No matter how offensive Trump's opinions of developing countries is, it's probably for the best that the developing world understand the viewpoint held by the leader of the United States. Let's face it: racism is the reason why many Americans voted for Trump in the first place. Trump may claim not to have said the term, but few believe him. So, what's the American institution that's supposedly dedicated to help other countries develop do? The United States' reputation worldwide is going to receive a Trump-sourced battering. The impression made is that Americans pretend to help, but actually couldn't care less if you rot in hell. (Just don't send anyone over.)

Given his druthers and, by extension, most of his supporters, Trump would rather defund the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Actually, he's been trying to do exactly that as his more sane advisers warn him against doing so. The likely result of this tug-of-war is that USAID will remain in existence, but by significantly smaller funding. While they're at it, Trump's reluctance at giving money away to these hopeless countries can perhaps better match his internal conflicts. On one hand, his white supremacist leanings (and base) have no intention of giving white people's money to colored people. Even if the amounts which actually go to American aid are very small compared to what most these ignoramuses believe, the very idea goes against their way of thinking. On the other hand, even Trump needs to maintain a veneer of international respectability by trying to "help" less fortunate countries. He even claims to be a "Christian," after all [more laughter].

What's the solution for Trump playing to both racist and internationalist views? The above is the best guess. It's just too bad they're probably not honest enough to adopt such Trumpian wording reflecting how the American leader views the rest of the world and, by extension, the executive agencies he leads like USAID.

Would Ivanka Trump be complicit if tens of thousands died due to starvation arising from US foreign aid cuts?

To say Donald Trump hates poor foreigners is an understatement. He's definitely bigoted, but apparently it matters less if you're a Muslim [a] from a wealthy nation with [b] Trump-linked business interests. After all, the 9/11 attackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but they go off scot-free in a world where, well, money talks. Although the world is fixated on the fate of his travel ban on folks from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (countries which account for a grand total of zero terrorist fatalities in the US) less is said about the ongoing famines in many of these countries and their near-neighbors.

You see, the Trump administration has been mulling drastic cuts to US foreign aid going to all these poor, ungrateful, Trump-hating coloreds (or is their hatred partly due to the US planning to cut so much aid?) to spend on things like a multi-billion military expansion and a Great Wall of Trump on the US-Mexico border. However, note that Congress ultimately decides what to spend on the US federal budget and not the president.

Meanwhile, some hope that his moderate[-ish] daughter/adviser Ivanka Trump will persuade The Donald to not make such drastic aid cuts--at least that's what some aid agency officials think in the face of massive ongoing famines elsewhere:

The head of the UN World Food Programme has said he is hopeful Ivanka Trump will lobby her father into a U-turn on cuts to humanitarian aid in the face of an urgent cash crisis that is imperilling hundreds of thousands of lives.

David Beasley, a former Republican governor of South Carolina who supported Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, said Congress and the Senate had already defied the new president to ringfence $980m (£764m) for famine relief this year.

Beasley said he believed Trump would now rethink his policy of stripping down funding of peacekeeping and humanitarian aid for 2018, due in part to the president’s “savvy” daughter, with whom he posed for photographs following a meeting earlier this month.

Even now, the US is the biggest UN contributor, even if its aid contribution is among the least in GDP percentage terms for OECD nations:

The US is the biggest contributor to the UN, paying 22% of its $5.4bn core budget and 28.5% of the $7.9bn dedicated to peacekeeping. Trump has said that such contributions are unfair, and has been seeking to cut spending on US diplomatic and humanitarian efforts by a third...

In relative terms the US is one of the least generous countries when it comes to foreign aid: spending for 2015 stood at just 0.17% of gross national income, compared with Britain’s 0.7%.

The projected aid requirements this year are certainly staggering:

Speaking on a visit to Brussels, where he met leaders of the EU and the Belgian government, Beasley said he needed an injection of $1bn in the coming months to save the lives of 600,000 children. “While the European Union and Belgium have been tremendous supporters, the needs at this time are just extraordinary,” he said. “We are facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the second world war.

