1 Lower growth forecast for developing Asia (Straits
Times) The Asian Development Bank slightly lowered its 2016 growth forecast for
developing Asia, reflecting slower-than-expected expansion in India.
Developing Asia, which groups 45 countries in the
Asia-Pacific region, is now expected to expand 5.6 per cent this year, slightly
weaker than a previous forecast of 5.7 per cent, the ADB said.
The ADB trimmed its growth estimate for India this
year to 7.0 per cent from 7.4 per cent due to weak investment, agricultural
slowdown and the government's demonetisation, but India is expected to end 2017
at faster growth rate of 7.8 per cent. The ADB said China is seen expanding 6.6
per cent this year and 6.4 per cent next year.
2 Venezuelans prepare for currency yanking (San
Francisco Chronicle) Venezuelans are rushing to spend their 100-bolivar notes
after President Nicolas Maduro's announcement they will be taken out of circulation
to stop the contraband smuggling "mafias" along the Colombian border
that he says hoard cash outside the country.
The government has promised to issue new,
higher-denomination bills this week amid the world's highest inflation.
Maduro warned that people will not be allowed to
bring back 100-bolivar bills from outside the country to trade them in for new
currency. People loyal to Maduro's socialist party circulated drawings on
social media of hapless criminals trying to smuggle 100-bolivar bills into
Venezuela like drugs. An estimated third of Venezuelans have no bank account
and keep their savings in the soon-to-be-worthless bills.
3 Power has leaked from cities to countryside (Andy
Beckett in The Guardian) As the most successful British and American cities
have gentrified and repopulated in recent decades, reversing the inner-city
decline of the 60s and 70s, it’s become a cliche to say how powerful they are:
economically, culturally, politically.
Many people think they’re too powerful. A revolt
against urban liberalism and multiculturalism, and their supposed imposition on
the rest of the population, was a big element of the Brexit and Donald Trump
campaigns.
Almost two-thirds of US rural and small-town voters
chose Trump, while a similar proportion in the cities chose Hillary Clinton. In
the English countryside, 55% voted for Brexit, while cities as varied as
Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool and London voted even more decisively for
remain.
The stark and growing political division of the US
and the UK by population density has been one of the most striking, if
under-reported, revelations of the great 2016 electoral reckoning. Yet the US
election and the EU referendum have also shown that even the most confident,
expansive cities are politically quite weak. Not simply because their preferred
causes lost narrowly in both cases; but because patterns of urban life and both
countries’ electoral systems are increasingly out of sync.
According to the Office for National Statistics,
there are currently more than a million non-British EU citizens living in
London – almost an eighth of the city’s population. Yet none of these can vote
in British national elections or referendums, only in local ones. Their
presence may have a huge economic and social impact, but it has little
political weight.
The very thing that makes modern cities vibrant and
culturally dominant – increasing population density, and the atmosphere and
networks that result from it – has left them politically under-represented.
Meanwhile, the scattered and thinned-out populations of many struggling rural
and small town areas distribute their voters through the British and American
electoral systems much more efficiently.
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