“German retail sales rebounded in March as declining unemployment, slowing inflation and higher wages bolstered households’ purchasing power.
Sales, adjusted for inflation and seasonal swings, rose 0.8 percent from February, when they fell a revised 0.9 percent, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists forecast a gain of 1 percent, the median of 26 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. Sales increased 2.3 percent from a year earlier…”
Comments »“China plans to lower tariffs on some products to encourage imports as the nation seeks to alleviate pressures on domestic resources and reduce trade conflicts, the State Council said in a statement today.
China’s cabinet called on local governments and departments to stabilize and promote commodities imports, widen the buying of advanced technology equipment and energy products, and “appropriately enlarge” the import of consumer goods, according to the statementposted on website….”
Comments »Elections next weekend could determine if Greece is to stay in the EU. If by chance they leave some fear the Euro could unravel quickly.
Not to mention president elect Hollande could be elected shortly in France help the unwind spiral right quick….
Comments »Surprisingly, despite a larger government, France is not showing many symptoms of the government dragging on the economy.
Yes, the French have chosen to allow the government to perform more functions than in many other countries, but economic growth has not been notably worse than its neighbors, and its public debt burden is on par with Germany and the United Kingdom. Despite ideological wishes to the contrary, there is little evidence that countries that choose to have a larger government (within a reasonable range) perform worse economically.
Read the rest of the article here.
Comments »The Dutch gov’t has effectively ended the marijuana tourism industry. Read about it here.
Comments »Some activists are years or decades ahead of their time.
Arundhati Roy is one of these visionaries.
Her words were mocked years ago.
Now she wins!
Click here for a documentary called We by Arundhati Roy
Cheers on your pleb weekend activities….
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFXMQ7Ot-k 450 300] Comments »“Francois Hollande’s stepped-up attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s belt-tightening solution toEurope’s crisis show he doesn’t understand his country’s economic shortcomings, an aide to the German leader said.
The intensifying war of words between the French presidential race frontrunner and Merkel is putting the two politicians from Europe’s two largest economies on a collision course over ending the region’s sovereign debt crisis.
“It’s not for Germany to decide for the rest of Europe,” Hollande said late yesterday on France 2 television, prompting Michael Meister, the deputy caucus chairman of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, to say in a phone interview today that “Herr Hollande has misunderstood the problems in his country and in other euro area countries.”
Anyone want to place a bet on Hollande getting DSKed ?
Comments »Naked Capitalism has linked to the study, skimmed it, and offers some commentary about the bits that stick out, here.
Comments »TOKYO – A half dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased at a lavish military parade were clumsy fakes, analysts say, casting more doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess after its recent rocket launch failure.
The weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don’t even fit the launchers they were carried on.
“There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups,” Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany’s Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. “It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work.”
Read the rest here:
Comments »These people are out of their fucking minds. Barbarian hordes.
Egypt’s National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that ‘marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development’.
This video comes to mind when reading depravity such as the article above.
Comments »Some night cap reading. For some blood will boil. For others their hearts will warm. Make of this report what you will.
“World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills”, warns a major report from the Royal Society.
Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.
The assessment of humanity’s prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.
“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, it says.
At today’s rate of population increase developing countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of a million people every five days from now to 2050, says the report. “Global population growth is inevitable for the next few decades. By 2050, it is projected that today’s population of 7 billion will have grown by 2.3 billion, the equivalent of a new China and an India.”
But the sheer number of people on earth is not as important as their inequality and how much they consume, said Jules Pretty, one of the working group of 22 who produced the report. “In material terms it will be necessary for most developed countries to abstain from certain sorts of consumption, such as CO2. You do not need to be consuming so much to have a long and healthy life. We cannot conceive of a world that is going to be as unequal as it is now. We must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than a $1.25 a day out of absolute poverty. It’s critical to slow population growth in those countries which cannot keep up with services.”
The report gives the example of Niger in West Africa which has increased life expectancy in the past 30 years but is doubling population every 20 years. “Even assuming its total fertility rate (Tfr) falls to 3.9 by 2050, which may be optimistic, the population will grow from 15.5 to 55.5 million by 2050. A future in which population increase outstrips the production of food and other necessities of life is a real possibility for Niger. It is difficult to see a bright future for the country without sharp reductions in fertility and population growth together with increased investment in health and education,” it said.