“Some 30 million people don’t know where their next meal is going to come from in just four of the countries facing famine, and 1.4 million are literally on the brink of starvation as we speak. “If we do not receive the resources, the food that we need in the next few months we are talking about the possibility of 600,000 dying. If we receive the funds, we can avert famine and minimise the chance of death.”

What does Trump care? More to the point, why would Trump care about colored people unable to afford Trump-branded gold courses or hotels who hate his guts? My guess is that aid proponents are wasting their time lobbying Trump. Besides, Trump can propose the most vicious cuts to US foreign aid, but it's ultimately the congress that decides how much to allocate in the federal budget. Given that fact, I'd be lobbying congresspersons instead of this guy. It's a waste of time IMHO.

And yes, Ivanka Trump does not escape responsibility, try as she might to portray herself as a "non-political" actor.

UPDATE: Don't forget her futile attempt to get The Donald to stay in the Paris Agreement. Progressive causes are lost on him...even if his daughter tries to persuade him.

Is this an endangered scene for countries like Bangladesh? What would its consequences be?

There is much hand-wringing going on about automation lessening the need for human workers and the unemployment that may occur as a result. In the West, scare stories about robots making humans redundant in any number of industries are all the rage as even skilled work that relies on think power becomes vulnerable to the rise of machines. This may or may not occur in the future, but whatever it holds for us, it's a narrative that's helping sell scare stories in the meantime.

Now, a Bloomberg article argues that it's not just folks in rich countries who should be worried, but also those in developing countries such as those in Asia. Given the rate at which automation is progressing, it may not be very long until even those at the bottom of the wage ladder will become increasingly redundant too. That is, previous technological advances were not so great as to overturn what we will call the 'Asian development model' here of gradually progressing the value-added ladder by starting with the manufacture of the most labor-intensive goods. In short, machines (capital) could not compete with lowest-paid labor in generating cost efficiencies...until now.

Take, they say, the example of the newest Chinese factories relying more on automation than on sweat:

Jinsheng’s factory covers almost 15 million square feet, more than five times the floor area of the Empire State Building, but it needs only a few hundred production workers for each shift. “Textiles used to be a labor-intensive industry,” said Pan Xueping, the chairman and chief executive officer, in a September speech in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. “We are at a turning point.” Instead of moving production to whatever nearby country has the lowest wages, he added in an interview a day after the speech, “the industry can achieve a human-free factory.”

Pan’s company is at the vanguard of a trend that could have devastating consequences for Asia’s poorest nations. Low-cost manufacturing of clothes, shoes, and the like was the first rung on the economic ladder that Japan, South Korea, China, and other countries used to climb out of poverty after World War II. For decades that process followed a familiar pattern...

Even the nuances of garment manufacture requiring a human eye and touch may no longer forestall the move to more automation, with potentially dire political-economic consequences for Asia's developing countries at the bottom rung of progress:

The transformation looks like it will happen fast. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that mass replacement of less-skilled workers by robots could be only two years away. Overall, more than 80 percent of garment industry workers in Southeast Asia face a high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to Chang Jaehee, an ILO researcher who studies advanced manufacturing. Chang recalls presenting her findings to a government official in a country in the region that she declines to name. The official’s response? If she’s right, the result could be civil unrest.

If this story is true, then why stop at setting up highly automated factories in Asia? Why not move them back to the West or 'reshore' in contemporary parlance if labor costs become an insignificant factor?

As automation accelerates, it’s not just Asia that could see its industrial trajectory affected. If the cost of labor is no longer a major factor, there’s no reason manufacturers can’t relocate production to where the bulk of their customers are: North America and Europe, where wages for decades have been too high to support textile production. Remove most of the workers from the equation, along with the costs and delays of round-the-world shipping, and making clothes or shoes in Dallas or Düsseldorf instead of Dhaka starts to look like a compelling idea.

