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: FOOD versus/and FUEL

Malcolm Shepherd probes increasing concerns surrounding and policy shift away from biofuels.

Monday 29th September, 18:45 to 20.45

The Gallery, 70/77 Cowcross Street, Farringdon, London, EC1M 6EJ

The production of biofuels from agriculture to replace fossil fuels was originally widely applauded, but concerns over the displacement of food production, doubts about carbon savings, and dismay over deforestation for land use are increasingly shifting public opinion and putting pressure on policy. In July the UK government announced a reduction in its biofuel targets.

Malcolm Shepherd asks however, if the bio-fuel picture has been over simplified, and misinformed by powerful interests, including those who don't want to lose their lucrative market share in liquid fuels?

Malcolm Shepherd is Managing Director of Biofuel Matters Ltd, a company that provides specialist consultancy services on biofuel issues, and he has spoken widely on his investigations into the issues and facts surrounding the "food versus fuel" debate.

He on the current complex situation, he will suggest that if properly produced, the use of food crops for biofuels can actually improve food security, stabilise food prices and reduce poverty. (BBC radio programme “Our food, our future” 28th July)

Link:
http://www.mondediplofriends.org.uk/calendar.htm

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

Analysis: Reversal of globalisation?

How flat is the world of the future?

Rising oil prices; US$ devaluation; currency re-valuation and upward pressure on labour costs in emerging markets etc. - what are the implications for global supply chains, global trade and economy?

I sense that globalisation's forward momentum has been taken for granted, has even seemed irresistible, but how robust are the mechanisms which have driven it and could we potentially currently be witnessing some reverse momentum? While much progress has been made on liberalising global trade over the last few decades, record high oil prices, the failure of WTO talks and the re-assertion of state interventionism - driven in part by increasing resource scarcity and competition - all have major implications for global trade. An interesting report I read by Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets back in May (see link below) says that “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” and concludes that as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.” Russia meanwhile has declared its intentions to revise trade policies and tariffs it was pressurised into by WTO talks which are disadvantageous to Russia; scarcity and price hikes in agro-commodities meanwhile provoked a rash of dramatic market interventions etc.

It seems hard to avoid the conclusion that globalisation has been fueled by cheap oil and energy prices generally. If oil prices remain high, and especially if they go higher, the efficiency/practicality of the long and complex supply chains circling the globe which we have come to take for granted may come under considerable pressure. The Wal-Marts and the Tesco´s of this world and many many other industries have highly fuel-intensive business models (especially for example where they rely on air-freight), but there long supply chains are becoming bloated as costs are inflated at every stage. While there is a general presumption that as emerging economies develop and the differential in cost of labour is eroded, production will be shifted to less developed countries (the rush to outsource to Eastern Europe has already cooled) there is little escaping the cost of oil.

With inflation of costs at every stage of supply chains, and transport costs rising, it may increasingly make sense to shorten supply chains and move production closer to home. The implications are inevitably complicated, but there already seems to be a visible trend for US companies for example to look more towards Mexico and less to wards Asia for production, a tendency for outsourced services to be brought back onshore, and for Asia to turn more to Asian markets for trade volumes as US trade declines etc. A major question is how this will effect developing markets that have grown on the back of globalisation and US over consumption and we seem to find ourselves in the absurd situation where the world is hoping for the US, already over consuming, to keep up consumption in order to support the other economies of the world.

CIBC Report
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/smay08.pdf

Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Some reasons high oil prices are not a bad thing:

Painful? Undoubtedly, but are high oil prices really such a terrible thing or are they a medicine we have to swallow? Below I briefly list some of the ways in which high oil prices could be good for us. I will go on to explore some of these points and others in brief articles to follow.

1. High oil prices may have a geopolitical stabilisation effect? With oil prices already at nose bleed levels, nobody can afford to start a war over oil?

2. High oil prices while a function of supply and demand, are more representative of the real cost of oil?

3. (As a corollary of 2) Prices feed through the whole economy so that for example rising shipping costs mean the real cost of food miles etc. is increasingly felt by the consumer (see "Reversal of Globalisation")

4. High oil prices incentivize reduced and more efficient consumption of energy. Demand side response already clearly visible.

5. High oil prices make environmentally more sustainable, renewable and geopolitically less contentious new energy technologies more competitive.

Event: The Price of Food: Hunger or Hope for Africa?

16 July, 2008 - 18.00 - Portcullis House, Westminster - London

Speakers
Dr Monty Jones
Executive Director, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa

Dr Camilla Toulmin
Director, International Institute for Environment and Development

Professor Lawrence Haddad
Director, Institute of Development Studies

Chair
Hugh Bayley MP
Chair, Africa All Party Parliamentary Group

This forthcoming Royal African Society event will address some really key and really topical issues and is very much in line with the themes I have been pursuing and writing about here at InformationOthewise. I encourage anyone interested to come along and anyone who is unable to attend but has questions they would like to put to the panel, to get in touch as FreeHouse representatives will be attending.

The world food crisis threatens to destroy years, if not decades, of economic progress, and may push millions back into abject poverty, stated Kofi Annan recently. But others see the crisis as an opportunity to reform global agriculture and increase longer-term productivity in Africa.

The discussion will look at the implications of the food crisis for Africa – both the opportunities and the threats – as well as possible interventions. It will discuss the possibility of a Green Revolution for Africa. It will also critically assess the role of bioenergy in the current crisis and in the future of sustainable agricultural production in Africa.

Space is limited. RSVP essential: ras_research@soas.ac.uk

Please arrive 15 minutes prior the meeting to clear security. http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/faxmap.pdf