News and Analysis: 14-25 Mar 11 | EmergingFrontierMarkets.com

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Posted on Fri, 25 Mar 11:

Record participation with days until the world unites for Earth Hour: This Sat., 26 Mar, at 8:30pm local time, iconic landmarks across the globe will go dark for Earth Hour, as 131 nations/territories, thousands of cities and public figures join hundreds of millions across the world to celebrate action for the planet. The event began in Sydney in '07, when 2 mln people there switched off their lights. By '10, Earth Hour had created history as the largest voluntary action ever witnessed. Some of the iconic landmarks that will join in include the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa Dubai, Empire State Building NY, Times Square NY, Christ the Redeemer statue Brazil, Nat’l Monument Indonesia, London Eye, Eiffel Tower Paris, India Gate Delhi, Alhambra Spain, among others, World Wildlife Fund, 23 Mar 11 (Why I will leave my lights on, Vancouver Sun, 24 Mar)

Unsustainable budget threatens US - An open letter from 10 fmr chairs of pres.'s Council of Economic Advisers: Repeated battles over the '11 budget are taking attention from a more dire problem. Divided gov't is no excuse for inaction. The bipartisan Nat’l Comm on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, under co-chairs Bowles and Simpson, issued a report on the problem last Dec. As fmr CEA chairs who have served in Republican and Democratic admins, we urge that the Bowles-Simpson report be the starting point of an active legislative process that involves intense negotiations between both parties. We do not agree on many issues. Yet we find ourselves in remarkable unanimity about the long-run federal budget deficit: It is a severe threat that calls for serious and prompt attention, Signed by: Baily, Feldstein, Hubbard, Lazear, Mankiw, Romer, Rosen, Schultze, Tyson, and Weidenbaum, Politico, 24 Mar 11

Jagdish Bhagwati: Four fallacies of the crisis--The current twin crises in finance and the real economy, what Americans call Wall St and Main St, and the interminable discussions about financial reform and the prospects for econ recovery, have spawned several fallacies that need to be addressed and dismissed, two of which are: 1) that the crisis would produce a 'free fall', and 2) that current global imbalances will continue to afflict us, says NY Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow/ Columbia U prof, Proj Syndicate (courtesy J Turkish Weekly), 28 Feb 11

Posted on Wed, 23 Mar 11:

Can nuclear power be safe?: 3 years after the '86 Chernobyl disaster, a discredited nuclear power industry established an association designed for operators to help each other avoid missteps made in Ukraine. Now, following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the World Association of Nuclear Operators is facing the question that brought it into existence: Can nuclear power be safe? Developing nations are increasingly involved in the association, incl 3 companies from China which, prior to Japan's accident, had been charged by Beijing with implementing the world's most ambitious rollout of nuclear power,   Weblog at WSJ, 23 Mar 11

Joseph Stiglitz: A balanced debate about reforming macroeconomics -- The most remarkable aspect of the recent confab on post-crisis macroeconomic policy was the broad consensus that the macro models that had been relied upon in the past had failed. They failed to predict the crisis; standard models even said bubbles couldn't exist - markets were efficient. Even after the bubble burst, they said the effects would be contained. This crisis, like many earlier ones, was a credit crisis; but few of the macro models modeled credit. And in any meeting such as this, it's worth noting what was not discussed, or only mentioned briefly, notes Nobel Laureate '01/ Columbia U prof,   Weblog at IMF, 22 Mar 11

US, Europe, Japan increasingly challenged in R&D by emerging nations: Europe, Japan and US may still dominate research and dev't (R&D) but they are increasingly being challenged by emerging economies, esp. China. This is one of the findings of the Science Report 2010, which was written by a team of int'l experts. It presents an overview of global trends in science/tech, based on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative indicators. It looks at the various regions, with spotlights on certain nations (Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Iran, Japan, SKorea, Russia, Turkey and US). The previous report in this series was published in '05,   Unesco, Nov '10

Posted on Mon, 21 Mar 11:

Impact of quake on Japan's growth likely to be 'temporary', 'limited impact' on East Asia regional economy: Japan’s real GDP growth will slow, but the slowdown will likely be temporary as a result of the quake and tsunami. Growth should start picking up after mid-'11 as reconstruction efforts get underway, says the latest East Asia and Pacific Economic Update [PDF] released today. While it is still too early for a full assessment, its past experience suggests an accelerated reconstruction effort, and the short term impact on the developing East Asia region is likely to be limited.  However, it points to uncertainties posed by the unfolding situation involving the nuclear reactors,   World Bank, 21 Mar 11

One Family: For the month of Mar, Giorgio Armani Fragrances will donate $1 (enough to provide a child with clean, safe drinking water for 40 days) to the US Fund for Unicef for the first 250,000 people who declare that he/she "likes" the 'Acqua for Life' page devoted to the Unicef Tap Project at Facebook (requires log-in) ; and

Editorial: Thirsty?--Whether you buy it by the bottle or jug, or just get it out of your faucet, one thing we in the industrialized world do not lack is clean water. In fact, many of us shamelessly waste gallons of it every day. This is not a ploy to make you feel guilty, just raise a little consciousness. Next week, Mar 20-26, is World Water Week, and it is a good time to remember our good fortune that the water we drink is clean and plentiful. That is not so everywhere. According to Unicef, 900 mln people lack access to potable drinking water - almost half of them are children - and some 2.6 bln people die each year from inadequate water sanitation,   Wilton Bulletin/ US, 17 Mar 11 (Unicef Tap Project)

