Hi all

On Thursday, Liam and myself will be presenting on the subject of the future of development, and will be looking at what issues arise, how they present themselves and what steps are being taken to overcome them on the world stage.

We were tied between two videos - a longer one and a shorter one, so we've gone with the shorter one during the presentation and you can watch the longer below:

We'll be asking you whether or not it is possible for poverty to ever be completely eradicated using development tactics such as Structural Adjustment Programmes.

Catch you Thursday

Cheers

Andrew and Liam

Hello.
Before the lecture tomorrow you can also have a look at this video clip I found today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAVESGBVy00


See you tomorrow!
Isabell

Here are some videos relating to the current economic crisis for you to watch:






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zPyZZIvwCc&feature=fvwrel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHry1dK7ZLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQbVDTdIrAI

Hi everyone,

as Isabell has already said, this week's SSL will be looking at economic crises and whether they promote cooperation or competition.

Here is a video for you to watch of the example we will be using, of Greece's financial crisis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTmNdXg62s&feature=relmfu

- no confidence votes for the government
- "punishing austerity measures"
- 20% unemployment rates
- 20% cuts to pensions
- minimum wage cut to just 700E a month

As we know, Greece has been offered "bail outs" from the IMF of billions of euros - do you think that this will promote further cooperation within the European Union as all countries are struggling, or more competition as all the European economies fight to keep themselves afloat?


See you on Thursday!

-Rachael.

Does Economic Crisis Promote Cooperation or Competition?

Hello everybody!

In this weeks’ presentation the topic is economic crisis, and one of the things we are going to talk about is if economic crisis promote cooperation or competition between countries.

It seems like countries tend to cooperate with each other in times of crisis, but none of these co-operations have lasted for a longer time. 

There are several examples of co-operations in the past, and the most recent one is called ‘European Financial Stability Facility’. This cooperation was invented in May 2009 during the Greek sovereign debt crisis and the aim was to promote financial stability in Europe.

We have two questions for you guys to think about before our presentation this week:

•   What do you think are the benefits with cooperation in times of crisis? 
• Why do you think there has not been a long-lasting cooperation between countries so far?

To prepare yourself you can have a look at this framework for international policy cooperation: 

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Economics/r0411_ipc.pdf

This will give you a greater knowledge about cooperation between countries in the past, and also why more cooperation would be a good way to, for instance, prepare for upcoming economic crisis.

You can also have a look at “United Nation Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development” from 2009 by this link: 

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/pga_opening_en.pdf

Hope we will see you all on Thursday!

Isabell and Rachel

Could it be that the world is already rich?

Hey everyone,


for our presentation tomorrow we will be looking at the effects inequality has on the developed world. We will be answering three questions;


1) Can there be poverty in the developed world?
2) Can skilled people inevitably avoid poverty?
3) Are wealth and capitalism inherently connected?


In order to get you guys thinking we are posting a documentary on child poverty in the viewpoint of the child giving us an insight on how they are dealing with living in poverty in the UK in 2011. It demonstrates different factors of poverty in particular looking at the income of the different families and how they are seen to cope with the recession and much more.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pzDclniQzg


Also, we have added this additional clip - which is on the economic growth during the last 200 years, to show just how remarkably living standards have changed. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo


Alongside this, we want to share this BBC documentary on poverty in America, which was also posted by Helen a few weeks ago, but we feel as though this is relevant to this weeks topic of poverty in the developed world, so if you've not seen it yet we recommend you do so. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlZqaXd0uRg


Tomorrow we will start our presentation showing you a poverty report - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0ZziXDqIb5M
followed by asking you a few questions, which you can think about before the lecture.

1) In what ways do you think poverty is demonstrated in a developed country?
2) To what extent is inequality a casual factor of Poverty?
3) Do you think wealth and capitalism are connected and why?


Hope to see you all tomorrow,

Iffie & Erkki.

Right...just one more little thing and I pledge not to bombard you with any more links. We will only very briefly mention this in the presentation, but it is quite an interesting point. Here Stieglitz (who himself served as Chief Economist of the World Bank) talks about the barriers to ‘free trade’. It makes you wonder if we can really talk about such a thing as ‘free trade’. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rgj9EG5PS8
Hanna