I don't necessarily buy this story since automation has been in progress for centuries. Do we expect a quantum leap in the near future? The real (narrower) question here is whether technological advances can overcome advantages of low-cost labor combined with human intuition in garments manufacture.The answer will have significant implications, obviously.

Xi Jinping hawks OBOR to Filipino flunkies. Apparently, there are many of these sorts all over the world.

So we may have expressed some doubts about the now-legendary PRC "One Belt, One Road" project--otherwise known as the "New Silk Road"--coming true. However, there is an interesting corollary to the story. What if China's erstwhile economic rivals buy into the hype? The Americans, for instance, are comparing the decrepit state of US infrastructure and the beleaguered Donald Trump's ever-doubtful intentions to fix it with such a massive-scale, global effort:

China excels at spectacle, and the Belt & Road Forum was as much PR stunt as anything. But the vast scale of the plan and the national ambition behind it dwarfs anything leaders are contemplating in Washington, or European capitals. “If you compare this to what the United States is doing—trying to rescue the steel and aluminum sectors and open a few markets for its goods—we’re pretty small potatoes,” says Scott Kennedy, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China is more organized and they’re planning more strategically than the United States.”

Apparently, there is some kind of nascent Western inferiority complex when it comes to infrastructure. The Americans aside, the British want in on a piece of the action. However, they will have to duke it out with the PRC's erstwhile Hong Konger compatriots to help finance the enormous project if a South China Morning Post article is to be believed:

Over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted an elaborate event in Beijing concerning the PRC's idea of reviving the historical Silk Road. Spanning much of Asia and the Middle East besides, this trade route epitomized many of the things China wants to be today: (1) at the center of world trade, (2) involved in infrastructure, and (3) a prime mover of international relations. This, of course, stands in contrast to the retrograde "America First" stylings of the racist-protectionist-isolationist American president, Donald Trump.

Some hackles were raised about the invitation being extended to North Korea, of all nations, but certainly we'd rather have it peacefully trading with the rest of us than firing missiles to draw attention to itself?

More to the point, though, how realistic is this plan? A few months ago, an op-ed appeared in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (usually a Communist Party-friendly outlet) placing the "One Belt, One Road" project's viability in question by way of Japan's example from only a few years back of doing something similar: using infrastructural might to extend not only diplomacy but also trade with its neighbors:

Facing a deep slowdown after years of investment-fuelled growth that culminated in a huge property and stock market bubble, the leaders of Asia’s largest economy [China] come up with a cunning plan. By launching an initiative to fund and construct infrastructure projects across Asia, they will kill four birds with one stone.

They will generate enough demand abroad to keep their excess steel mills, cement plants and construction companies in business, so preserving jobs at home. They will tie neighbouring countries more closely into their own economic orbit, so enhancing both their hard and soft power around the region. They will further their long term plan to promote their own currency as an international alternative to the US dollar. And to finance it all, they will set up a new multi-lateral infrastructure bank, which will undermine the influence of the existing Washington-based institutions, with all their tedious insistence on transparency and best practice, by making more “culturally sensitive” soft loans. The result will be the regional hegemony they regard as their right as Asia’s leading economic and political power.

However, the author Tom Holland delivers the punch line that, actually, the Japanese tried all this stuff before and failed:

[I]t’s actually a description of a strikingly similar plan rolled out by Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi in the 1990s. That too promised to provide work for Japan’s recession-hit construction sector by building Japanese-funded infrastructure projects around Asia. And it even included a proposal – never realised – to establish an Asian Monetary Fund to lend to regional governments on easier terms than either the IMF or World Bank.
Unfortunately for Beijing, the precedent is hardly encouraging. From the start the scheme was plagued by bickering over conditions and allegations of corruption. A handful of infrastructure projects did get built, but the reality fell woefully short of Tokyo’s grandiose dreams. Far from cementing Japan’s economic ascendancy across Asia, the project left a legacy of bad blood, and marked the beginning of a financial retreat from around the region that Japan has only recently begun to reverse.

