US Inflation: Fears grow that US action on inflation will trigger debt crisis - by Larry Elliott

Fears are growing that action by the US central bank to combat high inflation will trigger a fresh debt crisis, as it emerged poor-country repayments to creditors are already running at their highest level in two decades.

The Jubilee Debt Campaign said debt payments by developing countries had more than doubled since 2010 and were likely to increase further if, as expected, the Federal Reserve pushed up interest rates.

Urging deeper debt relief, the JDC said payments to creditors already accounted for 14.3% of poor-country government revenue in 2021, up from 6.8% in 2010 and the highest level since 2001.

Many poor countries have borrowed in US dollars, exposing them to the dual risk of higher borrowing costs and a weakening of their currencies against the greenback.

Read more at: Fears grow that US action on inflation will trigger debt crisis | Inflation | The Guardian

Russia: Will protests against President Putin gain momentum in Russia?

People in Russia have defied police warnings and freezing temperatures to hold some of the biggest protests yet against President Vladimir Putin.

Tens of thousands rallied in nearly 70 cities to demand the release of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was arrested as he returned from Germany where he had treatment for poisoning by a nerve agent.

Security forces detained more than 3,000 demonstrators, triggering condemnation from countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.

Read more at: Will protests against President Putin gain momentum in Russia? | Protests News | Al Jazeera

Russia's Growth Too Slow to Catch Advanced Economies – says IMF

Rushas weathered the coronavirus pandemic better than other countries but its economic growth isia s too slow to catch up with advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

"Russia entered the Covid-19 crisis with low growth but strong policy frameworks and significant buffers," an IMF report said.

But it added that several factors, including low oil prices and sanctions, led to "lackluster growth" that was "insufficient" to match advanced economies. br>
Since 2014, Russia's tax policy "resulted in low public debt and reserve accumulation," the IMF said, adding that the central bank "brought inflation down and contributed to significant de-dollarization" that made the economy more resistant.

Read more at: Russia's Growth Too Slow to Catch Advanced Economies – IMF - The Moscow Times

US election: Here's how it can impact Europeans' lives - by Lillo Montalto & Marta Rodriguez

Donald Trump defined the 2020 Presidential vote as "the most important election in US history" but its impact will also be felt on this side of the pond too — and not just at the highest of political levels.

Trump’s politics over the past four years have affected both the pockets and the most intimate sphere of millions of Europeans.

On one hand, many EU workers have incurred substantial losses in their incomes as a result of the EU-US trade war.

On the other hand, unknown but influential lobbying groups with ties to the US administration are bringing on a fight to erode basic human rights for women and LGBT communities.

Read more at: US election: Here's how it can impact Europeans' lives | Euronews

Europe's coronavirus resurgence: Are countries ready to prevent a 'second wave'?

Many experts agree that Europe is experiencing a resurgence in cases, as people are more relaxed about social distancing during the summer months.

France has seen a 78 per cent increase in its weekly COVID-19 incidence rate per 100,000 people. New cases have increased from a couple of hundred per day to more than 1,000.

Read more at:
Europe's coronavirus resurgence: Are countries ready to prevent a 'second wave'? | Euronews

UN Trade Agency: Coronavirus update: COVID-19 likely to cost economy $1 trillion during 2020, says UN trade agency

Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty it has sparked will likely cost the global economy $1 trillion in 2020, the UN’s trade and development agency, UNCTAD, said on Monday.

Read more at:
Coronavirus update: COVID-19 likely to cost economy $1 trillion during 2020, says UN trade agency | | UN News

Food supplies: Will Grocery Stores Start Running Out of Food? - by Dave Wedge

 As recently as last week, grocery stores were jammed with panicked customers filling their carts with meat, frozen foods, canned goods, pasta and other items to get them through what could be weeks of isolation. Now, though, many grocery stores are turning into ghost towns, as braving human contact feels more and more like—and perhaps is—putting your life at risk. Not unlike the real estate or stock markets, this kind of buying volatility is destined to cause disruptions in grocery store supply chains, and there are signs that food shortages could arise should the national lockdown linger into summer as many expect.

