More financial crisis visualizations

27 visualizations and infographics to understand the financial crisis.

Russia Almost Gets Served

Eurovision, the annual song competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, is just around the corner. This year it will be held in Moscow, so Georgia, still reeling from its embarrassing military loss to the Russian bear this past summer, decided to redeem itself with a disco song: “We don’t wanna Put in.” The chorus:

We don't wanna Put in
The negative move
It’s killin' the groove
I'm a-tryin' to shoot him
Some disco tonight
Boogie with you

First, Georgia, disco? Really? Second, very subtle, Georgia, but not subtle enough for the European Broadcast Union. That’s right. The song has been banned from competition as it is too political. The rules clearly state: No lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political or similar nature shall be permitted during the Eurovision Song Contest. But what about Finland’s losing entry in 1982, you ask? Hey everyone’s asking it.

Well sirs and madams, Kojo’s “Bomb out” apparently does not count as political, because it was a message of peace that called for an end to nuclear weapons. And, apparently, a song threatening to shoot someone named “Put in” is not considered an olive branch in the European community. Plus Kojo is rocking out this red leather suit. Now you get served, Georgia!

Trash talk

The United States may finally be stuck with all of the discarded paper, scrap metal, and old computer parts that had previously been shipped to China for recycling. The New York Times recently reported that the once fruitful recycling industry in China that had been soaking up numerous waste products from around the world has become largely unprofitable after the fall of commodity prices, a trend we have been following closely here on zzzeitgeist. Among these commodities, paper prices have fallen by as much as 80%, meaning an end to the old practice of smuggling medical waste in crates marked for recycled paper. As environmental concerns shape into policy, the throw away culture of the past will hopefully reform in both the United States and China, leading not only to greener disposal practices but less waste as a whole. Finding viable solutions for managing the waste we've already created will open the door to cleaner practices in the future. In this era, the already fine lines between waste management (nuclear included), renewable energy, and culture will likely fade away.

(Photo thanks to Patrick)

Facebook goes Arabic

Facebook currently operates in 40 languages- from Afrikaans to Greek... but no Arabic... until now. 

Although Facebook has been available throughout the Middle East since it expanded beyond the US college network in 2006, it will now be fully functional in Arabic.  According to an article in the Guardian, "50 million of the world's 250 million Arabic speakers already use the internet, but Arabic only makes up 5% of global web content."

Considering the fact that there are currently over 300,000 Facebook users in Lebanon, and over 250,000 in Saudi Arabia- this should be an interesting trend to track.  Social networking is often used differently in various cultural contexts... it will be informative to see how Facebook is utilized throughout the Arab-speaking world. 

Atlas fudged

The focus of "The Word" this evening on Steven Colbert was the resurgence of Atlas Shrugged in public commentary. According to the Economist, sales of the book are up, and every Fox News pundit seems to be spouting the importance and timeliness of Ayn Rand's masterpiece. 

All this makes me wonder. When a historical or literary metaphor or analogy such as this seems to take off, it should spark our skepticism. I'm of the belief that most of the people bolstering Rand's genius haven't read beyond her Wikipedia page.

Is anyone getting a slight feeling of deja vu?

Everything you ever wanted to know about the gold standard

Or, what feels like about half of what Dave, Rory and I studied for our Master's Degree. The post is here.

(HT: The Big Money)

Feeding humanity

* Posts on agriculture represent my personal opinions on the subject.*

Yesterday, Rory made an important observation: the global food crisis isn’t over. Indeed, many of the long-term changes in global food supply and demand haven’t changed since last year’s price spikes. And as the world’s population continues to grow, finding a way to feed everyone will become an increasingly central challenge for humanity.

When it comes to the feasibility of significantly increased food production, I am no Malthusian. The great promise of genetically-modified crops, combined with current low levels of agricultural productivity in most of the developed world, suggest that current yields can be substantially increased. To this end, we should support programs that aim to increase productivity in the developing world through better rural infrastructure, mechanization of agriculture, increased fertilizer use, seed pilot programs, etc. We should also encourage biotechnology research and development in rich countries.