The rest of the editorial notes that rampant corruption elsewhere siphoned funds away from projects, and those bits that actually did get built ended up as "white elephant" projects: transport initiatives that cost so much to maintain that they could not be sustained and were eventually shelved. Certainly, the OBOR and New Silk Road tags characterize some grandiose initiative. (See the map pabove.) Whether the Chinese have the actual sense to scale these to reality-based bits is another question since linking the Middle East all the way to the Far East is not a vision based on modesty. 

Scaling it appropriately to meet local needs of the countries involved is key. That is, participating countries will plump for maintaining infrastructure built (with Chinese support) insofar as they can benefit from it going forward. However, if benefits are not evident--or mainly serve the purpose of transit through a country instead of serving the citizens of the countries in question first and foremost--the Japanese example provides ample cautions.

UPDATE: A warning is that investment in OBOR countries has, actually, dropped off in recent times, though there are caveats associated with this as a gauge:

Foreign direct investment from China to countries identified as part of the BRI fell 2 per cent in 2016 year on year and has dropped an additional 18 per cent so far in 2017, according to commerce ministry data. Non-financial FDI to 53 BRI countries totalled $14.5bn last year, comprising only 9 per cent of overall outbound FDI...

Chinese experts counter that published figures do not paint a complete story. Jia Jinjing, chief researcher at the Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies in Beijing, said much outbound FDI passes from China through an intermediate country before reaching its final destination, making the commerce data an unreliable gauge of total BRI investment.

Back in business thanks to Trump...of all people.

When you think of a person of no conviction, the name "Donald Trump" comes to mind. Mind you, the lack of core beliefs is not always a drawback when you are (rather regrettably) [a] the most powerful person in the world and [b] have a fondness for conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies. So it was perhaps inevitable that the reality of actually governing would lead him to recognize that many of his views are, well, economically untenable. Think of it: in the past few days...

President Donald Trump’s declaration that he won’t label China a currency manipulator stands as the clearest example of the difficulty he’s having delivering on big campaign promises.

The currency decision is one among many instances of Trump reversing course since taking office a little less than three months ago. Within the space of a few hours on Wednesday, Trump changed previously critical stances on the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the value of NATO, interest rates, and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. 

For this post, the item of interest is the US Export-Import Bank. For a number of months, it's been unable to provide credit to foreign buyers of US-made goods since the Republican-dominated Congress has slowed down the process of fully appointing its membership. The absence of a full slate has meant it has limits on how much in loans it can disburse. But wonders of wonders, Trump of all people has now restored it to full functioning. To be sure, his picks will need congressional approval, but it's unlikely that he will be waylaid by fellow Republicans on this at least:

President Donald Trump nominated former Republican lawmaker Scott Garrett as president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States on Friday, completing an about-face over an institution he had denounced as "featherbedding" for big business.
A White House statement also named Spencer Bachus, another Republican former congressman, to be a member of the board of directors of the bank. Both were named for four-year terms.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday he would fill the two vacancies on the bank's five-member board that have prevented it from having a quorum and being able to act on loans over $10 million.

His picks must gain approval from the Senate, which blocked nominees by former President Barack Obama.

When it comes to sheer economic ignorance, you will probably find it very hard to beat Donald Trump. In this case, however, you will have to give that designation to Congressional "small government" nutters who think that Ex-Im Bank is a little more than a subsidy provider. Those guys have both blocked efforts to get Ex-Im Bank from being fully functional and have delayed Obama's efforts to get it going despite bipartisan consensus to do so:

The bank has become a popular target for conservatives, who worked in Congress to kill the institution, arguing that it perpetuates cronyism and does little to create American jobs.

Trump's backing of the bank represents a victory for manufacturers like Boeing and General Electric Co (GE.N), which have overseas customers that use the agency's government-backed loans to purchase their products.