While it’s still early to predict the impacts that global lockdowns will have on food supplies, there is evidence out of China that the crisis is taking a toll on agriculture and livestock. Vos’ organization reported this week that 60 percent of agricultural businesses in the most impacted areas of China were reporting logistics disruptions. These disruptions include shortages in feed for animals, a lack of workers to care for livestock and tend to crops, and an inability to get other essential supplies. “As spring arrives, agricultural enterprises in many places face serious logistics problems,” the IFPRI report states. “Livestock farming also faces challenges similar to China’s—problems that may require government intervention to avert shortages or price spikes.”

Sam Rocco, owner of BC Produce Inc., a large distributor in Chelsea, agrees that workforce health could become an issue across the food distribution system, but tried to put a rosy spin on the increasingly nerve-wracking situation. “At the moment, the system is running smoothly,” he said. “We’re getting plenty of product. When there was the rush to the supermarkets, that caused a spike in demand at the farms and in the need for transportation, and that caused a little bit of disruption, but since then, that rush has subsided. It’s a very robust system. I think we’re going to survive it. Hopefully it won’t last too long and we’ll all be alright.”

Read more at: Will Grocery Stores Start Running Out of Food?

Storm Ciara latest: Eight dead across Europe as hurricane-force winds sweep across the continent

EU Impact Ciara: The death toll from Storm Ciara has climbed

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/08/wind-warnings-issued-all-across-northern-europe-as-storm-ciara-approaches

US Government: Impact to be felt after the Christmas holidays

Impacts of U.S. government shutdown to rise following holidays

Read more at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-government-shutdown-politics-1.4959098

Switzerland: Davos attendees are in for one of the bleaker WEF meetings of late

The threat of large-scale cyberattacks and a "deteriorating geopolitical landscape" since the election of US President Donald Trump have jumped to the top of the global elite’s list of concerns, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said ahead of its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The growing cyber-dependency of governments and companies, and the associated risks of hacking by criminals or hostile states, has replaced social polarisation as a main threat to stability over the next decade, according to the WEF’s yearly assessment of global risks, published on Wednesday in London. The Davos forum starts on January 23 in the Swiss ski resort.

While the economic outlook has improved, nine in 10 of those surveyed said they expected political or trade clashes between major powers to worsen. About 80% expected an increased chance of war.

"Cybersecurity is the issue most on the minds of boards and executives, given the visibility of state-sponsored attacks in an environment of increasing geopolitical friction," John Drzik, president of global risk and digital at Marsh, which contributed to the study, said in an interview.

"Businesses are increasingly dependent on technology and are aware that the openings hackers have are growing. As they invest in things like artificial intelligence, they are widening their attack surface."

Drzik said recent high-profile security breaches that have fuelled this perception include the WannaCry ransomware attack, which infected more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries, and NotPetya, which caused two companies losses in excess of $300m. The cost of cybercrime to firms over the next five years could reach $8-trillion, the WEF said.

Similarly, thousands of attacks every month on critical infrastructure from European aviation systems to US nuclear power stations show state-sponsored hackers are attempting to "trigger a breakdown in the systems that keep societies functioning," the WEF said.

In the preview, which would suggest Davos attendees are in for one of the bleaker forums in recent memory, almost two-thirds of global leaders saw risks intensifying from 2017. Climate change and extreme weather remained the greatest concerns of those surveyed. Economic worries receded as a unified pick-up in growth and stocks at record highs suggest the world may finally be r

Read more: Davos attendees are in for one of the bleaker WEF meetings of late

Brexit - Impact: The Economics of Brexit: A German View - by Holger Schmieding

The British “in or out” EU referendum on June 23 poses the top economic and political risk for Europe this year. Germany would love the UK to stay in the European Union.

The UK is simply part of Europe. Managing relations with the UK is much easier in the established framework of the EU than it would be on an awkward bilateral basis.

Beyond making economic and political sense for all sides (except for Vladimir Putin and some other interested politicians), a vote to stay in the EU would also avoid ‎a host of potential complications that could stem from a Brexit.

What might be the economic impact of Brexit on the continent? And how far would Germany go to offer the UK good terms of access to parts of the Common Market after a Brexit?

As a highly‎ open economy that specializes in the export of cyclical goods such as high-end machines and cars, Germany tends to be affected by any spike in global or European uncertainty more than most other countries.

A potentially turbulent Brexit could thus dampen the near-term outlook for German investment and exports noticeably.

