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.
- 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?
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday 21 March 2012
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
Hola fellow PovDev students! :-)
As Samantha has already posted,
tomorrow we will be focusing on questions of who runs the global economy and the limits to global governance. We will be looking at the global
governance of poverty and development. We will look, very briefly, at what we
understand by global governance, how it have developed over time, as well the
main challenges facing global governance in the 21st century. As the
main theme of the whole module is ‘poverty and development’, we will look at different
frameworks that give rise to particular kind of strategies of alleviating poverty
and fostering development on both national and global level.
We will talk about the crisis of
the Washington Consensus, as well as the Millennium Development Goals. We
encourage you to use the supplementary material we post on this blog, as it is (hopefully) relevant
to the topic this week and to our SSL. In addition to the video posted by Sam,
I believe these couple of link s might be quite useful:
This is an article by Joseph Stieglitz
on the road China decided to take in defiance of the Washington Consensus.
Stieglitz argues against the WC, raising concerns about the fact that market
economies cannot be just left to themselves, or ‘on autopilot’. China balanced
handling of the economy, with a mixture of market economy and state
intervention should be taken as a ‘roadmap’ for responding to constantly
changing economies.
I found this article particularly useful.It shows the difference between China and the
U.S. in providing loans and aid. China is defying the WC, it loans money with
‘fewer conditionalities’. Author argues that China has a clear lead over the
U.S. All discussed in the context of
Latin America.
WC is far from over, despite all the talk that IMF and WB
now include few conditions with their loans, there are examples that both are
still operating in ten spirit of the WC. The author is opposed to the WC and
argues that we should actively try to get rid of it. This is an article that is
useful for anyone who wants to explore the idea that the Washington Consensus
is dead.
Some good point about how successful are countercyclical
policies, and how much China, who’s as we know from previous articles, is in
defiance of WC, has contributed enormously to the worlds goal of reducing
poverty.
Finally, a short video on the
demise of the Washington Consensus and the apparent rise of the so- called Beijing
Consensus.
See you all tomorrow,
Hanna & Samantha
Hello good people!
For our presentation tomorrow, me and Hannah are exploring answering the questions: 'Who runs the global economy and are there limits to global governance?'. This video which I will post below will give you a small insight of one of the things which will be covered tomorrow which is Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
I've also put a link to the United Nations website which will give a update on the progress of the MDG today: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41488&Cr=mdg&Cr1=
For our presentation tomorrow we're going to be focusing on the following questions:
Who runs the global economy?
Are there limits to Global Governance?
Inside of this we have three key questions that give us a greater idea of how to answer them and we will be asking you opinions on the following questions throughout our presentation. These key questions are:
Who do you feel are the 'major' players in the global economy?
Why do you think the above mentioned players are so important?
Do you believe individual states influences diminished due to the rise of Globalisation?
What are the limits, if any, to Global Governance?
Why would there be limits in place?
What organisations would you say are limited and why?
We're currently having a bit of trouble trying to get our video to work in the presentation so if we're unable to show it, I will log onto here after our presentation and put the link on.
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news11_e/tnc_dg_infstat_29apr11_e.htm 'WTO ambassadors endorsed on 29 April 2011 Director-General Pascal Lamy’s plan to consult delegations in Geneva and ministers around the world in the search for a different way of achieving a breakthrough in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations. They were clear about what they do not want and said they are open to ideas.'
http://www.worldtradelaw.net/articles/drachedoha.pdf 'As a general rule, trade agreements do not eliminate protectionist sentiments or the ability of governments to vigorously defend production and employment interests. Rather, they keep these at politically acceptable levels. Even the current liberal order has failed to fully embed a liberalized framework for competition in its otherwise comprehensive regulatory system.'
Tomorrow we're also going to talk about the World Bank and the critique that has been expressed towards it. One important point is that all the Presidents of the World Bank have been from the United States. The current President Robert B. Zoellick is going to finish the 5-year-term in June and it's interesting to see, what kind of person the next one will be.
Here's the link to the website of the "Presidential Elections".
Good afternoon!
We want to show you some videos during our SSL tomorrow but probably we will not be able to see them all, just some parts. So here is the link for video of globalization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmvksvSvtc
There are many interesting pages about globalization and as you will hear tomorrow it is difficult to find the best definition, here is the web where you can find many interesting facts about it, including tables and charts and articles: http://www.globalpolicy.org/globalization.html
The WB has large database of statistics about developing countries. You can find there different indicators. So maybe you will find it useful for example for your essays: http://data.worldbank.org/
Hello
Tomorrow Kamil and I will be given a presentation on the topic of global economy and globalization. At the beginning i will give a brief definition of the term globalization, then Kamil will be talking about IMF, World Bank and WTO. He will explain how this organizations work and therefore who is running the global economy. After Kamil explanation I will give some arguments against and in favor of the premise that can globalization solve the world's problem.
we will have some videos too to support our presentation. we hope you enjoy it.
