Digital Archive....

Will Ireland Default? Ask Belgium The Baseline Scenario By Simon Johnson On the face of it, Ireland seems poised on the brink of default. Its debts are very large relative to the size of its economy, most of this money is owed to foreigners and – unless there is an unexpected growth miracle – the country will struggle to pay its debts in full for many years to come. Yet all the indications are that, as part of the historic rescue package to be introduced this week by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Ireland will not default on or otherwise restructure its most substantial debts. Why not? To be clear, Ireland owes a huge amount of money to the outside world. In the best scenario, Ireland's government debt is likely to stabilize at more than 100 percent of gross national product (G. N. P.); in the worst scenario, with greater real estate losses and a deeper recession , this level could reach 150 percent. That's a higher number...

WHO: 20 to 40 percent of money spent on health wasted, more funds needed to be wasted Aid Watch Health care systems worldwide are wasting up to 40 percent of their funds, but more money is needed to boost their capabilities, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. In an analysis of how countries pay for health and what they get in return, the United Nations agency concluded that despite these losses even more funds need to be invested in health care. This article by AP reporter Maria Cheng on the WHO's newly released 2010 World Health Report explores some of the biggest inefficiencies in global health spending. Of the approximately $5.3 trillion the world spends on health care every year, about $300 billion disappears in mistakes or corruption, according to European Health care Fraud and Corruption Network, quoted in the report. Up to a quarter of the money governments are supposedly using to buy drugs are somehow lost along the way...

Malawi Dev Exchange ( @eldismalawi ) 25-11-10 18:38 Malawi: Catholic Nun Wins U.S.$1 Million Humanitarian Award| All Africa: A Catholic nun who is the found... http://bit.ly/e23lNl #Malawi

Saving the Poor Innovations for Poverty Action Blog Last week Melinda Gates announced new funding of $500 million for micro-savings services in the developing world. In her speech she cited research being conducted by IPA on commitment savings accounts in Malawi. These accounts have had huge huge impacts, increasing bank deposits, farm investments, and ultimately consumption. Farmers offered the commitment savings account (which allows the farmer to freeze the funds until a date of their choosing), could afford to spend 25% more on food than the control group not offered the account. Figure: Total Daily per Capita Expenditure and Daily per Captia Food Expenditure   For more details, check out the IPA project summary  or the Gates Foundation briefing note .  Sent with Reeder  

How to Enchant Your Customer How to Change the World I love to do business with small businesses—in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work—it doesn't matter to me. I love to find great products and services made by entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world. And I love to help small business owners because they aren't flying around in corporate jets and lunching with investment bankers. American Express's idea for Small Business Saturday is a marvelous one, and I'd like to help out by them explaining 10 ways that small businesses can enchant their customers. Put likable, competent and passionate people on the front line. I prefer to interact with employees who smile, know what they're talking about, and love what they sell. However, companies often put the lowest-paid, least-experienced employees behind the counter or at the front desk and hope for the best. This doesn't make sense. Ask yourself this qu...

When Indian Elephants Fight David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog By David Roodman - I've been pretty oblique in recent posts about my evolving opinions of the Andhra Pradesh (AP) crisis. I've been trying to share my thought process with you. But that seems to have left me open to misinterpretation and criticism for poor construction. Perhaps I have taxed your patience. So let me be clear: in a [...] Sent with Reeder  

Another round on food prices Dani Rodrik's weblog Johan Swinnen responds to Oxfam: Let me start by thanking Dani Rodrik for putting a reference and summary of my report on his weblog. I also want to thank Mr. Bailey from Oxfam for his response and reference to two Oxfam reports. In fact, unlike Mr. Bailey's claim that they contradict my arguments, I think these reports are fully consistent with my arguments; and I invite everybody to read my paper and the Oxfam reports. In the post-food crisis 2008 report, there is a section "Few winners, many losers" where it is concluded that "only in a few countries are small producers benefiting from higher prices" (p9). Then there is an entire section on "Why are small farmers losing?", emphasizing that they are often net consumers, that they face many constraints, that small farmers are often women who face greater challenges, etc. In the 3 pages Summary, there is no mentioni...

