1 Eurozone recession may be over (Phillip Inman & Graeme Wearden in The Guardian) Hopes of a recovery in the eurozone were lifted after private sector firms across the region reported a rise in output for the first time in 18 months, leading to predictions that the single currency bloc is on the cusp of exiting recession. A strong performance by German manufacturers and a halt to the headlong decline in French business activity gave the eurozone a much needed boost after the area slipped into reverse last year.
With the US manufacturing sector expanding at a faster pace in July, the main blot on the global economic recovery was a decline in manufacturing output in China that some economists have warned could force Beijing to renew its stimulus spending or risk a hard landing. China's manufacturing sector tempered the eurozone data, slowing to an 11-month low as new orders faltered and the job market darkened.
Policymakers in Brussels will be buoyed by the monthly healthcheck of firms in the euro area that found that manufacturing output has risen for the first time since February 2012. Service sector firms are also pulling out of their long decline, with France and Germany leading the way out of the downturn. The euro hit a one month high of $1.3249 against the US dollar after the data was released.
2 Reading India’s poverty stats (Anant Vijay Kala in The Wall Street Journal) This week the Indian government released its latest estimates on the number of people living in poverty in the country. And there seemed to be good news. In the year ending 2012 there were 269.3 million people (21.9% of the population) living below the poverty line, the Planning Commission, the government’s think-tank, said.
For sure, that’s a huge number, but it’s far lower than the 407.1 million people under the poverty line in the year ending 2005, when the Planning Commission estimated that 37.2% of the population were living in poverty. But how accurate are these most recent estimates and do they stand up to economic scrutiny? Some experts have questioned the government’s definition of poverty and argue that it may lead to a gross underestimation of poverty levels in India.
The Planning Commission’s data are based on a methodology recommended in 2005 by a panel of experts headed by economist Suresh Tendulkar who died in June 2011. The methodology defines poverty in terms of consumption or spending of an individual during a certain period. Only those spending up to around 27 rupees a day (45 cents) in rural areas and about 33 rupees (55 cents) in urban areas would be counted as living in poverty. The Commission’s report does not qualify the term “poverty.”
Critics say the spending line has been drawn too low. The lower the poverty line, the fewer people who qualify as existing beneath it. Economic realities, such as the high and rising cost of food, rent and commodities, in India, mean it is impossible to make even bare minimum purchases of food with such small amounts of money, some economists say.
NC Saxena, a former bureaucrat who monitors food programs in India on behalf of the Supreme Court of India, says the estimates of numbers living in poverty are meaningless in the current economic climate. He says the poverty line has been historically set at “very very low levels” in India. The latest definition puts the poverty line slightly below the lowest levels set by the World Bank; levels at which the bank says people are living at the edge of subsistence. The World Bank’s extreme poverty line is based on purchasing power parity, or PPP, for $1.25. The PPP compares the amount of currency needed to buy the same item in different countries.
3 Enter Baby Cambridge (Khaleej Times) For months, the media had given in-depth coverage on Kate Middleton’s pregnancy that precariously bordered on utter voyeurism. Now the “great Kate wait” is over. The Duchess of Cambridge has delivered an eight-pound, six-ounce, baby boy, much to the delight of fans, who are arriving in hordes outside the Buckingham Palace to celebrate his birth.
The
international interest in the arrival of the royal baby has been especially
phenomenal. The media in the US — a country that has been historically bereft
of an aristocratic class and prides itself for giving its citizens equal
opportunities — has ironically shown a great obsession with the royal baby. It
seems like the modern fairytale has generated much fascination among the
Americans, despite their age-old dislike for the concept of nobility or a
privileged class.
But there are
some who are rather puzzled or annoyed by this abnormal fixation on the latest
addition to the British royal family and have taken to the social media to
express their views. These people, however, should know that the royal baby
mania is not going to die anytime soon. Speculations regarding the baby’s name
are already rife in the media and soon the paparazzi will go in a mad rage to
snap a picture of the newborn. Subsequently, the baby’s looks will spawn
columns in tabloids. So, everyone must get ready to hear and watch anything and
everything about the future King of England. Baby Cambridge is definitely going
to be the most talked about baby in the world, and there’s nothing that will
change that.
When stripped of executive power, monarchy does not represent the state; it is the state anthropomorphised, the state in human form. The bloodline is thus the guarantor of national eternity. Blessed by the luck of inheritance, offspring must literally play to the cult of the individual, like Krishnamurti or the Dalai Lama. That is why the birth of infants has always heralded a new dawn, symbolising both continuity and renewal. Henry VIII was delirious with joy on the birth of a son, the hapless Edward VI.
No amount of gilding can strip inherited celebrity of danger. The good fairies who gather round the new prince's cradle this week have evil ones hovering on their shoulders. Even as the press hypocritically debates how the baby's privacy might be respected, its fingers shift the lens focus and itch over the Twitter feed; #labour is readying itself for a Niagara of gossip. Nothing can stop it.
Short of going into exile, the third in line to the throne cannot expect to enjoy the slightest privacy.
He will spend his life with a media drone hovering overhead, listening, prying, revealing, proclaiming a global "public interest" in intrusion. Who knows but today's celebrity may yet prove the prince's happiest – or at least most private – moment. But at least he has done his public duty by sharing that happiness with millions.
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