Most of the global population growth in the next century will come from the 48 least developed countries, of which 32 are in Africa, said Ekliya Zulu, one of the authors and president of the Union for African Population studies. “Taking Africa alone, the population will increase by 2 billion this century. If we fail and fertility levels do not go down to 2.1, (from 4.7 now) the population [there] may reach 5.3 billion. When we slow down population growth we empower women and provide more money for least developed countries to invest in education. The majority of women want fewer children. The demand to reduce fertility is there”, he said.
The authors acknowledge that it would take time and massive political commitment to shift consumption patterns in rich countries, but believe that providing contraception would cost comparatively little. “To supply all the world’s unmet family planning needs would be $6-7bn a year. It’s not much. It’s an extremely good investment, extremely affordable. To not provide family planning is an infringement of human rights”, said Sulston.
The authors declined to put a figure on sustainable population, saying it depended on lifestyle choices and consumption. But they warned that without urgent action humanity would be in deep trouble. “The pressure on a finite planet will make us radically change human activity”, said Pretty.
“The planet has sufficient resources to sustain 9 billion, but we can only ensure a sustainable future for all if we address grossly unequal levels of consumption. Fairly redistributing the lion’s share of the earth’s resources consumed by the richest 10% would bring development so that infant mortality rates are reduced, many more people are educated and women are empowered to determine their family size – all of which will bring down birth rates”, said an Oxfam spokeswoman.”
Comments »“Rein is managing director of China Market Research Group, a strategic market intelligence firm with clients like Apple, DuPont and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
His thesis: “China’s evaporating cheap labor pool will disrupt supply chains and consumption habits around the world. Executives and policymakers need to prepare ahead of the curve, to evolve and take advantage of the changes — or else face extinction.”
The country’s unfettered growth and influence — billionaires now outnumbering their American counterparts — already reverberates through international markets.
Rein arrived in China in the 1990s. Now, unlike the 1990s, job opportunities are no longer scarce. The country’s twentysomethings are hopeful about their futures and career prospects. Their optimism is bolstering China’s consumers and workers, both of which demand American-style lifestyles. China’s middle class — 350 million and growing — want a piece of the good life, he says.
To satisfy China’s growing consumerism, foreign corporations are no longer operating in China as a lower-cost production center.
“Some companies cope with the End of Cheap China by building brands and charging more for their products; others by consolidating market share and becoming a volume player; and still others by converting factories to sell within China and other emerging markets,” Rein writes.
While China is an easy target for protectionists, many American businessmen hope to penetrate an expanding market and make customers of millions of Chinese with more money to spend. To those U.S. executives, China’s economic rise will create thousands of jobs for all kinds of companies in the United States.
Rein combines elegant writing and a methodical research. Years of working in China have given him access to important players. Incisive interviews with billionaires, business executives, government officials, and migrant workers guide the pulse of the narrative.
Each chapter concludes with strategic questions about “what to do and what not to do in China.” But the book is not a clear road-map to correcting the disruption he foresees. He leaves it to readers to answer many questions.
The main question still to be answered: Will China’s power and influence benefit or undermine the U.S. economy?
Rein’s exposé on the dawn of a new China is essential reading for anyone curious about globalism and the dynamism of the international economy.”
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“French Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande’s campaign pledge to reverse Europe’s austerity drive met German resistance, pointing to tension between the region’s two biggest economies.
Hollande, who polls show will oust incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May 6 elections, yesterday said the absence of economic growth prospects explained the record score for anti- euro National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the April 22 first round….”
Comments »Japan’s stock market, hobbled by more than a decade of deflation, is showing companies will stage a full earnings recovery from the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, pricing in the biggest increase in profits compared with other countries since 2001.
Income in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average (NKY) will rise by 69 percent in 2012, after plunging 31 percent last year, according to more than 2,600 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. At 24.5 times reported earnings, Japanese equities are the most expensive among the world’s 60 biggest markets, trading so high that only by meeting analysts’ forecasts will ratios come back in line with global stocks, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“The worst is over for Japan in terms of earnings,” Masafumi Oshiden, an investment manager at ING Mutual Funds Management Co. (Japan) Ltd., said in a telephone interview on April 18. The firm oversees about 1.5 trillion yen ($18.4 billion). “Consumer spending is improving and corporate earnings are rebounding. The cautious mood following the quake is gone.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »In light of the Walmart fiasco i thought it might be of interest to see other instances of bribery involved with business. The funny thing is it is treated as if the action is few and far between, but the reality is common place. In addition to bribery you can add threats, intimidation, black mail, and in some cases murder.
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