Eye on the IFIs

Mideast and Africa Still Holdouts on Women’s Rights

By Ramy Srour
Gender equality around the world has increased dramatically over the past half-century even though the vast majority of countries continue to restrict women’s economic development in at least one way, the World Bank reports this week.

Greek State Workers Rally Against Job Cuts

By AJ Correspondents
Thousands of civil servants have marched through the Greek capital, Athens, and the second largest city, Thessaloniki, amid a two-day nationwide strike against planned job cuts.

The Emerging Economies and the G20 Summit at St. Petersburg

By Shyam Saran
The eighth G20 Summit convened in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5-6, 2013 was dominated by the Syrian crisis, deflecting attention from the mandate of the gathering to serve as the premier forum for international economic coordination.

Sliding Back to the Victorian Age

By Roberto Savio
A recent report by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics called attention to the fact that, at the present rate of inequality, by the year 2025, the United Kingdom will have returned to the unequal society of the end of the 19th century. In other words, we are going back to the times of Queen Victoria!

Public Media Want Piece of Advertising Pie

By Felipe Seligman
Today’s new world of digital communications presents public media outlets with a complex challenge: to conquer loyal and active audiences, with programming that is beholden neither to governments, their main funders, nor to market imperatives.

U.S. Executives’ Pay on “Inexorable Upward Climb”

By Carey L. Biron
Three years after the passage of landmark legislation aimed at strengthening regulation of major U.S. companies, one of the most criticised disparities characterising today's corporate culture – the outsized compensation offered to top executives – continues to grow.

U.S. Court Ruling Boosts Vulture Funds at Developing World’s Expense

By Charles Davis
A recent U.S. court ruling over a fight between Argentina and its creditors on Wall Street will increase global poverty by making it easier for "vulture funds" to seize the assets of indebted nations, according to anti-debt campaigners who are urging the U.S. government to overturn the decision.

The World Trade Organisation after Eight Transformational Years

By Pascal Lamy
On Aug. 31, I will be stepping down after eight years as Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Norway Sets Example in Audit of Poor Countries’ Debts

By Carey L. Biron
Anti-poverty campaigners are celebrating the Norwegian government’s release of an external audit of all outstanding public debts it is owed by developing countries, the first time any country has undertaken such a process.

Caribbean Economies Battered by Storms

By Jewel Fraser
The Caribbean is in danger of becoming “a region of serial defaulters” with respect to international debt obligations, according to one expert, and this may partly be due to its economies suffering frequent shocks from natural disasters.

Opponents of Fracking Seek to Thwart Shale Gas Finance

By Emilio Godoy
Non-governmental organisations are putting pressure on multilateral financial institutions not to finance production of shale gas by hydraulic fracturing or fracking because of the high environmental costs they say are associated with this method.

Protests in Portugal Going Grey

By Mario Queiroz
The elderly have taken to the streets in Portugal to protest drastic public sector pension cuts announced this week by the government of conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.

Grassroots Groups Wary of Haiti’s “Attractive” Mining Law

By Correspondents
As the government works on preparing “an attractive law that will entice investors”, Haitian popular organisations are mobilising and forming networks to resist mining in their country.

U.S. Hedge Funds Paint Argentina as Ally of Iranian ‘Devil’ – Part One

By Charles Davis
When Argentina defaulted on its national debt in 2001, U.S. hedge funds swooped in to buy the nation's bonds at pennies on the dollar, confident they would eventually prevail in the U.S. legal system and force the country to pay out in full.

World Bank “Falling Behind” on Human Rights, Critics Warn

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank is being urged to explicitly incorporate human rights into its development lending criteria, ahead of an important technical briefing on the subject to its board of directors on Tuesday.

Making Peace with Our Futures

By Johan Galtung
Future studies, like peace-development-environment studies, is an interdisciplinary, international effort to get a grip on key issues, divided into ‘preferred futures’ – utopias – whose?; ‘predicted futures’ – forecasting – who does it, for whom?; and ‘future practice’ – scenarios bending the predicted toward the preferred – by and for whom?

/CORRECTED REPEAT*/River Diversion Project Spells Disaster

By Michelle Tolson
Tsetseghkorol, a Mongolian herder, stares out nostalgically at the Orkhon River, the longest in the country.

A New Bretton Woods, to Prevent Future Crises?

By Supachai Panitchpakdi
Almost five years have passed since the global financial crisis, and the world economy is still reeling from its consequences. The main reason for this is the continued stagnation in developed countries, which is adversely affecting economic dynamism in other regions.

World Bank Doctor Promises Not to Make Prescriptions

By Milagros Salazar
Long before he became president of the World Bank, South Korean physician Jim Yong Kim was on the dusty streets of the working-class Lima neighbourhood of Carabayllo, helping cure local residents of tuberculosis.

World Bank to “Cease Providing” Funding for New Coal Projects

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank is set to consider dramatically cutting down its funding for coal-related power projects, according to a draft strategy document leaked this week.

World Bank Formally Urged to Overhaul ‘Doing Business’ Report

By Carey L. Biron
An external review panel is calling on the World Bank to institute sweeping reforms to its widely cited annual “Doing Business” report, including doing away with a controversial ranking of countries on a variety of business-friendliness metrics.
« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*