Brexit fears coming true
Pro-Brexit politicians deny that Britain's economy will be damaged by leaving the EU. Anti-Brexit pols will point to the closing of a Michelin factory in Scotland.
Michelin workers' shock at factory closure
Dundee Michelin factory workers have spoken of their shock after the company announced its intention to close the plant, with the loss of all 845 jobs.
The tyre factory will close by mid-2020 after the French firm deemed it "unsuitable" in the current climate…
Michelin Dundee manager John Reid said… "Clearly we have been operating in a very difficult market context for more than a year.
"We've had our volume cut three times this year.
"This year we actually produced the lowest volume we've ever produced in the factory, so it was clear that something fairly fundamental was happening."…
The union Unite has said the closure would be a "hammer-blow" to the city.
Michelin said the Dundee site, which opened in 1971 and specialised in smaller tyres, has suffered because of a shift in the market towards low-cost products from Asia.
The trade union representing many of the Dundee workers said it had not given up the fight to keep the factory open.
Unite's Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty said: "Unite has been aware of the challenging market situation facing the Michelin Group…
He added: "The workforce can be assured Unite will fight tooth and nail to save our factory, we will leave no stone unturned to keep this factory open.
"Unite will work day and night to ensure that all options remain on the table."
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Labels: Brexit, economy, politics, UK
Degree for nothing?
What political consequences can you predict from this report?
Dire figure shows 42 percent of Iran’s unemployed are university graduates
Iran is facing a crisis represented in the high percentage of the unemployment among the universities and institutes graduates at 42 percent of the total unemployment.
Dr. Saeed Nemki, Assistant in the Development of Social and Public Affairs [said]… “We are facing this situation, while educating these people had cost a lot. Thus we should think about a basic solution for this dilemma and eliminate the elite from immigrating (abroad),”…
[T]he 42 percent of the unemployed, either have bachelor’s degree or even higher, despite allocating major financial resources for their graduation. This is a very important issue in the society. Actually, the society’s expected something different than those graduates. Thus brain drain is one of the worries facing the labor market in the future…
Iranian news agencies published reports that mentioned the details of the report of the interior minister of Khamenei, indicating that there are about 11 million Iranians are marginalized, 1.5 million are drug addicts, and 600,000 are imprisoned, these are catastrophic numbers for a country that exports more than 4 million and 500 thousand barrels of oil daily.
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Labels: economy, education, Iran, political culture
Some costs of Brexit
How will these predictions play with voters in the UK?
Brexit: UK divorce bill offer worth up to 50bn euros
The UK has offered a larger potential "divorce bill" to the EU - which could be worth up to 50bn euros (£44bn), the BBC understands.
There has been no final agreement on a number but the offer was given a "broad welcome" by Brussels, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said.
No 10 has played down reports the final sum could be up to 55bn euros (£49bn)…
The UK is hoping to move on to talking about trade but the EU will only do this when it deems "sufficient progress" has been made on three areas - the so-called divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit and the Irish border…
EU trade 'linked to 134,000 Scots jobs'
European Union trade routes are linked with 134,000 jobs in Scotland, according to new economic research…
The jobs in this latest Brexit assessment are reckoned to be dependent on trade.
It would be wrong to assume that they will disappear, just as it would be wrong to assume that a job supported by sales to other parts of the world will be more secure under future trading deals…
What the report shows is the starting point for a period of likely upheaval, in which the future trading relationships between Scotland and the rest of the UK, and much more so between the UK and the rest of the world, are re-aligned - perhaps radically so.
It's likely some sectors will suffer, and jobs will be lost. Others will grow…
We don't know any of this, because the shape of Brexit remains foggy. For now, most economists see the downside of this upheaval, or re-alignment of the British economy, being much more significant than any upsides…
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Labels: Brexit, economy, politics, UK
Budgets, not just for households
The US government budget is not the only one being debated these days. In the UK, budget makers are looking forward to more austerity. And what are the alternatives?
