1 Greek bailout set to fail (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The most expensive sticking plaster in the world. A rescue deal with shallow foundations. That was the snap assessment of the markets on Tuesday about the deal struck in Brussels to spare Greece the indignity of going bust and to keep alive the myth that the euro is working. The pundits could be wrong. It is possible that the €130bn bailout will mark a turning point and in a decade's time Greeks will be looking back on the dark days of 2012 in the way that the newly prosperous Germans looked back in the 1960s to their war-ravaged economy in 1945.
Greece's national debt would be equivalent to 120% of its national output in 2020, putting it on a par with where Italy is today. Greece's biggest problem in the years ahead will be its dismal economic prospects, which will be made still more dismal by the destruction of demand being ordered by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
The so-called troika is assuming that the Greek economy shrinks by 4.3% this year and holds steady in 2013, before growing at more than 2% a year thereafter. These projections are for the birds; Greece is currently contracting at an annual rate of 7% and for the troika's forecasts to be met the economy would have to stabilise immediately. That looks a tad improbable. The IMF admits that there is a risk of a deeper recession; what it doesn't say is that the risk is exceptionally high. In short, this is not the end of the Greek saga. The economy will continue to contract, the debt dynamics will get worse and before long there will be talk of a third bailout. That, though, will not arrive. Next time, Greece will jump or be gently shown the way to the exit.
2 British universities cut degree courses (The Guardian) The number of degree courses on offer at British universities has been slashed by more than a quarter in the past six years, new research suggests. It reveals that there are almost 20,000 fewer full-time undergraduate courses available now than there were in 2006. England, where tuition fees will rise to a maximum of £9,000 a year this autumn, has been the hardest hit, with almost a third fewer courses on offer, it claims. The report's authors found a sharp reduction in the total number of full-time undergraduate degree courses in Britain: a fall of 27% between 2006 and 2012.
In total, there are 51,116 degree courses available this year, compared with 70,052 in 2006.
Within the UK, England has seen a 31% fall in courses, while Northern Ireland has seen a drop of 24%, Wales 11% and Scotland 3%. Sally Hunt, University and College Union general secretary, said: "While successive governments have been dreaming up new ways to increase the cost of going to university, the range of subjects available to students has fallen massively. The UK's global academic reputation is built on the broad range of subjects available and on the freedom of academics to push at the boundaries and create new areas of study. "This report shows that, while government rhetoric is all about students as consumers, the curriculum has actually narrowed significantly.”
3 Asian countries rush to borrow (The Wall Street Journal) Asian companies are tapping bond markets at a record pace, worried that the euro-zone crisis may deepen and make it more difficult and expensive for them to secure funds later in the year, say bankers who arrange borrowing. The value of bonds sold by blue-chip companies across the Asian-Pacific region, excluding Japan, has hit $14 billion this year, an unprecedented amount, according to data provider Dealogic. The comparable figure for 2011, the year with the second-most issuance at this point since 1995, was $6 billion. The borrowers range from conglomerate Hutchinson Whampoa to India's Reliance Industries.
Other factors fueling the bond boom: Some Asian borrowers feel their currency will outperform the US dollar, thus issuing dollar-denominated bonds will see costs decrease. Another factor is a pipeline of deals shelved last year because of market turmoil.
4 When the web page comes to you (The New York Times) The world of Web marketing is based on the idea of search engine optimization, which means building Web pages that search engines can find and then drive readers to. But what if the right pages could come to you instead? BloomReach, a company based in Mountain View, California, claims it has such a method. Staffed by former executives from Google, Cisco, and Facebook, the company has spent three years developing a way to look at one billion Web pages a day, divine what kind of products and services they might have, and then by looking at a broad range of customer interests, deliver Web pages that have just the right items and descriptions to suit an individual consumer.
“There are 10 to the 30th power different ways just to describe flat panels,” Raj De Datta, co-founder and chief executive of BloomReach, said in an interview. As big data problems go, this one is pretty daunting. The core of their business is a “Web relevance engine,” which uses machine learning and search techniques to gather data on content and user behavior. It then adapts Web sites to show what the algorithm concludes is the relevant content for that viewer.
