Event: The Credit Crunch

Graham Turner in conversation with economics editor for The Guardian Larry Elliot

Thursday, September 11, 2008, 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Waterstone's, 82 Gower St

Something else for your diary. I will review this book and raise some questions concerning the credit crunch and global economy post event. For now here is a brief outline of book and event for any body interested to check it out or come along:

This book argues that the current financial turmoil signals a crisis in globalisation that will directly challenge the free market economic model. Graham Turner claims to show that the housing bubbles in the West were deliberately created to mask the damage inflicted by companies shifting production abroad in an attempt to boost profits. As these bubbles burst, economic growth in many developed countries will inevitably tumble he says. The Japanese crisis of the 1990s shows that banks and governments may struggle to contain the fallout he argues, stating that the problem has not been limited to the US, UK and Europe but that housing bubbles have become endemic across wide swathes of emerging market economies. As the West slides, Elliot says, these countries will see an implosion of their credit bubbles too, shaking their faith in the free market.

Turner is an economic forecaster, who founded and runs an independent financial and economic consultancy - GFC Economics (See link below).

Graham will be discussing and signing his new book with Larry Elliot of The Guardian

Tickets £2 redeemable against the price of the book

Links:

Book
http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745328102&main=

GFC Economics
http://www.gfceconomics.com/index.html

Event: Beyond Microfinance:

"The Next Frontier For Sustainable Poverty Alleviation"

Rosalind Copisarow
Chair of the Board, Global Village Energy Partnership; former Chief Executive, International Development Enterprises.

18th September, 6.30-8pm. DFID, 1 Palace Street, London SW1E 5HE

Presentation
When micro-finance first started, enabling ‘access to finance’ was considered virtually automatically to lead to ‘poverty alleviation’. Over time, however, the many important innovations increasing access to finance have not translated into the same levels of poverty alleviation. More importantly, the vast majority of the world’s unbanked will remain below the reach of MFIs unless an integrated package of support is made available to them. In her presentation, Rosalind will provide examples of organizations that have successfully combined micro-finance with other support tools and show how this approach could well be the next big breakthrough towards eliminating global poverty.

Speaker
After 15 years in investment banking with Citigroup, HSBC and JP Morgan, followed by 13 years in micro-finance largely pioneering cutting edge products and models of delivery, Rosalind is now on her third career, most recently as Chief Executive of International Development Enterprises (IDE). She is applying her business and financial skills and passion for working with micro-entrepreneurs to the service of the 2 billion people either below the reach of MFIs or for whom micro-finance is inadequate as a stand-alone tool to help them out of poverty. A serial social entrepreneur, Rosalind is now starting her fourth social enterprise, to be based in the UK, having founded and led three microfinance-related organizations: Fundusz Mikro in Poland, Street UK and the Microfinance Centre for Central and Eastern Europe. Rosalind has written a number of publications, perhaps the most influential of which, “Self-Employed People in the Informal Economy: Cheats or Contributors?” (2004), offers a secure platform for the transition of UK micro-entrepreneurs into the formal economy. Rosalind holds a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University, an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA in Latin American studies and Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2000, she was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Poland.

Information about Rosalind’s new social enterprise which packages modular kits to build decent homes with home-based income-generating opportunities and microfinance
The organization will operate in the areas of overlap between the housing, renewable energy, water and sanitation, micro-enterprise development and micro-finance sectors. Its objective is to improve the living conditions of the 2 billion people currently inhabiting shacks without water, sanitation or power, in such a way that it also builds their short term income and long term assets, leaves the lightest possible ecological footprint, and insulates them as much as possible against major political and economic risks likely to directly affect them.

Attendance:
If you are interested to attend, please register online at London Microfinance Club's site by filling in their online attendance form (No later than 10am on Friday, 12th September 2008).

http://www.microfinanceclubuk.co.uk/

Event: Commodity Prices, Capital Flows and the Financing of Investment

Secretary General of UNCTAD Supachai Panitchpakdi, will present The Trade and Development Report 2008, subtitled "Commodity Prices, Capital Flows and the Financing of Investment.”