Government looks for new spending cuts of up to 6%
Government departments have been told to find spending cuts of up to 6% as part of plans to save £3.5bn by 2020…
Treasury… said the NHS and core schools budgets would not be included, with savings found by councils to be spent on under-pressure social services…
Departments have already faced significant cuts in their budgets since 2010, but they will now be told to find further savings of between 2% and 6% by 2019-20, the Treasury said, with up to £1bn to be reinvested in "priority areas"…
 |
| McDonnell |
[S]hadow chancellor John McDonnell said further cuts would put councils in an impossible position and "it was difficult to see" how they would maintain services.
With interest rates so low, he said there was an "overwhelming case" for government to borrow to fund spending on infrastructure, such as roads, rail and broadband.
"The government has said schools and hospitals are going to be protected. That is simply not true. The NHS is suffering the biggest crisis since its foundation and schools are having the first budget cut per head since the 1970s… "
Public spending as a share of GDP has fallen steadily since 2010 when it totalled 45%. This year's figure is forecast to be 40%…
 |
| Chancellor Hammond |
But ahead of his first Budget on 8 March, Mr Hammond is under pressure to increase spending on a number of fronts amid signs that stronger-than-expected tax receipts could give him additional room for manoeuvre…
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said the effects of an ageing society, on top of underlying financial pressures, were creating a "perfect storm" for the health service.
She said the NHS needed a cash "lifeline" in the Budget and that plugging gaps in day-to-day spending by re-allocating capital spending was a "false economy".
The government is being warned that a further dose of austerity, without better financial planning and reform, could push some public services to "breaking point"…
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Labels: economy, policy, taxes, UK
Economic instability
At a time when those in power want stability, economics is not a friend. Growth has slowed and now there's labor unrest.
Strikes in China over foreign employers selling out to local companies
Coca-Cola workers in three Chinese cities have gone on strike after the US soft drinks company announced it was selling its bottling interests in the country…
The company has announced it is selling all its bottling assets in mainland China to Hong Kong conglomerate Swire Pacific and Cofco Corporation, one of China’s state-owned food giants…
Workers at three Coca-Cola plants called co-ordinated strikes on Monday, with pictures posted online appearing to show workers outside a factory in Chongqing with a banner that read: “We worked hard for over a decade but were sold in less than a second. Compensate! Compensate! Compensate!”…
The Coca-Cola bottling plant workers feared they would lose their jobs or pay under the state-owned employer, said one striking employee.
“We are demanding the company disclose details of the refranchising and plans during the transitional period,” he said.
“We request the company give workers economic compensation before they decide to sign the contract with Cofco.”
Separately, workers at a Sony factory in the southern city of Guangzhou downed tools in protest at the sale of the Sony Electronics Huanan subsidiary, which managed the site, to a Chinese company.
Production at the smartphone camera parts facility, which employs 4,000 people, was halted for two weeks after Sony announced it had been sold to Shenzhen O-Film Tech…
Labour protests have erupted in China with economic growth slowing and factory closures often leaving workers with unpaid wages and no redundancy [unemployment] pay.
Hong Kong-based rights group China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said there were 2,774 strikes and labour protests across the country in 2015 – more than the previous four years put together – with unpaid wages the most common grievance.
Independent trade unions are banned in China, with only the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions legally recognised. But critics say it often fails to assist workers in disputes…
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Labels: China, economy, politics, unions
Recession? Stimulus spending
Look it up in your econ text. When the economy needs a boost, government spending is the most direct way to stimulate the economy. (Even if you have to pay for it later.) [From the
Daily Trust]
Govt Set to Employ 200,000 Graduate Teachers
The Federal Government says the implementation plan for effective commencement of its social investment programmes has reached an advanced stage.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo… said the selection of the first 200,000 unemployed graduates for teaching jobs was being completed…
"Definitely, before the end of this month, we expect that several states would have come on stream with their home-grown school feeding programme. The programme will energise agriculture in the different states because it is what you plant that you feed the children with.