Postcards from a dentist chair: Natalie Shaw has plenty to smile about. A 45-day holiday exploring the palaces and forts of Jaipur and other cities ought to be reason enough, but the real sparkle comes from the fact that she managed to save about £1,920 ($3,100) during this trip. The savings come from her decision to get her dental treatment done in Jaipur. Back home in London it would have cost her around £2,200. Jaipur is the latest Indian city to cater to foreigners seeking cheap, reliable dental treatment and exotic tourist experiences. Malaysia and Thailand have emerged as other hot spots for dental tourism, together with Hungary and Spain,   Forbes, 3 Mar 11

Posted on Fri, 18 Mar 11:

UN Security Council allows 'all necessary measures' to protect Libyan civilians: With pro-Qaddafi forces advancing on Benghazi, the opposition capital, the UN SC approved a no-fly zone and other measures to protect civilians. The resolution goes beyond a no-fly zone. It authorizes states to take 'all necessary measures' to enforce a ban on flights and protect civilians from harm. That could include targeted air strikes on Libyan military forces, but excludes an occupation force. The resolution passed by a vote of 10-0, with 5 abstaining: Russia, China, Germany, India and Brazil. Initially, US was reluctant, until the Arab League came out in support of a no-fly zone, CSMonitor, 17 Mar 11

The nuclear crisis and Japan's gov't: The response of the gov't to its multiple unfolding disasters has been better than its past performance in moments of crisis, but its political leaders still have a long way to go to manage events well and win public confidence, MIT experts said Wed. in a forum. The fact that Tokyo's buildings survived the main quake and its many large aftershocks is a 'testimony to the quality of building codes, the quality of engineering and the enforcement of those codes.' However, one expert drew a distinction between the vigilance Japan has showed in the area of quake safety and the relative lack of stringency in the area of nuclear power, MIT News, 17 Mar 11 (Readers' questions about Japan's nuclear crisis, Weblog at Science Mag)

Olivier Blanchard: The future of macroeconomic policy - 9 tentative conclusions: The global crisis taught us to question our most cherished beliefs about macro policy. I was heartened by the excellent discussions at a confab on post-crisis macro policy in Wash. last week. At its end, I organized my concluding thoughts around 9 points, one of which is that the crisis made it clear that there are many distortions relevant for macro. We had ignored them, thinking they were the province of the micro-economist. As we integrate finance into macro, we're discovering distortions within finance are macro-relevant, says IMF chief economist/ MIT prof, Weblog at IMF, 13 Mar 11 (Romer: An important starting point - with one gap, 16 Mar)

Posted on Wed, 16 Mar 11:

Fukushima's radiation so far: At the Fukushima reactor 1, workers have been in the vicinity of radiation levels in the past day as high as 400 millisieverts per hour (a sievert is an int’l unit of radiation measurement). "That's pretty high, it's worrisome," says Clifford Chao, head of radiation oncology at NY Presbyterian Hospital. At that level, an hour's exposure is roughly equivalent to 1000 times the radiation that the average person experiences in a full year, Weblog at Science Mag, 15 Mar 11 (US Nuclear Regulatory Comm: Layman’s guide to nuclear energy and nuclear reactors | Comm news updates | MIT Nuclear Sci Eng--Briefing on the Japan nuclear crisis | Int'l Atomic Energy Agency updates)

The future of UK aid: The Int'l Development Secy announced the key outcomes of two aid reviews. One of these, the Multilateral Aid Review (MAR), took a long, hard look at 43 of the global dev't agencies his dept works with. Core DFID funding to 4 poor performing agencies - Int’l Labor Org, UN Int'l Strategy for Disaster Reduction, UN-HABITAT and UN Industrial Dev't Org - will end. A further 4 agencies - Int'l Org for Migration, Food and Agriculture Org, Commonwealth Secretariat's dev't programs, and UNESCO - will be asked to improve their effectiveness. DFID will increase support for the most effective agencies such as UNICEF, Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization, and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Dept. for Int'l Dev't, 1 Mar 11 (MAR overview [PDF] | Responses of ILO, UNISDR, UN-HABITAT, UNIDO and other agencies)

Posted on Mon, 14 Mar 11:

Nuke crisis raises many questions, no easy answers: The nuclear crisis in Japan has developed rapidly on many fronts, making it difficult to track the threads. What are the dangers? Will the situation improve? Can the reactors be cooled? The crisis began on Fri when a mag.-8.9 earthquake and tsunami cut off regular electricity to the oldest unit at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, 270 km northeast of Tokyo. Since then more reactors - at more nuclear sites - have lost at least some cooling ability, increasing concerns about possible meltdowns. Some questions and answers about the crisis,   AP (courtesy Hindustan Times/ India), 14 Mar 11

Jeffrey Sachs: A calamity is inevitable unless we share resources--India's great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody's greed. Today, Gandhi's insight is being put to the test as never before.  If our societies are run according to the greed principle, with the rich doing everything to get richer, the growing resource crisis will lead to a widening divide between the rich and the poor - and quite possibly to an increasingly violent struggle for survival, says Columbia U Earth Inst dir.,   Proj Syndicate (courtesy Gulf Times/ Qatar), 11 Mar 11

Todd Moss: Development policy of the future… And why we aren't ready--The maxim that armies are always fighting the last war might just as aptly apply to development agencies: they are too often tackling yesterday’s problems with an outdated set of tools. If our dev’t policies and agencies are to serve our interests, then we need them to both live in the present and prepare for the future. So, what then might dev't policy look like, say, a decade from now? What should we be thinking about now to get ready? Here are 3 big trends that will be shaping the dev't future, says Ctr vice-pres/ senior fellow,   Ctr Global Dev't, 22 Feb 11

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