Hello everyone!
On Thursday me and Oona would like to tell you something about the Globalization and the World Bank as one of the most important institution of the world political economy.
First we will tell you something about the globalization, if it can solves the world´s problems or not. There are many videos about it but I have decided to post this one for the beginning because there is an very interesting point about globalization. It´s the homogenization of Global taste. Big companies influence and shape consumers taste around the world. Do you agree with that? Here is short video that you might like...
Have a nice day
Lenka http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Echi6oMYEOM&feature=related
In 2005 the 'Make Poverty History' campaign was set up to last the full year in order to raise awarness worldwide, on the problem that was, and still is poverty. Not only did the campaign raise the issue of cancelling debts carried by the poorer countries, it also raised the issue on unfair trading globally, and made clear that the explotation of the poorer countries benefitted the rich, and caused poverty to keep occuring. These are some of the points raised about unfair trading found on the campaign website:
Trade Issues What’s wrong with the Global Trade System?
Unequal Partners: rich countries abuse the system and bully poorer countries into agreeing to rules which favour the rich. The benefits of trade will only reach the poor – at home and in the developing world – if international trade rules are deliberately weighted in favour of poor people and the environment.
While international trade is worth $10 million a minute, poor countries only account for 0.4% of this trade - half the share they had in 1980.
The so-called Doha Development Round projected that 2/3 of any gains would go to the richer countries.
According to the New Economic Foundation (2010), for every $100 of growth, just 0.60 found it’s poverty reduction target and contributed to reducing poverty below the £1 a day.
One size doesn't fit all: rich countries use trade rules to force poor countries to open their economies to goods from rich countries (known as “trade liberalisation”). But poor countries' farmers and industries aren't ready to compete. Decades of forced liberalisation has devastated many poor countries resulting in huge job losses, poor health care and less education. Trade “liberalisation” often comes alongside increased rights for foreign investors and pressure to privatise its economy.
Do as we say, not as we do: rich countries such as the UK, the USA and the East Asian Tigers succeeded by protecting their farmers and industries, only opening up to competition once their industries were strong enough to compete. Rich countries are using trade rules to deny poor countries the same rights. For example, the average EU cow is subsidised to the tune of around $800. In Ethiopia, the average annual income per person is just $100.
This links in with one of this weeks quetions to consider; What does work have to do with poverty? From the above we can see that as a result of poverty, the poor are continued to be exploited in their work, unable to compete on the global scale with the rich. Work for those in the developing world is limited by the restraints forced upon them by the developed world. Therefore work and poverty are inter-related as a viciuos cycle occurs, lack of work and the lack of well paid work leads to poverty, and poverty can lead to a lack of capability to work.
Although Make Poverty History came to an end in 2006, the events of 2005 helped inspire various members to work together on further campaigns. These took place as the UK platform of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. The white band continues as the joint symbol of the fight against poverty, wear yours to continue support for the fight.
I just came across this article about development and health from the BBC, which I found very interesting and fitting into our topic. On page one the question of 'what is development' is raised, the next page shows the models of development, mentioning Rostow's model as well as comparing South Korea and Burkina Faso. Page three and four are about using development indicators and development differences between countries, providing questions for the reader to think about.
Focus on page five, there you will find a video showing a case study of Brazil, which is a good example of a country which has wide regional variations in development.The video shows the dimensions of development; how different development can be, to which extent it can vary in one country and, that it certainly does vary in most of the countries. Besides, it shows that the gap between rich and poor still exists and probably is going to stay.
For them who would like to test what the learned and already knew about development and health care, try your best making this quiz.
Definition
of Development: Development
could be explained as “fierce” process, with “Blood, sweat, and tears”. It is
the world in which wisdom demands toughness. (Amartya Sen, Development as
freedom, chap2.)
According
to Anna Dickson, Development is “an ongoing process of qualitatively
ameliorated social, political, and economic change” (Robert O’Brien, Marc
William, Global Economic Change).
Characteristics:
Political
freedom (free and fair elected Institutions, Humans rights)
The
United Nation has promoted Political and Economical Institutions and
Values.
Democracy, the market, protecting human rights. Egalitarianism as the
Route
of the prosperity to the rest of the World. (Culture, Democracy and
Development
by Deepak LAL, IMF, september20, 1999).
The relationship between Politics Is the Policies
of the IMF and the World Bank in Africa.
In
Sub-Sahara Africa the IMF politics of Development achieved growth rates during
1995-1997:
Reducing
and containing inflationary pressures.
Increasing
ratio of domestic saving to GDP.
Strengthening
Fiscal Performance
Increasing
private sector Investment
Improving
Export performance
Restructuring
public expenditures
(International
Monetary Funds, August 2000)
Example of the World Bank – Mauritania: Women Microfinance Mauritania is helping its tens of thousands of urban poor by creating job opportunities where there once were none. A microfinance program is giving small loans to inner city residents to start small businesses, most of them run by women. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xffDu_EWLWc