"We'll be hiring caterers, cooks, etc in each state because it'll be federal government-funded from primary 1 to 3 and the state governments, hopefully, would be able to cater for the other classes…
Osinbajo added that the micro-credit scheme in which very low-cost loans would be given to more than one million artisans, traders, market women and others ranging from N60,000 to N100,000, would also kick off this month…
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Labels: economy, Nigeria, policy, recession, stimulus
Recession, inflation, corruption, and famine
Add another challenge to the list of things the Nigerian government must deal with.
Hunger games: Famine looms in areas devastated by Boko Haram
 |
| Borno state |
All told, the UN estimates that 240,000 children in Borno [the state worst-affected by Nigeria’s insurgency], are suffering from severe acute malnutrition—the deadliest category of it. More than 130 will die each day without assistance. Across the wider north-east of Nigeria, a population equivalent to New Zealand’s is in need of food aid. In Abuja, the country’s sleepy capital, humanitarian co-ordinators compare the crisis to those of South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Unlike them, Nigeria cannot excuse itself as a failed state. It is Africa’s second-biggest economy. Things should never have got this bad…
The jihadists want to establish a caliphate in Nigeria: until early last year they occupied a territory the size of Belgium. But they are hopeless administrators, skilled only in violence. Rather than wooing neglected villagers, they pillaged food, stole cattle and poisoned water. Instead of using farmers to feed their fighters, they held them under lock and key…
Mercifully, the insurgents have been pushed out of most big towns in the north-east over the past 18 months… Soldiers say that landmines litter farmers’ fields, making it dangerous to grow food. Borno is now entering its third season without a harvest…
Of the roughly 20 international non-profit organisations that together hand out 90% of the world’s aid, only half are present in Nigeria’s north-east… Nigeria’s own relief agencies are more used to dealing with floods than food crises, and are also accused of stealing supplies.
To help humanitarians, Nigeria’s army must secure major roads and push forward into smaller towns, instead of sitting on its haunches…
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Labels: cleavages, economy, Nigeria, violence
No surprise here
With oil prices slumping, it should be no surprise that Nigeria's economy suffers.
Nigerian economy slips into recession
Nigeria has slipped into recession, with the latest growth figures showing the economy contracted by 2.06% between April and June.
The country has now seen two consecutive quarters of declining growth, the usual definition of recession…
Crude oil sales account for 70% of government income.
The price of oil has fallen from highs of about $112 a barrel in 2014 to below $50 at the moment.
Outside the oil industry, the figures show the fall in the Nigerian currency, the naira, has hurt the economy. It was allowed to float freely in June to help kick-start the economy, but critics argued it should have been done earlier…
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Labels: economy, Nigeria
Who gets the profits?
Citizen anger about government is not restricted to the UK and China. It's also popping up in Iran, when reporters are able to see it.
My reminder here is that about 20% of the non-oil Iranian economy is owned and controlled by
bonyads (those "charitable" foundations formed from the assets of opponents of the Islamic revolution and run by clerics).
Iranians are angry about big bonuses paid to bureaucrats
[T]he payslips of several employees were leaked online and published by several media outlets.
They showed not just inflated salaries, but what appear to be bonuses, interest-free loans and significant overtime payments. In one instance, a bank manager at a state bank was shown to have received £50,000 in one month.
By contrast, other public servants - including those who identified themselves as teachers, nurses and journalists - have published monthly payslips showing some of them are paid much more modest salaries of £300 a month or less…
But what started as a conservative issue has now become a much broader protest on the Iranian internet, with the public blaming both conservatives and reformists for it…
Some Iranian Twitter users also debated the issue tongue-in-cheek.
One tweeted an infographic featuring the monthly income of several world leaders with the following quip: "Obama has sent over his resume and is seeking employment with a bank in Iran, once his presidency ends."…
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on the government to "decisively" tackle the issue. President Rouhani has said he will take "firm action" against the payment of large bonuses.
Quick make this scandal go away
Iran sacks bank chiefs amid uproar over high salaries
The chief executives of four public banks in Iran have been sacked amid widespread criticism of their salaries, the state-run Irna news agency reports.
