For those who are wondering how high oil prices need to be to be considered “too high”, the answer is: We are already there. In fact, continued high oil prices may be the key reason behind the recessionary forces we are seeing around the world now, troubling developed countries like the United States and most of Europe, as well as the main drivers of global growth China and India.
Global shale resources increase the world’s total gas reserves by 47 percent and oil reserves by 11 percent, said a U.S. government report released Monday, and are vast enough to cover more than a decade of energy consumption.
Noam Chomsky once said that ‘reform is a change that you’re supposed to like. So as soon as you hear the word reform, you kind of reach for your wallet and see who’s lifting it’.
This statement is all the more true given that economic reform does not mean the same thing across the world. Not all countries choose to take the IMF-driven, Washington Consensus path of economic reform. China’s ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is the clearest example of this.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have ended a two-day summit described by a U.S. official as “unique, positive and constructive”, even as neither side gave details of any new ground broken on the most contentious issues in the relationship which include alleged Chinese cyber espionage and China’s aggression in the disputed waters of Asia.
This Week: Protestors target banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions in London ahead of the G8 Summit next week, while Iran holds a presidential election to find a successor to firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Monday, June 10
The US-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, discusses the security of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the relationship between political reform and development, and the Syrian crisis.
Rising global food demand will push prices up 15 to 40 percent over the coming decade as consumption outpaces production growth said the United Nation’s food agency and the OECD on Thursday, warning that governments will have to increase investment in agriculture to boost food security.
The discovery of shale gas has been the biggest driver in the reversal of decades of decline in U.S. oil production and has already transformed North Dakota, for example, into an economic powerhouse, boasting the nation’s lowest unemployment rate and fastest-growing GDP, as well as an oil production level surpassing that of some OPEC nations. But will Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom with not only the largest proven oil reserves but also the largest repository – by far – of low-cost oil reserves, allow the U.S. oil boom at its expense?
Western central banks have extended themselves well beyond their comfort zones and today face unusual brand management risks: Beyond inflation fighting, they have had to confront market failures, fragmented financial systems, clogged monetary-policy transmission mechanisms, and sluggish growth in output and employment – essentially pushing both their policies and influence to the limit. Are they better off reining in their hyper activism?
In a retaliatory move against fresh EU punitive duties on Chinese solar panels, Beijing on Wednesday announced it will launch an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe against wine imported from the EU in a dramatic escalation of the widening trade dispute.
The decision comes a day after the European Union announced it would levy an initial average tariff of 11.8 percent on Chinese solar panel imports from Thursday, rising to 47.6 percent on August 6 in the absence of negotiations based on a Chinese commitment to address the problem.
The Japanese economy has undergone difficult times in recent years, though a recent government stimulus package appears to be reinvigorating the economy. In 2008 and 2009, the economy shrank by 1.042 percent and 5.527 percent respectively – as a result of the global financial crisis – whereas it shrank by 0.569 percent in 2011 due to the tsunami disaster.