AIDS in Africa Baobab Over on our Daily Chart blog , we have a new map with some encouraging news about AIDS in Africa. Sent with Reeder  

Lennon vs. Bono Aid Watch I watched last night a remarkable documentary on the life of John Lennon called " Imagine ." For my generation, it's pretty much automatic that Lennon is our hero, and I am no different. But then I thought, do I have a double standard? I criticize celebrity musicians today like Bono for taking on a role like "Africa expert," because we would never put rock stars in charge of say, Federal Reserve Policy. Yet Lennon was also a politically active celebrity rock star – why shouldn't I make the same criticism of his career? Well, I still think there is a big difference between Lennon and Bono. Lennon's anti-war activities courageously challenged the power of the status quo, so much so that he was frequently harassed by the police and FBI.  Bono's support of aid to Africa and the MDGs is more like a feel-good consensus that does NOT challenge Power. Celebrity counter-weight to established power seems muc...

A Subprime Crisis for the Poorest? Aid Watch Vivek Nemana is a graduate student in economics at New York University and works for DRI. Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, India's largest for-profit microlender. The impending collapse of the microfinance industry in Andhra Pradesh, one of India's largest states and a major hub of microfinance, is the ultimate example of a silver aid bullet…not being a silver aid bullet at all. The New York Times reports: India 's rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India's largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor. Responding to public anger over abuses in the microcredit industry — and growing reports of suicides among people unable to pay mounting debts — legislators in the state of Andhra Pradesh last month passed a stringent new l...

Can Employers Tell Employees What to Eat? The Business Ethics Blog All companies want their employees to be team players. But just how far can companies go in requiring that employees 'toe the line'? Can that demand extend to cultural or religious or moral or dietary requirements? How As a starting point, consider this story, from CBC News: No meat on menu for Montreal purse maker A Montreal accessories company has taken its policy of using no animal products beyond the rack and has forbidden its staff from eating meat and fish at work. A former employee says the policy violated her rights as a non-vegetarian…. (I've blogged on unusual forms of employee discrimination before. See Discriminating Against the Non-Blind and "Smokers Need Not Apply" .) So, is it OK for a company to require that its employees not eat meat? Now, to be more precise, the company in question isn't forcing people to be vegetarians. It's just insis...

Malawi growers' warning over tobacco plans BBC News - Africa Tobacco growers in Malawi warn moves by the World Health Organisation to ban some of the product's additives could wreck their livelihoods. Sent with Reeder  

Food and Finance The Baseline Scenario By James Kwak I just read Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food , and what struck me was the parallels between the evolution of food and the evolution of finance since the 1970s. This will only confirm my critics' belief that I see the same thing everywhere, but bear with me for a minute. Pollan's account, grossly simplified, goes something like this. The dominant ideology of food in the United States is nutritionism: the idea that food should be thought of in terms of its component nutrients. Food science is devoted to identifying the nutrients in food that make us healthy or unhealthy, and encouraging us to consume more of the former and less of the latter. This is good for nutritional "science," since you can write papers about omega-3 fatty acids, while it's very hard to write papers about broccoli. It's especially good for the food industry, because nutritionism justifies even m...

Who Gains From The Eurozone Fiasco? China The Baseline Scenario By Simon Johnson Ireland will get a package of support from the EU and the IMF.  Will the money and the accompanying policy changes be enough to stabilize the situation in Ireland or more broadly around Europe?  Does it prevent Ireland from restructuring its debt – or move the Irish (and other parts of the European periphery) further in that direction? And who gains from the delay and mismanagement we continue to see at the highest European levels? This is complicated economic chess within Ireland, across Europe, and at the international level.   In my Bloomberg column this morning , I suggest we look several moves ahead, recognizing the underlying political dynamic: There is a much more general or global phenomenon in which powerful people cooperate to build an economic model that provides growth based on a great deal of debt. When the crisis comes, those who control the state try to save t...

Do-It-Yourself Guide: How to Evaluate a Charity Tactical Philanthropy For all the talk about overhead expense ratios being a bad way to decide if a charity is any good, there aren't many tools available that help donors do better evaluations. There are organizations like Philanthropedia , GiveWell , Root Cause , New Philanthropy Capital and GreatNonprofits , which offer information, but as a group they only cover a tiny sliver of organizations. Charity Navigator is overhauling their rating system in order to move beyond overhead expense ratios, but even they only rate 5,500 of the literally million-plus nonprofits in the country. So what to do if you are wondering if your local after school tutoring program or a nearby homeless shelter is worthy of support? Last month, I published a piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that offered five questions that donors can ask nonprofits , but I intentionally designed the questions to apply to a huge range...