1 The New York Times on Philippines overtaking India as the world’s top call centre. Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to Mark in Manila than Bharat in Bangalore. Over the last several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call center business: the rise of the Philippines, a former US colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in American culture. More Filipinos — about 400,000 — than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly American consumers. The jobs have come from the US, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines. India, where offshore call centers first took off in a big way, fields as many as 350,000 call center agents, according to some industry estimates. The Philippines, which has a population one-tenth as big as India’s, overtook India this year, according to Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines. The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for American English. In the early days, the industry focused simply on finding and setting up shop in countries with large English-speaking populations and low labour costs, which mostly led them to India. But executives say they are now increasingly identifying places best suited for specific tasks. India remains the biggest destination by far for software outsourcing.
2 Paul Krugman writing, 'We are the 99.9%' in The New York Times. “We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general. If anything, however, the 99 percent slogan aims too low. A large fraction of the top 1 percent’s gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1 percent — the richest one-thousandth of the population.
3 The New York Times on the age of the superfluous worker. America, like other modern countries, has always had some surplus workers — people ready to work but jobless for extended periods because the “job creators,” private and public, have been unable or unwilling to create sufficient jobs. When the number of surplus workers rose sharply, the country also had ways of reducing it. However, the current jobless recovery, and the concurrent failure to create enough new jobs, is breeding a new and growing surplus pool. And some in this pool are in danger of becoming superfluous, likely never to work again. The currently jobless total about 15% of the work force, not including the invisible discouraged workers the government cannot even find to count. In the old days — before Social Security, welfare and Medicaid — poverty-caused illnesses killed off or incapacitated some of the people who could not find jobs. Even earlier, some nations sold their surplus workers as slaves, while the European countries could send them to the colonies. If modern capitalism continues to eliminate as many jobs as it creates — or more jobs than it creates — future recoveries will not only add to the amount of surplus labour but will turn a growing proportion of workers into superfluous ones.
4 Fareed Zakaria writing in Khaleej Times that America is the most dynamic society in the developed world. While Japan has entered and Italy and Germany are approaching a demographic death spiral, the US remains young, vibrant and active. Demographics is not destiny, but it helps mightily to have a growing society, with a healthy share of young workers — who are also taxpayers. US still attracts the most immigrants and most investment in the world.
5 The Wall Street Journal on the rupee sending a warning. The Indian rupee plumbed all-time lows against the dollar this week, prompting investors to question the health of one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Though some of this currency weakness is due to the "risk off" flight to safety that's affecting most emerging markets, the rupee has depreciated more than any other currency in Asia this year. And the reason is not hard to discern: Profligate government spending and a lack of reforms are feeding concern about the economy's fundamentals. Starting in 2004, the Congress Party-led government went on a binge of expanding subsidies and instituting new entitlements, while ignoring calls for further market liberalization. Social spending had more than doubled by 2009-10. Slower growth this year is robbing the fisc of tax revenues, yet spending continues to accelerate. This week, a senior official admitted that the fiscal deficit may end up one percentage point higher than the 4.6% of GDP the government budgeted in February, mostly due to extra spending on fuel and food subsidies. The government has had to borrow 530 billion rupees ($10 billion) more than it planned, which has India's bond markets spooked. Bond yields have spiked in the past month, and more than one government bond auction has failed.
6 The Economist on overvaluation of Australian houses. Australian house prices could plunge by as much as 25 per cent on the back of a global credit crunch caused by the European meltdown. In a dire warning for Australia and other developed countries, The Economist says global house price indicators suggest property was still overvalued. ‘‘The latest global house price indicators are now falling in eight of the 16 countries surveyed by the magazine, compared with five countries in late 2010.’’
7 Mint reporting on an across-the-board pay raise at Hero MotoCorp. In the middle of an economic slowdown, an across-the-board pay increase qualifies as a counter-intuitive response. But that’s what Hero MotoCorp Ltd, the world’s biggest two-wheeler maker, has done. For white-collar employees, the pay has been raised as much as 30%, while workers at the Dharuhera plant have got a monthly increase of Rs 6,500 each. The move isn’t so much counter-intuitive as reflective of the new ground reality that prevails across Haryana’s industrial estates in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera belt. No company wants to go through what Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country’s biggest car maker, had to endure in the past few months.
8 Mint quoting Count Anton Wolfgang Von Faber-Castell, chairman-CEO of the 250-year-old stationery company that pencils will last longer than we imagine. In a digital world, where cutting costs in offices means stationery is the first thing to go and a paperless world is looking increasingly realistic, what is the future of stationery? “It will probably last longer than we believe,” says Count Anton. “The question is in what quantities. It was already my concern 30 years ago with the pencil business which, to my surprise, is stronger than ever. One of the reasons is because pencils, especially coloured, are needed for education, they don’t dry out, last forever and are environmentally friendly. “Globally, colour pencils are growing because of education and demand in developing countries. Children might start early with computers, but as we know from brain research, it’s important that children use their hands for motor development and mental skills. There was a dream of a paperless office, which has remained a dream. Where there is paper, there is the need for pencils. Colour, including artist pencils, will remain for 50-100 years because they have special features but in limited quantities.”
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