Trump told the Journal the bank benefits small businesses and creates jobs, a reversal of his earlier criticism of the bank as being "featherbedding" for wealthy corporations.

The truth of the matter is that most other countries--especially major exporters of manufactures like China (China Exim Bank) and Japan (Nippon Export and Investment Insurance) have export credit providers. Virtually all OECD nations have such institutions. So what the right-wing nutters were effectively doing was uniquely handicapping US exports in the face of international competition. The whole point is that the financial systems of many prospective buyers--especially in developing countries--may be unable to provide [a] larger-sized loans at [b] reasonable enough rates for [c] a long enough time. Those risks--amount, repayment and duration--usually entail official international credit.

As such, credit provided by export-import entities can be "developmental" in enabling purchases of capital equipment useful to fostering economic growth--especially in poorer countries whose financial systems are less sophisticated by definition. 

If even Trump can recognize that, what does it says about those who don't?

UPDATE: It is fair to reiterate that among the nominees of Trump, the putative president Scott Garrett was an Ex-Im Bank doubter who used to vote down re-authorization while a congressperson. However, it's counterbalanced by the other person proposed as a director, Spencer Bachus, being a proponent of getting it going again.

They cancel each other out, IMHO, and the bank will be back in business. After all, why activate it if you're not going to grant any financing to help US firms?

Is it really a whole new world? If there's any such thing as a premature call, then it's probably to label Asian export-led development "dead" because of anticipated Trump-led US protectionism. As goes America, so goes the world, some think: When the US shuts its borders to trade, that's all she wrote. However, I would argue that saying that a process that's made any number of Asian countries immeasurably better off is over is way too early. To make a baseball analogy, we're only in the first inning of the Trump horror show.

Consider the following:

• Trump hasn't even hit Asian countries with massive tariffs yet;
• Even if he did, it's unlikely for these to stick once disputed at the WTO;
• Trump will not remain in office forever; 
• There are several other export markets other than the United States; and 
• No alternative Asian development model has been mooted.

At any rate, Bloomberg has some commentary to the effect that the next generation of would-be Asian export-led developers are reconsidering following the path of their predecessors. Consider populous (and largely Muslim) Indonesia:

At stake for less developed but relatively open economies is the ability to sustain economic growth rates that for Indonesia at least have hovered around 5 percent, helping lift more of its people into the middle class and giving a large youth population access to jobs. Trade and investment from the U.S. and China, alongside Japan, has helped propel that.

"In the past, emerging markets could have relatively high growth because they could focus their strategy on industrialization and trade,” said Basri, who was finance minister from 2013-2014 and a former chairman of the country’s Investment Coordinating Board. “Now, with the Trump protectionism, they cannot go with trade again.”

Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore were aided in becoming industrialized nations as the global economy was open at the time, Basri added. "The rest of the emerging markets probably cannot repeat the success story.”

Glum they are:

Emerging economies generally will struggle in the face of Trump’s policy shifts, with Russia likely one of the few beneficiaries, according to a report from Nomura Holdings Inc. It warned that U.S. protectionism and possible retaliatory measures could intersect with geopolitical tensions, with “no shortage of potential flash points” including the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula.

To paraphrase Albert Hirschman, I'd probably agree that going with a highly unbalanced growth strategy reliant on exports for the most part for generating growth is increasingly unviable. Perhaps a more balanced strategy giving domestic consumption and market development equal billing makes better sense at the current time. With large populations, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, etc. are better placed to substitute some international with domestic demand.

That said, the rigors of international competition are probably not to be dealt away  with so easily if development is the overarching objective.

Stock market "trading"--something of a Peruvian novelty.

