
governments and businesses to act to try to avoid the "disaster" of
"a lost generation". In Greece, the most recent figures recorded in
June show that more than 50% of the young workforce has no job.
4 Google is number two tech firm (Dawn) Google has soared past
Microsoft in terms of market value to become the second-richest firm in the
tech world behind Apple. Google shares gained 0.96% to end at
$761.78, giving the Internet giant a market capitalization of $249.1 billion.
Microsoft meanwhile fell 0.91% to $29.49, translating into a market worth of
$247.2 billion. Both remained well behind Apple, which shed 1.16% to $659.39,
meaning its market cap is just above $618 billion.
5 An empty shop in Diwali time (MJ Akbar in Khaleej Times) India prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s political career began when he was selected in 1991 by the then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao to be a part of the solution; he succeeded because he was not part of the problem. He does not have that alibi in 2012. After having been in power for more than eight years, Congress cannot blame others for corruption and inflation, the twin poles of looming disaster.
Turning Mamata Banerjee into a culprit simply does not wash; she had enough MPs to object but never enough to bring down the government. If Congress believed that it could have averted an economic crisis by taking certain decisions, they could have been taken two years ago. Moreover, Mamata Banerjee never stopped this government from bringing down prices or sending the police into the homes and offices of coal block scam artists. When your shop is empty during a Diwali sale, then you surely must understand that your sell-by date is over.
6 Manly women, womanly men (PG Bhaskar in Khaleej Times) Women are going in for ‘sensitive’ rather than ‘tough’ men. Gone are those ‘manly’ days where men held back their emotions and chewed gum. Just before the world cup finals in 2010, Spanish captain Iker Cassilas kissed his reporter girlfriend in full view of the public. After the match, he broke down and cried like a baby, doubling his female fan base overnight.
More recently, dour Scotsman Andy Murray and the usually unflappable Roger Federer both burst into tears on court for entirely different reasons. One cried when he lost, the other when he won. Both performances went down well with the public. The species is undergoing a metamorphosis. Women talk tough and loud. Men wear ear-rings. Women drive taxis. And men have suddenly lost that deep, gravelly voice of yore.
More women, I am told, are making the first move when it comes to relationships. Gone, too, are those days when men were expected to propose marriage. The distinction between the sexes is getting blurred. In my own home, I am not exactly the ‘man’ prototype. I am terrible at reading maps and worse when it comes to electronics or carpentry. I am not even - dare I say it - above shedding a tear or two while watching an emotional scene on telly. But what the heck, I’m ‘man’ enough to admit it.
7 A theory on why India Muslism lag (The Wall Street Journal) Could it be that the poor performance on economic and social indicators by India’s Muslims today doesn’t just reflect current disadvantage and deprivation, but also has far deeper historical, cultural, and religious roots? Timur Kuran, an economics professor at Duke University, together with Anantdeep Singh, a researcher at the University of Southern California, have argued that the roots of Muslims’ lagging performance may be attributed to institutional differences that go back to the British colonial period.
They argue that the real culprit is the Islamic inheritance system, which the British codified and enforced after coming to power in India. They suggest that the typical Muslim form of saving across generations, family trusts known as Waqfs, were not well suited for the pooling of capital across families, nor were they well suited to pursuing profit-making enterprises. What they were good at, though, was providing a safe way for an individual family to save its wealth over time.
By contrast, more flexible Hindu inheritance practices were much better suited to capital accumulation within a given family, the pooling of resources within extended family and clan networks, and the preservation and growth of wealth across generations. What is more, Hindus tended to do business within family run enterprises that were able to transition to modern corporate setups in the 20th century, whereas Muslims tended to rely on transitory and short-lived business partnerships with other Muslims that were difficult to translate into the structure of a modern corporation.
In practice many Muslims became subject to a stricter enforcement of Islamic laws. Tellingly, the Muslims who’ve fared best economically come from small ”nonconforming” communities that converted from Hinduism – the Khojas, Bohras, Memons and Girasias – who as it happens were allowed by the British to retain their original inheritance practices. Azim Premji, India’s richest Muslim and the only Indian Muslim on the Forbes list of billionaries, is a Khoja.
To borrow a term from historian Niall Ferguson’s book “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” were the majority of Indian Muslims deprived of a “killer app” that Hindus and nonconforming Muslims had access to, preventing their development of modern enterprises? Mr. Kuran and Mr. Singh make a compelling case that the answer is yes and that this helps explain their current state of relative deprivation.
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