turned violent, as groups protesting mass unemployment blocked roads and railway lines.
Protester Navin Kumar Jha, 28, told DW he was among 10 million applicants for roughly 36,000 total jobs being offered.
"The authorities had to finally suspend the recruitment. We wanted to draw attention to joblessness that is worsening in the country," Jha said.
Read more at:
COVID: India′s economy battles widespread unemployment, inflation | Asia | An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 31.01.2022
Showing posts with label Economic decline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic decline. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
TURKEY - Erdogan Driving Turkey Over The Cliff: Why Investors Have Become Skittish About Turkey
For the better part of 16 years, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a self-styled economic reformer and the world’s great hope for Muslim democracy, had a compelling story—and for most of that time, everyone
bought it. Everyone, that is, except Turkey’s old guard—the secular establishment, the billionaires, generals, and educated elites who stood to lose their monopoly on power, wealth, and influence.
Now, however, it looks like Turks got more than they bargained forAfter a run that brought in more than $220 billion of foreign investment, tripled gross domestic product, and returned inflation to single digits, Turkey’s economy is again ailing—its democracy even more so.
With the nation heading to snap elections on June 24, the lira is sinking, inflation is running at double the central bank’s target, and companies are struggling under more than $300 billion in foreign debt.
Turkey’s ranking on nearly every index of democratic governance has plunged. There’s no longer talk of a peace process with Kurdish separatists.
Buoyed by a seeming imperviousness at the polls, Erdogan has become ever more autocratic, his style of leadership more personal, prickly, and intolerant.
He has ruled using emergency law since a failed military coup in the summer of 2016, jailing more journalists than any country in the world and widening censorship powers to include the internet.
If people don't wake up in time to the fact that Erdogan is driving Turkey over the cliff and vote him out of power - it could mean this beautiful country will be going in na tailspin towards certain disaster.
READ MORE: Why Investors Have Become Skittish About Turkey - Bloomberg
bought it. Everyone, that is, except Turkey’s old guard—the secular establishment, the billionaires, generals, and educated elites who stood to lose their monopoly on power, wealth, and influence.
Now, however, it looks like Turks got more than they bargained forAfter a run that brought in more than $220 billion of foreign investment, tripled gross domestic product, and returned inflation to single digits, Turkey’s economy is again ailing—its democracy even more so.
With the nation heading to snap elections on June 24, the lira is sinking, inflation is running at double the central bank’s target, and companies are struggling under more than $300 billion in foreign debt.
Turkey’s ranking on nearly every index of democratic governance has plunged. There’s no longer talk of a peace process with Kurdish separatists.
Buoyed by a seeming imperviousness at the polls, Erdogan has become ever more autocratic, his style of leadership more personal, prickly, and intolerant.
He has ruled using emergency law since a failed military coup in the summer of 2016, jailing more journalists than any country in the world and widening censorship powers to include the internet.
If people don't wake up in time to the fact that Erdogan is driving Turkey over the cliff and vote him out of power - it could mean this beautiful country will be going in na tailspin towards certain disaster.
READ MORE: Why Investors Have Become Skittish About Turkey - Bloomberg
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
US Economy: U.S. Economic Growth Downgraded to Largest 1-Year Drop - by Ali Meyer
The International Monetary Fund downgraded the economic growth outlook
for the United States to 1.6 percent in 2016, which is the largest
one-year drop seen for an advanced economy, according to the Fund’s
World Economic Outlook report.
According to the report, the United States grew at a rate of 2.6 percent in 2015 and is projected to slow to 1.6 percent in 2016, a decline of 38 percent. The United States’ decline in growth is the largest one-year drop seen in all of the advanced economies such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
“Softer-than-expected activity in the second half of 2015 and the first half of 2016 points to some loss in momentum in the United States, despite a mildly supportive fiscal stance and a slower projected pace of monetary policy normalization,” the International Monetary Fund explains. “A prolonged inventory correction cycle and weak business investment has prompted a downward revision of the 2016 forecast to 1.6 percent.”
The group projects that the economy will grow to 2.2 percent by 2017, but medium term growth will be held down at 1.8 percent due to an aging population and low productivity growth.
“The weakness in business fixed investment appears to reflect the continued (albeit moderating) decline in capital spending in the energy sector, the impact of recent dollar strength on investment in export-oriented industries, and possibly also the financial market volatility and recession fears of late 2015 and early 2016,” the report says.
According to the International Monetary Fund, advanced economies are still feeling the effects of the global financial crisis. While progress has been made, the progress has been “uneven” and “crisis scars” are still visible in some countries.
For example, the group notes that the recovery in the United States is overstated by the decline in the unemployment rate.
“In some counties (such as the United States) the decline in unemployment to pre-crisis levels somewhat overstates the recovery in employment, given the decline in labor force participation,” the report states. “This has not, however, been the case in other advanced economies, where in many cases participation rates are above pre-crisis levels.”