However, agricultural land, like any natural resource, is distributed unevenly. Some countries are better positioned to grow food than others. Because of this, we need to advocate strongly for total liberalization of international agricultural trade. This is the only way to ensure that every country, including those with poor resource endowments, has equal access to market-priced agricultural staples. Let’s not forget that a significant trigger of global food price spikes were temporary export controls enacted by major wheat and rice exporting countries. Improve agricultural productivity wherever possible and work simultaneously toward agricultural free trade.

But agricultural trade liberalization would require an unprecedented degree of global policy cooperation. I am particularly worried that the economic crisis will actually result in a breakdown of international cooperation, which could herald a significant domestic retrenchment of politics. History shows us that globalization is hardly the natural state of international affairs. However, some of the most dangerous problems that humanity faces, like climate change and food security, will require global solutions. If we can’t find a way to cooperate, our shared future will be bleak.

It starts with me, it starts with you, it starts with us.

Happy International Women's Day! (March 8th)



Since 1911, International Women's Day has celebrated the economic, political, and social achievements of women: past, present and future.

The progress women have made world-wide, and the critical contribution of women to the betterment of their societies in every corner of the world are indisputable.

IWD events are being held all over the world - check them out.

And don't forget: It starts with me, you... us.

The Browser

If you haven't checked out TheBrowser.com, I highly recommend it. It's a frequently-updated list of links selected for you by a small group of very bright people. It's sort of like anti-crowdsourcing, which I actually prefer.

China encourages consumer spending

While Wal-Mart continues to shine in the U.S., China is creating incentives for low income farmers to spend more domestically. Although increased consumer spending may be one strategy for bolstering the economy, this video seems to suggest that rural residents in China living off of $600 per year are ready to rush out and buy washing machines.

Future of capitalism

This week, the FT is having a debate on the Future of Capitalism. Here's a sobering excerpt from Martin Wolf's opening salvo, titled "Seeds of its own destruction:"

"These changes will endanger the ability of the world not just to manage the global economy but also to cope with strategic challenges: fragile states, terrorism, climate change and the rise of new great powers. At the extreme, the integration of the global economy on which almost everybody now depends might be reversed. Globalisation is a choice. The integrated economy of the decades before the first world war collapsed. It could do so again."

The food crisis never ended

Christopher Delgado, an agricultural policy advisor at the World Bank, recently said of the global food crisis, "The food crisis has not gone away...In fact, it is coming back."

Combing through the media, it would be easy to assume that the food crisis had long ago subsided as demand for imports, commodity prices and economic growth declined. However, risks to food security and the possibility of famine are still very high in many countries. While food commodity prices have fallen from their record highs in 2007, the US Department of Agriculture forecasts that they will remain above historical levels in 2009. The combination of rising food prices, economic contraction, export/price controls and tight trade credit exposes many vulnerable countries, particularly LDCs, to serious risks of famine, poor crop yields and higher prices coinciding with falling income. This doesn't even begin to include the impact on food production by drought, land degradation and other environmental conditions; the UN recently warned that global food production may fall 25% by 2050.

Given the still prevalent risks, it is disconcerting that less is being done to combat the problems directly. Further, certain policy responses to the financial and economic crises, such as looser monetary policy in the developed world, or expropriation in countries like Venezuela, risk stoking the rising food commodity prices. Which brings me to the real danger on the horizon (beyond, of course, the human cost): that the financial, economic and food crises will reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. A food crisis is a likely second-round affect of the financial and economic crises, which in itself breeds political and economic instability, undermining the recovery process and further destabilizing the global economy.

Policy responses to the financial and economic crises are understandably driven by the need for immediate action; to stop the bleeding, so to speak. But what if the very policies necessary to bring us out of this downward spiral only reinforce it in the medium-term?

(photo from snake.eyes' photostream)

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman is taking it to the streets and offers an entreprenuerial perspective on the current economic crisis. He has some valid insights, especially his idea on the highly politicized H-1B Visa.

Trade papers worth reading

Trade policy wonks have their hands full.