Instead of expanding at an annualized clip of around 1.6% in the second half of 2016, German growth may slow to less than half that rate. Other eurozone countries would, on average, not do better than that.

Fortunately, Germany tends to be good at overcoming short-term shocks. As long as a Brexit does not cause the remainder of the EU to unravel, the direct impact of a Brexit would be brief. German and Eurozone growth can be expected to rebound back to its trend rate by the end of 2017.

Read more: The Economics of Brexit: A German View - The Globalist

Tourist Industry: Tourists Steer Clear of Turkey After Bombings, Russia Clash - by Yeliz Candemir and Emre Peker

A string of terrorist attacks blamed on Islamic State or Kurdish militants, on top of a diplomatic feud with Russia, are battering Turkey’s vibrant tourism industry, which had been one of the few bright spots in a slowing economy.

Bookings for this summer are down 40% from last year, and hotel occupancy rates have plunged more than half, according to industry figures. Hundreds of hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and boutique resorts have been put up for sale.

And there is no end in sight to the turmoil. On Saturday, another bombing blamed on Islamic State killed four foreigners on a busy Istanbul shopping street.

“We didn’t dream of such a terrible situation,” said Bora Adali, a 35-year-old hotelier in Antalya, who is trying to sell his three-star resort. “We are facing a big crisis, and its scope hasn't yet been recognized.”

Tourism revenues tripled between 2001 and 2014, reaching a record $34.3 billion. In 2012, Istanbul joined the world’s top-five tourist destinations, according to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index.

For eight years, Mr. Adali tapped into that growth. His 43-room hotel in the seaside town of Belek, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted the Group of 20 summit in November, was often filled by Russian tourists.

But just weeks after that summit, Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane along the Turkey-Syria border that Ankara claimed had violated its airspace. Moscow denied the allegation and hit back with a trade embargo, including an effective ban Russian tours to Turkey. About four million Russians normally visit Turkey each year, the second-biggest group after Germany.

Turkey’s hotels and tourism-related businesses might have weathered the punitive Russian steps. But a series of suicide bombings frightened off a much broader stream of tourists from Europe.

Islamic State was blamed for twin-suicide bombings in Ankara last fall that killed more than 100 people at a peace rally. In January, an Islamic State suicide bomber killed a dozen German tourists in Istanbul near the Blue Mosque, one of the city’s most popular attractions.

Two car bombings over the past month in the capital killed dozens of people. Both were tied to Kurdish militants, signaling the insurgency was shifting its decades-old battle toward attacking urban centers and civilians instead of military targets in the mostly rural southeast.

The government has launched operations across predominantly Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey to stamp out Kurdish separatists, including areas like Mardin and Diyarbakir, where tourism had thrived until the recent violence.

Officials have also tried to shore up the industry, which has seen almost 2,000 facilities catering to tourists listed for sale online in recent months.

Tourists Steer Clear of Turkey After Bombings, Russia Clash - WSJ

Brexit: Talk Real London "Exit Europe?" - by Niccoló Milanese, Marina Prentoulis, Federico Campagna, Ulrike Guerot, and James Schneider

BREXIT ?

The UK referendum on EU membership coming up on June 23 is a potentially momentous historic occasion.

It’s the first time in a generation that British citizens and Commonwealth citizens will have the right to decide if they stay in the European Union. It will clearly have effects for people in the UK for generations, for British people living in the rest of Europe and for Europeans living in the UK.

It could also have serious consequences for the future of the United Kingdom itself which may break up if the UK were to vote to leave; Scotland could subsequently secede from the United Kingdom and one could imagine the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would also be thrown into question.

But beyond the impact on British people, the referendum is situated in a space of debate about the future of Europe itself: should Europe be understood basically as a single market? Is the European Union a neoliberal construction?

Should it just impose regulation but have very little say from the citizens and very little democracy? Or should Europe instead be understood as a progressive space of social justice, of transnational democracy, perhaps of peace in the world?

We discuss this and more with Ulrike Guérot, founder and director of the European Democracy Lab, Federico Campagna, writer, philosopher and rights manager at Verso Books, Marina Prentoulis, from Syriza London and Another Europe Is Possible, and James Schneider from Momentum.

One thing is clear: the broad battle about the future of Europe goes well beyond the options on the referendum voting paper. The UK vote itself is situated in an ongoing continental debate about the future of how we’re going to live together in this European continent.

