World Economics

While still moving ahead, the rate of growth in all Sales Managers Indexes has slowed sharply from a year ago.  Read more...

His detractors claim that Greece was forced to face harsher conditionality because the deficit was revised upwards, thus helping to justify externally imposed austerity. Despite overwhelming evidence that Mr. Georgiou correctly applied EU rules in revising Greece’s fiscal deficit and debt figures, and despite strong international support for his case, some Greek courts continued the pursuit. The Georgiou case tested the independence of the Greek judiciary, as some senior prosecutors and judges would appear to have repeatedly failed to act in accordance with the rule of law and due process. With a solid majority in parliament, the newly-elected center-right New Democracy government has the opportunity to deliver deep institutional and economic reforms. Ensuring the independence of the judiciary should be a top priority.  Read more...

Africa’s fast-growing markets should be producing far more commercial opportunities for its businesses and yielding far more jobs for its people, but they are not. If there is genuine economic growth occurring in Africa’s major cities then current data and the view from the street are not reflecting it. Jobless growth haunts the cities of Africa.  Read more...

The author was told that he should start by researching something simple - like exports of German cars to the country under investigation, as listed in German export documents. And compare the results with imports of German cars as documented by the Middle Eastern country. The results were spectacular. Over 10 times more cars were exported from Germany according to German data, than were supposedly imported according to Middle Eastern data, over the same period. Something wrong somewhere!  Read more...

What do you think happens to the used clothes we give to clothes banks? Some go to charities for the poor, some to emergency aid, but most go to maintain a multi-million dollar international business, with companies exporting mostly American and European second-hand clothes to Africa at market rates, creating big turnovers and profits for all the various...  Read more...