Weaker-than-expected growth in the United States is one of the reasons why the International Monetary Fund cut its global growth projections. The group projected that global growth would slow to 3.1 percent in 2016 after growing 3.2 percent in 2015, citing the U.S. growth forecast as well as the Brexit vote.
Read more: U.S. Economic Growth Downgraded to Largest 1-Year Drop
According to the report, the United States grew at a rate of 2.6 percent in 2015 and is projected to slow to 1.6 percent in 2016, a decline of 38 percent. The United States’ decline in growth is the largest one-year drop seen in all of the advanced economies such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
“Softer-than-expected activity in the second half of 2015 and the first half of 2016 points to some loss in momentum in the United States, despite a mildly supportive fiscal stance and a slower projected pace of monetary policy normalization,” the International Monetary Fund explains. “A prolonged inventory correction cycle and weak business investment has prompted a downward revision of the 2016 forecast to 1.6 percent.”
The group projects that the economy will grow to 2.2 percent by 2017, but medium term growth will be held down at 1.8 percent due to an aging population and low productivity growth.
“The weakness in business fixed investment appears to reflect the continued (albeit moderating) decline in capital spending in the energy sector, the impact of recent dollar strength on investment in export-oriented industries, and possibly also the financial market volatility and recession fears of late 2015 and early 2016,” the report says.
According to the International Monetary Fund, advanced economies are still feeling the effects of the global financial crisis. While progress has been made, the progress has been “uneven” and “crisis scars” are still visible in some countries.
For example, the group notes that the recovery in the United States is overstated by the decline in the unemployment rate.
“In some counties (such as the United States) the decline in unemployment to pre-crisis levels somewhat overstates the recovery in employment, given the decline in labor force participation,” the report states. “This has not, however, been the case in other advanced economies, where in many cases participation rates are above pre-crisis levels.”
Weaker-than-expected growth in the United States is one of the reasons why the International Monetary Fund cut its global growth projections. The group projected that global growth would slow to 3.1 percent in 2016 after growing 3.2 percent in 2015, citing the U.S. growth forecast as well as the Brexit vote.
Read more: U.S. Economic Growth Downgraded to Largest 1-Year Drop
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Caputalism: Will Capitalism Die? - By Robert Misik
The fact that western capitalism is in a severe crisis is now so commonplace that it’s become almost a cliché. In 2008 the global financial system stood on the brink of collapse and the rescue measures undertaken by panic-stricken governments will burden their economies for years to come.
Economists and analysts of a neo-conservative, economically liberal frame of mind have nothing to add to our understanding of this. Their models simply cannot explain why a system based on de-regulated market activities can ever get into crisis – and why it cannot rediscover the path to prosperity if the state is gradually dismantled and market forces let loose.
But economists and analysts tuned to Keynesian and reformist thinking are much closer to reality: their criticism amounts to saying that the wrong kind of policies – deregulation of markets, liberalisation of the financial system, shrinking the state and the scandalous growth in inequality – had already undermined the system’s stability. In a word: the wrong policies have been pursued for 30 years and a disastrous set of policies has been enacted since the outbreak of the crisis but the system can only be stabilized once the right policies are in place.
But let’s take a closer look at the world: Here’s Spain, with its ghost houses, monuments to a failed fresh start, stretching all along the beaches for kilometer after kilometer; or let’s cast a glance at the ‘solidarity’ clinics in Greece over-crowded by people with no health insurance; at rural America, where the jobless numbers refuse to go down despite growth on tick; at our inner cities in northern Europe where everything seems to be stable but we very quickly get to feel that things are not really progressing, it’s at best stagnation with ever-harsher competition for decent living standards and, along with that, rampant resentment without any confidence in the future. Briefly put: it ain’t working properly any more. So the question is: what if Keynesian tools don’t do the trick anymore?
The American economist Robert Brenner noted such a development as long as 20 years ago in his book The Economics of Global Turbulence – and forecast a crisis-ridden future. It was Brenner who coined the concept of “secular stagnation”: a phrase now spoken aloud by all mainstream economists.
The charm of Brenner’s analysis lies in that it explains the end of the post-war boom and the start of the slow decline through endogenous tendencies or the logical in-built dynamics of capitalism. And thus the conclusion follows: Even if they’re only crudely true then these critical tendencies cannot simply be wished away through a different set of policies because developed capitalism, for technological as well as economic reasons, is hitting limits that no longer allow for high rates of growth and productivity increases.
“The image I have of the end of capitalism — an end that I believe is already under way — is one of a social system in chronic disrepair” is how the German social scientist Wolfgang Streeck put it two years ago. A permanent quasi-stagnation with at best mini-growth rates, explosive inequality, privatization of all and sundry, endemic corruption and plunder, where normal profit expectations get ever lower, a consequent moral collapse (capitalism is more and more linked to fraud, theft and dirty tricks), the West getting weaker and weaker, staggering along as it foments disintegration and crisis in trouble spots on its periphery.