An official was quoted as saying the economy minister had replaced the heads of Mehr Iran, Mellat, Refah and Saderat at President Hassan Rouhani's request…
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Labels: corruption, economy, Iran
UK government deficit
After you look at the headline and before you read the article, how will this development affect government in the UK? How will it affect politics? and What facts do you want to know before you try to answer the first two questions?
UK deficit rises steeply after surprise fall in tax receipts
A fall in income tax receipts sent Britain’s deficit spiralling to £12.1bn in August, the widest shortfall in government funding since 2012…
Dampening the euphoria last month about the first surplus for three years, the deficit represented a big jump on last year’s figure…
The combination of higher spending and lower tax receipts meant the cumulative deficit of £38.4bn this financial year is only marginally down on the £42.8bn at the same point last year.
Vicky Redwood, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said the government was still on track to reduce its anual borrowing, but at a much slower pacer than previously forecast…
The Treasury said: “Britain’s hard work is paying off with cumulative borrowing £4.4bn lower than at this point last year. We have more than halved the deficit but there’s more to do with debt remaining higher than 80% of GDP.”…
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Labels: economy, government, politics, UK
Seeking outside influence
Nigeria and Mexico are seeking foreign investments. China is investing — especially in Africa and Latin America. Iran has been largely walled off from foreign investment by sanctions and desires to avoid foreign influences.
As most sanctions seem to be on the verge of ending, are there investment opportunities? And who wants them? What does it all mean for government and politics in Iran?
Not so fast: Enthusiasm for post-sanctions Iran is being tempered by realism
ACROSS Europe, businessmen pack conference halls to discover how to unlock Iran’s vast potential after three decades of isolation… Not only would they enjoy access to Iran’s 80m people, but to a hub for trading with hundreds of millions more in Iran’s troubled neighbours…
Sanctions have indeed created pent-up demand, but they have also dried up the liquidity needed to finance it. The price-tags delegates place on Iran’s needs—$15 billion for its railways, $200 billion for its energy sector, $30 billion for tourism—look exciting, but paying for them is a different matter. Oil prices are down by half, sharply reducing revenues as well as the incentives to invest when reopening happens.
In the meantime nepotism, legal unpredictability and state companies masquerading as private ones will all bedevil business. “The corruption is still at unbelievable rates,” says Sharif Nezam-Mafi, [an organizer of a Zurich conference for potential investors]. Financial experts insist that President Hassan Rohani remains on track to privatise the inhisarat, or state monopolies, which dominate the economy, are blacklisted by sanctions and often have close ties to the Revolutionary Guards…
Not all is gloom… Mercedes and Volkswagen are said to be gearing up to replace Peugeot, which once ranked Iran as its second largest market.. Coca-Cola is planning a major expansion in 2016… Politicians and businessmen again speak excitedly of the Persian Gulf. But the reality is that the Iranian phoenix may take some time yet to become airborne.
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Labels: economy, Iran, politics
It's not just the economy…
The American stock market is taking a bath while the economy is growing. What if the economy wasn't growing and the boss was in jail?
Fading Economy and Graft Crackdown Rattle China’s Leaders
[U]ncertainty… permeates the Communist elite as they contend with two unnerving developments beyond their control: an economic slowdown that appears to be worse than officials had anticipated… and a campaign against official corruption that has continued longer and reached higher than most had expected.