Read more; Talk Real London "Exit Europe?" | openDemocracy

ISIS: Why Bombing ISIS Is Futile - by Robert Fisk

Is there a “Plan B” in Barack Obama’s brain? Or in  David Cameron’s, for that matter? I mean, we’re vaguely told that air strikes against the ferocious “Islamic State” may go on for “a long time”. But how long is “long”? Are we just going to go on killing Arabs and bombing and bombing and bombing until, well, until we go on bombing? What happens if our Kurdish and non-existent “moderate” Syrian fighters – described by Vice-President Joe Biden last week as largely “shopkeepers” – don’t overthrow the monstrous “Islamic State”?

Then I suppose we are going to bomb and bomb and bomb again. As a Lebanese colleague of mine asked in an article last week, what is Obama going After Alan Henning’s beheading, the gorge rises at the thought of even discussing such things. But distance sometimes creates distorting mirrors, none so more than when it involves the distance between the Middle East and Washington, London, Paris and, I suppose, Canberra. In Beirut, I’ve been surveying the Arab television and press – and it’s interesting to see the gulf that divides what the Arabs see and hear, and what the West sees and hears.

The gruesome detail is essential here to understand how Arabs have already grown used to jihadi barbarity. They have seen full video clips of the execution of Iraqis – if shot in the back of the head, they have come to realise, a victim’s blood pours from the front of his face – and they have seen video clips of Syrian soldiers not only beheaded but their heads then barbecued and carried through villages on sticks.

Understandably, Alan Henning’s murder didn’t get much coverage in the Middle East, although television did show his murder video – which Western television did not. But it didn’t make many front pages. Mostly the fighting between jihadis and Kurds at Ein al-Arab (Kobane) and the festival for the Muslim Eid – and the Haj in Saudi Arabia – dominated news coverage. In general, the Arab world was as uninterested in Henning’s murder as we have been, for example, in the car bomb that killed 50 Syrian children in Homs last week. Had they been British children, of course…

Read more: Why Bombing ISIS Is Futile | Alternet

Global Development Programs: What the EU elections mean for global development- by Richard Jones

lthough summer may (belatedly) have arrived in Brussels, Shakespeare’s “Now is the winter of our discontent” may be a more appropriate apothegm — at least for Europe’s voters, if the results of last week’s European parliamentary elections are anything to go by.

In what was the second biggest democratic exercise on the planet — some  400 million people were eligible to cast their vote for a new European Parliament — the estimated 43.1 percent of eligible European voters that went to the polls across the European Union have returned a very different set of representatives to the bloc’s parliament.

From the perspective of Europe’s mainstream parties, at least, things did not go quite according to plan. Indeed, although mainstream politics still predominate, there were significant gains for euroskeptic and populist parties across the political spectrum in many of Europe’s 28 member states, with notable success for France’s far-right Front National and the United Kingdom’s UKIP.

In the face of what French Prime Minister Manuel Valls dubbed a “political earthquake,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy acknowledged — following a gathering in Brussels on Wednesday — that voters had sent “a strong message” and that EU leaders would need to re-evaluate the bloc’s agenda.

But what impact will the makeup of the 751 MEPs taking up their seats in July have on the regional bloc’s international development cooperation? What might the results mean for the EU’s footprint abroad as it engages in an increasingly complex world, negotiates a new global development framework and navigates the choppy waters of climate change, governance, conflict and immigration from non-EU countries? And will the fallout from last week’s electoral earthquake cause long-lasting reverberations?

Although the EU’s multiannual financial framework — which cements international relations, especially with the global south, as a “top priority” — has been agreed to in principle, it is not yet set in stone. Eloise Todd, international advocacy director at the ONE Campaign, cautioned that the 2016 budget, which will be released, negotiated and voted upon next year, will be telling.

“It’s a big moment — an opportunity to make some revisions. Although the broad parameters are set, there’s always a bit of ‘push-pull’ year-on-year as to which priorities get how much money,” Todd said.

Therein lies the danger for the aid community, and we should therefore expect significant lobbying from civil society groups in the coming year to galvanize support around development. The global development community knows that it is often last in line when it comes to budget allocations, or top-ups in the case of shortfalls — as was seen in the recent aid funding crunch at ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid and civil protection arm.

Read more: International Development News | What the EU elections mean for global development