Why is Obama Drilling?

Frank Ackerman

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.

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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.

Questions about IMF/World Bank Reform? Ask a TripleCrisis Economist.

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.

Questions about IMF/World Bank Reform? Ask a TripleCrisis Economist.

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.

India and China: Not so decoupled from the global downturn

C.P. Chandrasekhar

With growth recovering significantly in China and India, these countries are once again being presented as decoupled giants who can revive the world economy. Advocates of “decoupling” argue that, despite the force of globalisation, some economies are relatively unaffected by the economic cycles characterising the rest of the world because the factors driving their growth are sui generis. However, this view has been discredited in recent years for two reasons. First, there appears to be a high degree of synchronisation of booms and busts in stock and housing markets across the world. If the appetite for investment among wealth holders or even wealth seekers was stoked anywhere in the world, such investment found its way across the globe, reviving diverse markets simultaneously, even if to differing degrees. The reverse was true when bearish sentiments prevailed.

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Brazil: Latin America’s Big Success Story?

Matias Vernengo

The global media has hyped the performance of the Brazilian economy as an example of successful economic development.  The Economist magazine referred to it as Latin America’s big success story.  Lula was seen as a positive left-of-center leader, in contrast to the negative leadership of Hugo Chávez and other lefties.  Also, Goldman-Sachs lumped Brazil together with Russia, India and China into the so-called BRICs, a group that supposedly would take over the world economy by mid-century.  Further, according to The Economist: “Unlike China, [Brazil] is a democracy. Unlike India, it has no insurgents, ethnic, religious or hostile neighbors. Unlike Russia, it exports more than just oil and arms, and deals with foreign investors with respect.”  In other words, Brazil is in the best of all possible worlds! Or is it not?

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Food Crisis Preceded the Financial Crisis

Mehdi Shafaeddin

What are consequences of the implementation of Neo-liberal economic philosophy for industrialization and development of poor countries? The answer: de-industrialization of many low-income countries; destruction of their food production (influenced also by protectionist agricultural policies of developed countries), thus their heavy dependence on food imports. The boom in commodity prices had improved the balance of payments of some developing countries temporarily before the “busts” emerged. But even then, it had detrimental impact on some other developing countries, through the hike in food and fuel prices, which were influenced by speculative activities of the trans-national corporations.

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Financial Transaction Tax Links

Kevin Gallagher

Here at the Triple Crisis blog we linked to the video and campaign surrounding a global financial transaction tax.  The accompanying economists letter supporting the tax was signed by many of the economists who blog at Triple Crisis.   Since then there has been a great deal of push back on the idea of such a tax.  To aid those interested in examining in-depth arguments and analyses for and against the tax, Zachary Wermer, a student of Triple Crisis co-chair Kevin Gallagher, put together this fairly comprehensive bibliography (with links) of the pros and cons of such a tax.

FTT Bibliography.

Agribusiness and the Food Crisis: A new thrust at anti-trust

Timothy A. Wise

The food crisis has a new villain: agribusiness. A recent report by Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, on “Agribusiness and the Right to Food” takes a close look at the contribution of commodity buyers, food processors, and retailers to the food insecurity now plaguing over one billion people in the world.

Why agribusiness?  Aren’t they driving prices down?  Well, yes and no, and both are a problem. If they are so big they can exert monopoly control over key markets, they can raise prices for lack of competition, hurting all food consumers. And if they have excessive market power over suppliers – particularly farmers – they can exert monopsony control and force down crop prices.  That can benefit food consumers if low prices are passed through to consumers, but monopoly can rear its head again there. In any case, the price squeeze puts smallholder farmers in a precarious position. That contributes to the global food crisis because the majority of the world’s hungry are small-scale farmers.

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