Driving decisions on both issues is Mr. Xi, who took the party’s helm nearly three years ago and has pursued an ambitious agenda fraught with political risk. Now, weeks before a summit meeting in Washington with President Obama, those risks appear to be growing, and there are signs that Mr. Xi and his strong-willed leadership style face increasingly bold resistance inside the party that could limit his ability to pursue his goals.
 |
| Xi |
Mr. Xi has positioned himself as the chief architect of economic policy… [and] is making enemies with an anticorruption drive that has taken down some of the most powerful men in the country and sidelined more than a hundred thousand lower-ranking officials…
Mr. Xi has pledged sweeping market-oriented reforms to overhaul the Chinese economy for long-term growth, including plans to weaken monopolies enjoyed by state enterprises, to wean the economy from its dependence on inefficient state-directed investment, and to liberalize the nation’s financial markets, with the aim of making the country’s currency, the renminbi, a strong competitor to the dollar on world markets…
“Everyone understands that the economy is the biggest pillar of the Chinese government’s legitimacy to govern and win over popular sentiment,” said Chen Jieren, a well-known Beijing-based commentator on politics. “If the economy falters, the political power of the Chinese Communist Party will be confronted with more real challenges, social stability in China will be endangered tremendously, and Xi Jinping’s administration will suffer even more criticism.”
Some have asked whether the party leadership and its technocrat advisers are up to the task of managing a slowing economy after decades of experience with one that has only soared…
The policy adviser to senior party and government leaders said fears that the slowing economy could lead to social unrest prompted the Politburo in a July 30 meeting to approve a raft of measures to bolster growth, including the decision to devalue the currency. Other steps will follow, the person said.
Mr. Xi’s campaign against corruption enjoys broad support in a nation where the widening gap between rich and poor is attributed to the ability of a small minority to prosper by abusing government positions or using political connections. As the economy falters, though, the risks for Mr. Xi multiply, said one retired party think tank official.
“The main thing is the economy. As long as the economy continues to decline, people will have more and more objections, and there will be more and more pressure on the leadership,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss internal party politics. “And right now, the fact is that the economy is in decline.”
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Labels: China, corruption, economy, leadership, politics
Challenges of economic policy
Linda Yueh's review at the BBC offers a clear view of the challenges facing China's rulers in the area of economic policy. Can the CPC leaders control consumption as easily as it controlled industrial production? (You might want a briefing about the factors of production and the elements that make up the GDP to go with this article.)
The end of an era for China
Probably the least surprising thing about China's GDP growth rate for the first three months of the year is that it slowed to 7%. After all, that's the target for the year.
 |
| Chinese consumers |
What's more surprising are the drivers: consumption more than investment, services outpacing manufacturing, and domestic demand rather than exports. Taking today's figures and the data for March together with the full year picture for 2014 shows that China's growth drivers are changing.
Consumption contributed 3.8 percentage points to 2014's 7.4% growth rate, which is more than investment which accounted for 3.6 percentage points. Net exports - so exports minus imports - contributed nothing.
Consumption has risen to account for more than 50% of GDP… and finally places China in the realm of market economies where consumption is between half to two-thirds of GDP.
Indeed, industrial production in March expanded by 5.6% in March, the slowest on record, which was significantly outpaced by retail sales - a measure of consumption - which grew at over 10%.
This is what China has been trying to achieve…
It's part of their aim of overcoming the middle income country trap to become prosperous by improving the quality of the growth drivers in the economy.
Growing more through consumption and services is similar to the growth drivers of developed economies such as the U.S. and Europe. So, China's re-balancing also marks the beginning of the end of a period of rapid growth that is based on industrialisation…
So, the picture in terms of re-balancing looks better than the headline growth rate of the slowest quarterly growth rate since the global financial crisis…
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Labels: China, economy, policy
Imbalances affect stability
Mara Hvistendahl, a former comparative politics student, wrote a book (
Unnatural Selection) about the "missing 100 million females" in Asia. The cause of the gender imbalance in China, India, and other countries is a preference for male children. Hvistendahl speculated about political, economic, and social changes that will come with these imbalances.
Perhaps she should have included Nigeria in her book as well. What affects might this imbalance have on Nigeria's politics, economy, and society?
Bring back the girls
SEX-SELECTIVE abortions are used round the world to discriminate in favour of boys. But not in Africa. Nigeria’s sex ratio at birth is the natural one…
Yet despite all this, a recent study* finds that Nigeria also suffers from sexual bias from birth and that, while this does not skew the sex ratio, it manifests itself in other ways that harm individuals and society as a whole. Son-preference damages maternal health, makes marriage trickier for women, increases polygamy and alters the institution of child-fostering, which is widespread in west Africa.