On Monday, the Obama administration released their 2009 Trade Policy Agenda, outlining their general strategy on trade for the next year. (Never mind that they don't have a USTR yet.) Unless you want to torture yourself, skip the 100+ page report on trade policy in 2008. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. That said, it's definitely worth reading the five page summary on trade policy going forward at the beginning.

VoxEU has a phenomenal new e-book on the new "murky protectionism". It is absolutely fascinating reading all the way through, but at least have a look at the introduction. I'd write a much longer post on this if I could. Suffice to say that things have gotten worse since the G20 summit in November, and they could get much, much worse if things don't change.

Go check them out. I want a report on my desk by Monday morning at 8am.

Should I stay or should I go?

It's a testament to how bad things have gotten when people are already thinking about whether Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should step down.

Kind of like Martin Wolf wondering out loud whether Obama's presidency has already failed. And that was a month ago! Think of everything that's happened since then.

Er, actually, maybe it's best not to think about...

Quantifying culture

As a student with formal training in a variety of fields, most notably anthropology and economics, I often find myself flummoxed at how drastically the two fields seem to speak past each other. This sentence gives me hope. 

One interesting bit of research suggests that "group values" cultures will export products that don't require as much impersonal contract enforcement, and thus values is part of what makes you specialize.

Besides the verb disagreement, that's one of the most intriguing ideas I've heard in recent development theory. Easterly, at his new blog AidWatch, vastly oversimplifies the research (as he openly admits) but boils the ideas down nicely. Read the whole thing.

Afghanistan: the weak link in a stronger global chain?

The war in Afghanistan may not end well for the US; history has not been kind to foreign forces. But there are signs that it will become the key linkage in the Obama administration's attempts at redefining US foreign relations.

NATO announced today that it was restoring high-level contacts with Russia. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that, amongst others, Afghanistan was an issue of "mutual concern." She also expressed her support for a conference on Afghanistan that would bring together all of the key stakeholders in the region, including Iran. From the BBC:

"If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited as a neighbour of Afghanistan," she said.

The challenges posed by Afghanistan are shared by each country in the region (whether there by geography, choice or military alliance). Beyond the obvious interest of each stakeholder in the country's success, Afghanistan may provide the conduit for a diplomatic thaw in US-Russia (a "reset"), US-Iran relations (a handshake, maybe?). Stay tuned...

Marketplace of Ideas

Following Kevin's post on the declining newspaper industry, I'd like to draw a somewhat unusual comparison: unlike the newspaper industry, "soft power" is highly compatible with the internet and stands to benefit greatly if leveraged correctly.

As Kevin stressed: "advertising dollars will continue to migrate to the internet where technology provides highly targeted advertising with measurable statistics."

That's the key. Advertising and newspaper debate aside, the internet provides users with MEASURABLE STATISTICS.

Beyond the typical business/marketing use of viral marketing and social media- the internet is a perfect way to to gauge the reception of all sorts of campaigns: health/environmental/social campaigns, development projects, community initiatives, etc... all over the world. Taking a message, including that of the US government, to the internet gives us an unprecedented look into the "success" of the message as well as the demographics of those receiving it.

Just a thought.

*photo from Dru Bloomfield's photostream

Ecuador and new protectionism

Dan's comments on new protectionism:

The Washington Times sees the case of Ecuador - what it calls the "the world's most protectionist response to the global economic crisis," with restrictions on "everything from Peruvian shampoo to Chilean grapes and U.S.-made running shoes" - as a bellwether heralding the possible spread of protectionism around the globe.

The combination of falling remittances, its debt default, and plummeting oil prices have put the country in a very difficult spot, but autarky and import substituting industrialization are not the way out.

New protectionism

This Vox EU piece on post-G20 summit protectionism sheds a lot of light on the current state of international trade. Two World Bank economists have tracked the implementation of 47 new protectionist measures since November. Most of these have had negligible effects on trade, but they're part of a worrying trend of domestic economic retrenchment, which spans agriculture, industry and finance. Also of particular note is a sharp increase in the number of anti-dumping cases.