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For years the news media have been full of shocking reports on the abuse of women, largely though not exclusively, in Muslim countries. Sentences of flogging and death by stoning for accused adulteresses in Nigeria and Iran, and forced marriage, the burqa and the niqab, female genital mutilation, flogging and prison sentences for “immodest” attire, and “honor” killings, not just in Somalia and Afghanistan, but also in the suburbs of Paris and Birmingham. It’s a pretty grim picture.
But now comes a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research arm of The Economist magazine, which has devised a new index that ranks economic opportunity for women in 113 countries. [click to continue…]
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Economist Intelligence Unit,
Egypt,
EIU,
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honor killing,
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Somalia,
stoning,
Tunisia,
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women,
women's economic opportunity
President Obama, hosting the G20 meetings that kick off today in Pittsburgh, has asked Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to deliver a presentation on his country’s elimination of fuel price subsidies, replacing them with needs-based grants to poor consumers. The U.S. estimates that if developing countries were to follow Indonesia’s example they could reduce fossil fuel emissions by 12%. The question is whether President Obama is willing to follow his own advice. [click to continue…]
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Ending fuel subsidies,
Environmental Law Institute,
ethanol subsidies,
fossil fuel subsidies,
Indonesia
Several months ago I posted an article contending that decoupling – the notion that movements in emerging markets correlate minimally, if at all, with those in mature markets – was dead. The vertiginous rise in most emerging market indices over the previous seven or eight years stood in stark contrast to the anemic performance of the S&P 500 over the same period. As the financial meltdown and subsequent recession hit, there was a brief moment when it seemed that many of the emerging markets, especially in Asia and Latin America, might emerge unscathed. Subsequent events indicated that emerging markets, especially in Africa but also Southeast Asia, were suffering as much as the OECD countries, but with much less of a cushion against humanitarian catastrophe. In some parts of Africa, a five per cent drop in GDP can push millions of people into starvation. Decoupling, as I wrote, was dead. Even the miserable Congolese worker scrabbling in the dirt for diamonds or gold or the columbium-tantalite used in cell phones, was hit by the collapse in consumer and industrial demand in America, Europe, Japan, and China.
I may have been wrong. [click to continue…]
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decoupling,
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Thailand