To be exact, Peru does not appear to have enough freely traded listings to qualify for inclusion in the MSCI Emerging Markets index according to free float and liquidity criteria. That is, interested foreign investors should have the means necessary to purchase such stocks without undue difficulty. How many listings should qualify? Well, it's, er, three. Even by that measure, though, Peru is coming up short. Despite Peru's thin volumes, there would still be consequences for the global universe of equity investments:

The Peruvian stock exchange fears that the move would drive foreign investment away from its $67bn bourse. Moreover, the move would further unbalance the MSCI Frontier index and potentially divert much-needed foreign investment from countries such as Nigeria, Argentina and Pakistan. “It may seem like linguistics, but the index designation is important in terms of retaining and attracting foreign investor assets,” says Mark Mobius, executive chairman of the Templeton Emerging Markets Group, who believes foreign investors are responsible for roughly a third of Peru’s trading volume.

Index inclusion often drives investment since indexed funds are obviously required to place a proportion of their investments in the countries included. Such are China's hopes and, conversely, Peru's fears. And the bush league of the frontier market is really quite tiny:

MSCI launched a consultation on Peru’s potential ejection from its flagship EM index — tracked by an estimated $1.5tn, against just $12bn for the Frontier equivalent — in August last year. MSCI’s concern was that only three stocks in its Peru equity universe meet its liquidity and free float requirements, the minimum number to be eligible for its EM index...

Compounding the problem, MSCI has proposed switching Southern Copper, one of these three stocks, to its US equity universe, where it is listed (it is currently included in the Peruvian section for “historical and index continuity reasons” and generates 43 per cent of its revenues from Peru, with the remainder from Mexico), pushing Peru below the minimum threshold.

While the arguments for and against de-indexing Peru are interesting, the larger fact remains: without wider Peruvian development, you can hardly expect its prospects for stock market indexing to be much better. And so it finds itself in this unpromising position.

You see a major Jordanian camp for Syrians refugees in Zaatari; the EBRD sees a development opportunity.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was founded in the aftermath of WWII to rebuild a continent shattered by that conflict. It is one of four regional development banks together with those in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Until recently, the EBRD's mission has not strayed far from providing funding for, yes, European reconstruction and development. In recent decades, it has helped transition economies from the former Soviet bloc move to capitalist systems.

Now, though, comes an element of "mission creep": with Middle East turmoil driving millions upon millions of refugees to European shores, the EBRD is now tasked with helping staunch this massive flow of humanity. How? By promoting economic development in Middle Eastern countries that are currently hosting large numbers of refugees:

This realization has prompted the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development to find a new calling: crisis development. Created after the fall of the Berlin Wall to help Europe's ex-communist nations become market economies, the EBRD controversially moved on to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia after the Arab Spring. Last summer, as he watched TV coverage of refugees coming to Europe, the bank's president, Suma Chakrabarti, told me he saw "an opportunity to show we are relevant to crisis situations." Now Lebanon has applied for EBRD membership.

Thus went the call for funding for Middle East projects:

In October, Chakrabarti says he got the EBRD's board to agree to a new approach. It would help stabilize refugee host countries by corralling funds and private investors to deal with the consequences of sudden population explosions and treat them as a development opportunity. On Wednesday, he announced a 900-million euro program. "We're ready to go," says Chakrabarti. All that's required is for donor countries to provide 400 million euros, and for the host countries to cooperate.

Jordan is currently one of the targeted nations given its massive population surge from refugees settling there:

In 2010, the population of Lebanon was around 4.3 million. By last summer the CIA estimated that figure at 6.2 million, mostly because of refugees from Syria. It is, said Lebanon's education minister Elias Bou Saab, as though 32 million people had suddenly descended on Britain...

Start with sewage. Already straining, Jordan's system can't cope with 1.4 million extra Syrians, so the first EBRD project would strengthen the network in the Zarqa River area, north of Amman. Then landfills - they're full. New ones have to be built.

Jordan, the second most water-poor country on earth, has had to halve cistern deliveries in some areas. Leaking water pipes need repair. Four hundred schools are running double shifts -- local kids in the morning, Syrians in the afternoon. More schools need to be built. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Transportation systems are overrun. Digging landfills and laying pipes is labor intensive, as is building schools and hospitals -- which is good. The work can employ both locals and Syrians.