In Nigeria, as in many other African countries, men have stronger ownership rights over land than women do. This gives everyone an economic need for sons, including women, who face a grim widowhood without one… [W]omen whose first child is a daughter are likely to have more children than those whose first child is a son…
It also changes a woman’s married life. Women with first-born daughters are 1.2 percentage points more likely to end up in a polygamous union. Some husbands, it turns out, take another wife if their first child is a girl (polygamy is legal in northern Nigeria and recognised by customary law elsewhere). Men also seem more willing to abandon or divorce wives who produce a daughter…
Heading a household may sound like a good thing. But in Nigeria, as in most countries, female headship is associated with poverty. In fact, almost everything to do with having a daughter first is bad for women. Being in a polygamous household harms their health and their children’s because of competition for food in the home. Having children in quick succession damages maternal health, since mothers need time to recover after giving birth. The need to produce sons may also help explain Nigeria’s maternal-mortality rate of 550 deaths per 100,000 live births—one of the highest rates in the world, even though Nigeria is now a middle-income country…
* “Son preference, fertility and family structure”. By Annamaria Milazzo. World Bank. Working Paper 6869.
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Labels: demographics, economy, Nigeria, political culture
Counter-cyclical economy in Mexico?
Bad news for the PRI with mid-term elections just over a year away.
Mexico's economic growth falling short of government projections
Bad economic news continues to… undermine government efforts to portray the country’s financial situation as robust as it heads toward a major expansion of the oil-exploration industry.
 |
| Videgaray |
Finance Minister Luis Videgaray acknowledged that growth was slower than the government had predicted but rejected the characterization of a recession. He cited the government’s statistics agency as saying the economy was merely stagnant.
“So the problem is that Mexico is growing at a lower rate than it should be, and continues to grow at the rates it has been growing, on average, for the last three decades,” Videgaray told journalists.
“Mexico is growing,” he said, but “it is definitely not the growth that Mexico needs.… Our rhythm of growth must accelerate.”…
Because Mexico’s economy is so intertwined with that of the United States, it is still recovering from its northern neighbor’s financial downturn. In addition, the Peña Nieto government has been widely criticized for failing to spend money in its first months, contributing to sluggishness.
Videgaray and other government officials insist that a battery of major reforms, including the opening of the oil and gas industry to foreign investment, is essential to improving the picture…
“The good news for Mexico is that fundamental changes are being made … changes, reforms that will permit us to speed up our growth in the years and decades to come,” Videgaray said.
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
Just The Facts! is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
What You Need to Know SIXTH edition is COMING SOON.
Labels: economy, elections, Mexico, politics
A little systems analysis
Here's a good example of one of those pesky external inputs that limits the capacity of a government to freely make policy (i.e. sovereignty).
Iran Staggers as Sanctions Hit Economy
For years, Iran’s leaders have scoffed at Western economic sanctions, boasting that they could evade anything that came their way. Now, as they seek to negotiate a deal on their nuclear program, the leaders are acknowledging that sanctions, particularly those applied in 2010 on international financial transactions, are creating a hard-currency shortage that is bringing the country’s economy to its knees…
In repeated meetings during the week [in New York], Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said the government’s financial condition was far more dire than the previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had let on…
Western economists believe the crisis point may be much closer than previously thought, perhaps a matter of months. Iran news outlets have reported that the government owes billions of dollars to private contractors, banks and municipalities.
Because of the sanctions, oil sales, which account for 80 percent of the government’s revenue, have been cut in half…
The sanctions have introduced numerous distortions into everyday life. For example, Iran is allowed to use money it earns from oil sales only to buy products from the purchasing country. As a result, Iranian supermarkets are filled with low-quality Chinese products, while several infrastructure projects are being built by Chinese companies, rather than Iranian…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The Second Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fifth Edition of What You Need to Know is also available from the publisher.
Labels: capacity, economy, Iran
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
