.. a very interesting IMF paper written by Il Houng Lee, Murtaza Syed, and Liu Xueyan. The study, “China’s Path to Consumer-Based Growth: Reorienting Investment and Enhancing Efficiency”, attempts among other things to evaluate the efficiency of investment in various provinces within China. I argued in the newsletter that the paper supported my contention that China has overinvested beyond its ca

The American public is extremely hesitant to intervene directly in Syria’s fighting.

Indeed, a June 1st NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found:

The American public is extremely hesitant to intervene directly in Syria’s civil war.

Asked to pick a response to stop the killing of civilians in Syria, just 15 percent in the poll say they favor U.S. military action, a

Everything else being equal, it turns out that “Zip code is the leading determinant of our health and life expectancy” says Basu. Which is why austerity (cutting services, shrinking care) isn’t just bad for our economy (because it swells layoffs and shrinks spending) it’s also dangerous to human health.

Doesn’t it seem a tad “unseemly” to have to make the case in body-counts before people will

Weeks later she claims Mr P told her she had an hour to leave. She said he gave her £300 and a letter falsely claiming they had discussed disciplinary proceedings and that a severance deal would be drawn up.

She is claiming for sexual discrimination, unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal and for unpaid holiday pay. The couple deny it and are due to give evidence at the hearing, which

...armies almost never boast about mass murder (see the mendacious handling of the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese military and the near-genocide of Armenians by the Turkish army). International scandal was to be avoided as much as possible. National armies are not supposed to slaughter their fellow-citizens, especially, as in the case of the PKI, if they are unarmed and put up very little resist

Malcolm Turnbull, who for years after the 1999 referendum defeat was reluctant to talk about a republic, has now set out a detailed blueprint for achieving the goal, including suggesting an online plebiscite for the model.

In an unusual joint appearance, Turnbull and treasurer Wayne Swan are coming together in Canberra today to back the cause, launching a collection of essays, Project Republic

Obama is well aware .. that the assassination program is unconstitutional and illegal, and that, as president, he is guilty of multiple impeachable offenses. As if nervous that he would be held solely responsible for these actions, he repeatedly reminded his audience that Congressional leaders had been briefed about them on many occasions.

“After I took office,” Obama said, “my administration

A series of UK Treasury papers released in the last week, directed against the “Yes” campaign, backed up Brown’s concerns. One paper warned that, faced with a comparable crisis to 2008, in which £66 billion was handed over to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS, an independent Scotland would be overwhelmed. The Treasury warned that Scotland would be more dependent on the financial sector th

The unemployment rate of young people in some parts of Greece is almost 75 percent, which is significantly higher than the unemployment level of other states in Southern and Northern Europe, based on data released by Eurostat on Wednesday.

According to Eurostat, the total youth unemployment rate in Greece was 55.3 percent in 2012, more than double the 22.9 percent average unemployment rate in

The Government has been slammed for its track record on child poverty and violence against women following a critical report from an international human rights watchdog.

The Amnesty International Annual Report on the state of the world's human rights highlighted New Zealand's high levels of child poverty, violence against women and a proposed law affecting asylum-seekers.

Auckland Action Ag

One member of staff working for Helena Homes reported entering the home of an older tenant living in sheltered housing to discover he had hanged himself on the back of the bathroom door.

“We do have some of the very most deprived people in the whole country. These people have more or less just given up. Some of them are just starving to death. It’s very distressing when someone stops paying th

In those first minutes, they'll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They'll just stand there. Soon, you'll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you'll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won't be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And i

The yen hit a four-year-low of 101 against the U.S. dollar on Friday, extending losses beyond the key 100-mark amid signs that Japan's bid to reflate its economy is finally leading domestic investors to look for higher yields elsewhere.

According to data from Japan's Ministry of Finance, Japanese investors became net buyers of foreign bonds in the last two weeks, buying 309.9 billion

In recent months financial firms in Britain, including banks and insurers, have announced thousands of lay-offs.

Major British banks have led the way. Barclays announced in February plans to cut 3,700 jobs, while HSBC recently carried out 3,160 lay-offs. Lloyds, 39 percent controlled by the government, announced 550 redundancies in the middle of March after 1,340 positions were eliminated in J

.. imagine that millions of Americans walk around each day wearing the equivalent of a drone on their head: a device capable of capturing video and audio recordings of everything that happens around them. And imagine that these devices upload the data to large-scale commercial enterprises that are able to collect the recordings from each and every American and integrate them together to form a mi