Regional Financial Governance: Lessons from the Eurozone
The strange, complicated drama involving the Eurozone’s bureaucratic core, Germany and Greece, European officials, and the IMF demonstrates that the matter of creating regional alternatives to the global financial architecture is politically charged and even fraught. The tensions raised around Greece reveal many of the deficiencies in Europe’s regional financial architecture—especially the puzzling absence of a lender of last resort, a regional surveillance mechanism, and a mechanism for coordinating fiscal policies among member nations. These deficiencies should be taken seriously by those working in the developing country context insofar as many of us have long looked toward regional financial governance as a more democratic and inclusive alternative to the global financial architecture.
Selecting the Next U.N. Climate Chief: Mr. Secretary-General, Be Bold
It is hiring season at the UNFCCC.
More precisely, the Bonn-based secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is seeking a new Executive Secretary, after the incumbent – Yvo de Boer, the third European in a row to have headed the secretariat – decided to resign after less than four years in office.
The deepest memories of Mr. de Boer’s term will remain the hype that was generated around and the subsequent failure of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations to come up with any meaningful results. In fairness, Copenhagen cannot be blamed on Mr. de Boer. Things unraveled as they did largely for reasons outside of his control and despite his efforts. However, the timing of his departure now gives the United Nations Secretary General – who will ultimately decide on his replacement – the responsibility to find someone who can help put the climate negotiations that are now in utter disarray back on tracks. He also has the opportunity with this appointment to give real direction to the ongoing debate on improved global environmental governance (GEG), which has been floundering and rudderless for some years.
Questions about IMF/World Bank Reform? Ask a TripleCrisis Economist. Deadline for questions: this Friday, April 16.
The 2010 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will be held over the weekend of April 24-25 at the World Bank and IMF Headquarters in Washington, D.C. As in previous years, a Civil Society Policy Forum, a program of policy dialogues for Civil Society Organizations, will be held between April 22-25, 2010. In the wake of the triple crises in finance, development and the environment, the Bretton Woods institutions face increasing pressure for reform.
In advance of the meetings, the unique collection of international economists at the Triple Crisis Blog is taking your questions. What arguments most need sound backing from economic analysts? Which reform proposals are you unsure about?
Post your questions as comments on this blog posting, and Triple Crisis analysts will do their best to answer with blog posts. Look for answers during the meetings and in the week before. We’ll answer as many as we can. We look forward to your questions.
Note: Open full post and scroll to the bottom to leave a comment. Comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately, but they will appear promptly.
Cleaning up the Clean Development Mechanism: Performance Standards needed to ensure carbon reductions, development benefits
The crisis in global climate talks may have clouded the future of the Kyoto Protocol but the Clean Development Mechanism seems to have a life of its own. The CDM, one of Kyoto’s three implementation mechanisms, allows companies in developed countries with Kyoto targets to offset their emissions by buying “certified emission reductions” (CERs) from investment projects in developing countries. As of November, 2009, some 1,860 projects in 58 countries were registered with the CDM, with another 400 in the pipeline. Some 335 million CERs have been created, worth, at a carbon price of $10-30/ton, $3-10 billion.
Corporate Air Polluters Get Environmental Justice Report Cards
Michael Ash and I at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have released a new edition of the Toxic 100 Air Polluters, a ranking of the top corporate air polluters in the United States.
The Toxic 100 rankings are based on releases of hundreds of toxic chemicals from industrial facilities across the country. The rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases, but also the toxicity of chemicals, transport factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks, and the number of people exposed.
Protectionism, Brazil and Doha
Matias Vernengo and Timothy A. Wise
Ask a TripleCrisis Economist: Triple Crisis Blog has invited readers’ questions in advance of the April 24-25 IMF/World Bank meetings in Washingon. post your questions at Ask a TripleCrisis Economist. Here are two responses to an earlier posted question:
Q: Will Brazil’s recent threats of retaliatory protectionist measures motivate the US to institute more conciliatory agricultural policies and trade practices? And is there any hope that those sanctions or a US response might spur some talk of energizing the Doha talks?
VERNENGO: As it turns out, Brazil agreed to temporarily suspend the imposition of sanctions allowed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is important to note, however, that the Brazilian measures should not be represented as protectionist. One must remember that they are a retaliation authorized by the WTO, resulting from the American cotton subsidies. In other words, the protectionist policies are the original subsidies provided by the US government. Peripheral countries are often referred to as protectionist, but more often then not they pursue more open policies than their more developed trading partners.
Why is Obama Drilling?
Once upon a time, “There’s Only So Much Oil in the Ground” was a popular song that could be heard on the radio. The year was 1974, and Tower of Power, an Oakland-based soul and funk band, was enjoying some commercial success. They made the year’s top 100 with “What is Hip?” In addition to the important topics of being young, hip, and falling in and out of love, they sang about the energy crisis. Following a brief OPEC oil embargo, the price of crude oil (in today’s dollars) jumped from $23 per barrel in 1973 to $41 in 1974. Everyone was thinking about the world’s finite and diminishing supplies of oil. As the song continued, “Sooner or later there won’t be much around.”
Now it’s later. What have we learned in the decades since OPEC, Tower of Power, and others brought the oil crisis to our attention? Back then, the Nixon administration’s energy policy included a big push to open the outer continental shelf to offshore oil and gas production. In 2010, the Obama administration has announced plans to open more of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas production.
Why the IMF Changed its Mind about Capital Controls
On Triple Crisis, Ilene Grabel was the first to highlight the IMF’s change in position on capital controls. In this new video for the Guardian and in a related article for Foreign Policy magazine, Triple Crisis blogger Kevin Gallagher also notes the IMF’s acceptance of capital controls and argues that the US should follow suit and stop outlawing the use of controls through its trade and investment agreements.
Read “Control That Capital”, from Foreign Policy, along with more of Gallagher’s research on foreign investment for development.
Jayati Ghosh on the Crisis in Greece
For more on the financial crisis in Greece read Matias Vernengo: The Greek Present