Tuesday 2nd September 2008, 18.30-20:00
Key Speaker: Supachai Panitchpakdi
LSE, New Theatre, East Building
Discussants: Heiner Flassbeck and Professor Robert Wade
Chair: Professor Stuart Corbridge

The report, which is under embargo until 4 September 2008, highlights the implications of commodity price volatility and one of the major paradoxes of globalization, namely that the “capital poor” developing world is exporting capital to the “capital rich” developed countries. Moreover, those developing countries that are the largest capital exporters tend to invest more domestically and to grow faster than those that still depend on capital imports. These facts create serious puzzles for mainstream economic models and reject most of their predictions. The report calls for a fresh approach to development financing that focuses less on the mobilization of savings and more on the direct stimulation of investment. UNCTAD also makes an important contribution in the report to the Doha Conference to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus on financing for development (Qatar, 29 November - 2 December 2008).

Supachai Panitchpakdi began his four-year term as Secretary-General of UNCTAD on 1 September 2005, following his appointment by the UN General Assembly. Dr. Supachai previously served as Director-General of the World Trade Organization (September 2002 to August 2005). He is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand who was entrusted with oversight of the country´s economic and trade policy making. In this role, he was actively involved in international trade policy and represented Thailand at the signing ceremony in Marrakech of the Uruguay Round Agreement in 1994. He was also active in shaping regional agreements, including Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM).

Heiner Flassbeck is UNCTAD Director of Division of Globalization and Development Strategies. Robert Wade is Professor of International Political Economy at LSE.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was established in 1964. UNTAD promotes the development-friendly integration of developing countries into the world economy. It has evolved into an authoritative knowledge-based institution whose work aims to shape policy debates and thinking on development, with a particular focus on ensuring that domestic policies and international action are mutually supportive in bringing about sustainable development.

The event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. For more information, email events@lse.ac.uk or phone 020 7955 6043.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/events/2008/20080728t1155z001.htm

The Changing Commodity Economy: Prices still a problem for Developing Countries?

Opportunities and challenges for trade and development, and the need for apporpriate policy responses.


Where developing countries, with economies heavily dependent on commodity production and export, have long suffered from the structural decline in the real price of commodities, what are the opportunities and challenges presented for developing countries by dramatic rises in commodity prices of the last few years?

By the end of the 20th century commodity prices were in the doldrums, mainly because of sluggish demand growth in relation to supply. They had been on the downward trend in real terms since the 1980's. However, since 2002, commodity prices have rebounded, driven largely by growing demand in newly industrialising developing countries. If the cycle of growth and industrialization in developing countries continues, the current commodity boom may mark the beginning of a changed commodity economy in the twenty-first century characterized by a long-term resurgence in the demand for, and concequently value of, primary commodities in world trade.

For commodity exporters, the rise in the unit price of exports, all else being equal, results in a positive development in the terms of trade (that is, the relative value of a country's exports to imports). This, in turn, results in a short-term improvement in the trade balance. One would expect then, the commodities production and export dominated economies of Sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from currently bouyant commodity prices. In practice, however, this is far from the case.

Only a few sub-Saharan countries have experienced an improvement in their terms of trade since 2003: (the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Republic of Mozambique, Cameroon, and, to a lesser extent, Benin). The rest have faced a downturn, with Burkina Faso, the Republic of Ghana, and the Republic of Madagascar experiencing the worst deterioration.

This is at least partly down to the asymetrical impact high commodity prices are inclined to have on developing economies: this is because while on the one hand they are big commodity exporters, they are also often heavily relient on commodity imports, especially in many cases oil, as well as many African agro commodity exporters for example, also being net importers of food, and so the real income increase from rising comodity prices must be calculated against rises in the cost of imports. When price trends are unequal for different commodities, the impact on economies importing and exporting the wrong commodities can be acute. The fact that African oil exporters have done OK from the commodity price boom, while the majority of African states (who are generally high importers of oil - averaging some 16% of imports in 2004) have suffered, seems to support this analysis.










Questions to address:

How to take advantage of high commodity prices?

Who has benefited? Why?

Who has not benefited? Why?

Tendency for economic gains from improved commodity prices to be short lived? How do countries take advantage of and lock in gains from commodity pice boom? Policy? Investment?

Challenges for countries not benefiting? How to overcome/deal with these challenges?

Nature of changing commodity price economy?

Role of Asia (especially China) in shift in commodity economy and its effect on Africa (partly see answers to above, also China driven growth in African commodity exports).


Links