5 Indian call centres linked to US debt fraud (BBC) Indian call centres were used to swindle millions of dollars out of Americans, say US federal officials. Callers from the Indian centres posed as "phantom debt" collectors who targeted people who had applied for small online loans. The Federal Trade Commission said two-California based firms and their owner had made $5m from the fraud. FTC officials said this was the first case of its kind as more than 10,000 people across the country were cheated. More than 20 million calls may have been made over the past two years, with collectors using aggressive and threatening language to demand payment for debts that did not exist. Nobody actually owed them a dime.
6 Record number of passengers at Heathrow (BBC) The number of passengers using BAA's Heathrow airport rose 5% to reach a record 69.4 million last year while losses for the company narrowed. BAA made a loss of Pound Sterling 255.8m in the year to December 31, after losing £316.6m the year before.
7 India’s Iran rationale (Khaleej Times) For those questioning India’s opposition to Western sanctions against Iran, the answer lies in its long-held view that broad-based sanctions hurt the common people, not the government, especially since they add to UN-imposed sanctions. This, and its strategic interests, means that New Delhi has made elaborate trade and barter arrangements to pay for Iran’s oil supplies. Israel is India’s second largest arms supplier after Russia. Apart from defence and security, the links have diversified to include collaboration in agriculture, tourism, science and technology. Yet, New Delhi has stood steadfast with the Palestinian demand for a sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, as endorsed in the Arab Peace Initiative and relevant UN resolutions.
In such a milieu, the only area that India could have, perhaps, done better or can attempt to do in future is translating its growing stock in the international arena into robust diplomatic efforts to resolve conflicts in various hotspots. This includes proactively encouraging Asian mediation in the GCC-Iran conflict. This would, no doubt, test India’s diplomatic skills, but it should feel confident in being one of the few countries that is capable of simultaneously pursuing normal ties with Iran, Israel, the US and the GCC countries.
8 Yunus comes calling (Rahul Singh in Khaleej Times) Professor Muhammad Yunus, the only Bangladeshi ever to have won a Nobel Prize, has proved his point: Even poor, illiterate people had an entrepreneurial streak that could blossom if they were given sufficient the right incentives. That was the beginning of an economic revolution of sorts, not just in Bangladesh but in many other parts of the world as well, called “micro-credit”, or “micro-finance”.
There are now models like the Grameen Bank he thought up, in over 100 other countries. His latest venture, which he talked about passionately during his visit to the Bombay Gymkhana Club is what he calls “social business”. Basically, the idea is to start a company that pays no dividends to shareholders, but ploughs all the profits back to the company whose purpose is to serve social needs. Quixotic and impractical? That’s exactly what his critics said about micro-credit. He is out, yet again, to prove them wrong.
9 Pakistan: Feeding the bomb, starving the nation (Dawn) Pakistanis are fast becoming a wasted nation. The alarmingly high level of malnutrition observed in Pakistan in the past few years is far worse than what has been observed in the sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of Pakistani children have been identified as stunted, under-weight, and wasting because of hunger, disease, and poverty. While the future of millions of children is threatened by hunger, the civil and military elites in Pakistan continue to pour undisclosed billions into conventional and nuclear weapons. The leaders of the right-wing religious and political parties are also in step with the military establishment as they continue to mobilise the starving masses to support developing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
In 2006, the United Nations estimated that no fewer than 35 million Pakistanis were malnourished. For millions of other partially-fed Pakistanis, whose future is supposedly guaranteed by nuclear and other bombs, there is an urgent need to secure their present. Thousands of nuclear weapons did not prevent the Soviet Union from disintegrating after it failed to feed and clothe its citizens. Pakistan must avoid the same fate by putting bread before bombs.
10 New look at Aurangzeb and Shivaji (Dawn) Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and Maratha warrior Shivaji were arch foes, but why? Colonial historians followed by their Indian and Pakistani protégés have projected the rivalry as a religious one. Similar communal assumptions fuelled Partition. But the assumptions were false. In a landmark episode that defies bigoted stereotypes, Aurangzeb sent the Mughal army to protect the Hindu baniyas of Gujarat who were being plundered by Shivaji.
Facts as gleaned from history would reveal that Shivaji was indeed a great hero who represented the Maratha masses. And the masses in the Indian context mainly meant the peasantry, not their exploiters, which was usually the moneylenders and state. The baniya or the moneylender — the Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and also Christian variant — has been historically patronised by the state whose ultimate quarry inevitably happened to be the peasant. David Hardiman’s well-researched work Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India, which he published in 1996, etches the background of this class-based source of conflict in the western region of the agricultural country.
No comments:
Post a Comment