The Nobel Prize winner for economics, Paul Krugman, like Larry Summers, paints a picture of “permanent slump.” Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary – truly no leftie – uses the phrase of “secular stagnation” as a self-evident truth – meaning that the long centuries of dynamic capitalist growth could come to an end.
The renowned economist Robert J Gordon has also investigated in a much-discussed paper whether – at least in the USA – “economic growth is over.” Growth rates took on dynamic pace in 1750, reached breakneck speed in the mid-20th century and have since gone down in successive periods. The great innovations that bring both productivity progress and growth – they may be history: “The growth of productivity … slowed markedly after 1970.”
The third industrial revolution, with computerization and concomitant labour saving, also demonstrated its essential effects between 1960 and the late 1990s but has practically come to a standstill since the nineties. Despite superficial impressions, the past 15 years may have produced practically no more genuinely productive innovations. “Invention since 2000 has centered on entertainment and communication devices that are smaller, smarter, and more capable, but do not fundamentally change labour productivity or the standard of living in the way that electric light, motor cars, or indoor plumbing changed it.”
READ MORE: Caputalism: Will Capitalism Die?
Economists and analysts of a neo-conservative, economically liberal frame of mind have nothing to add to our understanding of this. Their models simply cannot explain why a system based on de-regulated market activities can ever get into crisis – and why it cannot rediscover the path to prosperity if the state is gradually dismantled and market forces let loose.
But economists and analysts tuned to Keynesian and reformist thinking are much closer to reality: their criticism amounts to saying that the wrong kind of policies – deregulation of markets, liberalisation of the financial system, shrinking the state and the scandalous growth in inequality – had already undermined the system’s stability. In a word: the wrong policies have been pursued for 30 years and a disastrous set of policies has been enacted since the outbreak of the crisis but the system can only be stabilized once the right policies are in place.
But let’s take a closer look at the world: Here’s Spain, with its ghost houses, monuments to a failed fresh start, stretching all along the beaches for kilometer after kilometer; or let’s cast a glance at the ‘solidarity’ clinics in Greece over-crowded by people with no health insurance; at rural America, where the jobless numbers refuse to go down despite growth on tick; at our inner cities in northern Europe where everything seems to be stable but we very quickly get to feel that things are not really progressing, it’s at best stagnation with ever-harsher competition for decent living standards and, along with that, rampant resentment without any confidence in the future. Briefly put: it ain’t working properly any more. So the question is: what if Keynesian tools don’t do the trick anymore?
The American economist Robert Brenner noted such a development as long as 20 years ago in his book The Economics of Global Turbulence – and forecast a crisis-ridden future. It was Brenner who coined the concept of “secular stagnation”: a phrase now spoken aloud by all mainstream economists.
The charm of Brenner’s analysis lies in that it explains the end of the post-war boom and the start of the slow decline through endogenous tendencies or the logical in-built dynamics of capitalism. And thus the conclusion follows: Even if they’re only crudely true then these critical tendencies cannot simply be wished away through a different set of policies because developed capitalism, for technological as well as economic reasons, is hitting limits that no longer allow for high rates of growth and productivity increases.
“The image I have of the end of capitalism — an end that I believe is already under way — is one of a social system in chronic disrepair” is how the German social scientist Wolfgang Streeck put it two years ago. A permanent quasi-stagnation with at best mini-growth rates, explosive inequality, privatization of all and sundry, endemic corruption and plunder, where normal profit expectations get ever lower, a consequent moral collapse (capitalism is more and more linked to fraud, theft and dirty tricks), the West getting weaker and weaker, staggering along as it foments disintegration and crisis in trouble spots on its periphery.
The Nobel Prize winner for economics, Paul Krugman, like Larry Summers, paints a picture of “permanent slump.” Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary – truly no leftie – uses the phrase of “secular stagnation” as a self-evident truth – meaning that the long centuries of dynamic capitalist growth could come to an end.
The renowned economist Robert J Gordon has also investigated in a much-discussed paper whether – at least in the USA – “economic growth is over.” Growth rates took on dynamic pace in 1750, reached breakneck speed in the mid-20th century and have since gone down in successive periods. The great innovations that bring both productivity progress and growth – they may be history: “The growth of productivity … slowed markedly after 1970.”
The third industrial revolution, with computerization and concomitant labour saving, also demonstrated its essential effects between 1960 and the late 1990s but has practically come to a standstill since the nineties. Despite superficial impressions, the past 15 years may have produced practically no more genuinely productive innovations. “Invention since 2000 has centered on entertainment and communication devices that are smaller, smarter, and more capable, but do not fundamentally change labour productivity or the standard of living in the way that electric light, motor cars, or indoor plumbing changed it.”
READ MORE: Caputalism: Will Capitalism Die?
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