Maybe it should now be called the EMEBRD--the European and Middle Eastern Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

New targets require new measures of poverty, right?

There has been, in the memorable characterization of Robert Wade, a "political economy of statistics" concerning poverty and inequality. As standard-bearers of neoliberal, market-led globalization, the World Bank would of course claim that the world's decades-long towards putting faith in market mechanisms has resulted in a global reduction of both. Robert Wade begs to differ. Needless to say, methods of measuring these "bads" remain contentious.

There are of course all sorts of ways to measure poverty. For quite some time now, the World Bank has kept an easily-remembered shorthand of expenditures of less than $1.25 on a PPP basis. This, of course, was preceded by the famous $1/day standard before 2008. There are thus many complaints about this standard: sure $1 is a nice round number, but can such inter-country comparisons really be made even after adjusting for purchasing power?

Well, guess what: just as people were still arguing about the $1/day standard when the $1.25/day standard came along, the World Bank is now about to introduce a $1.90/day standard. As we transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) anchored on the $1.25 standard to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which replace the MDGs this year, I suppose the development experts came to the conclusion that we need a new international poverty line as well:

The World Bank is to make the most dramatic change to its global poverty line for 25 years — raising its measure by a half to about $1.90 per day — in a move likely to swell the statistical ranks of the world’s poor by tens of millions. The move from $1.25 would be the biggest revision since the World Bank introduced its $1 a day yardstick of global poverty in 1990...

The bank is expected to follow the event by shifting its poverty line to about $1.90 ahead of its annual meetings in Lima, Peru, in early October — a move likely to result in significant shifts in the estimated size and distribution of the planet’s poor. It is difficult to predict exactly how many more people will be defined as poor. However, when researchers at the bank tested a notional poverty line of $1.92 earlier this year, it led to a surge of 148m.

Most of the difference came in east Asia where the ranks of those falling below the poverty line almost doubled from 157m at the old $1.25/day measure to 293m. In Latin America, the result was an increase of 8m, or more than 25 per cent, in the number of poor to 37m, while in south Asia the ranks of the poor grew by 7m to 407m. Under that line, sub-Saharan Africa remained steady at some 416m.

Interestingly, there are now complaints coming from the right. If you assume that globalization has reduced inequality in recent years--and most orthodox economists would say it did--then why change the standard? The new accusation is that the World Bank would not have any work otherwise "helping" the newly (re-)classified folks qualifying as poor as per its mission of helping to eradicate poverty:

Angus Deaton, the Princeton economist and persistent critic of a poverty line that he argues has been misleading for years. “You’ve got a line that no one knows where to put it, PPPs that change, and underlying data that is bad,” he said. “It is sort of a statistical problem from hell.” The World Bank’s administering of the poverty line also carried a hint of conflict of interest, he said, as the bank’s main task was fighting poverty, and its very existence depended on its own poverty measures.

Mr Deaton added: “I think they have some institutional bias towards finding more poverty rather than less.” 

Talk about the political economy of statistics: from the left you have folks like Wade saying these measurements are bogus. On the right they say these statistics and bogus and self-serving.  There's just no pleasing some people.

World Bank headquarters - an unlikely site for "industrial action."

The recent leadership change to the Korean-American Jim Yong Kim has inspired a round of internal reforms that have rubbed many bank veterans the wrong way. What ignited a firestorm of controversy within the World Bank was the decision to retain CFO Bertrand Badre's hefty bonus of $94,000 on top of his base salary of $397,000 (plus other benefits) even as he was in charge of "right-sizing" the headcount through layoffs. Let's begin with details of the redundancies:

The World Bank said it plans to cut 500 jobs over the next three years as part of a broad restructuring meant to make it more efficient but that has rattled employees. The long-expected layoffs, along with budget cuts and internal reorganization, have sparked regular staff protests and fears of a broader revolt at a time when the bank is trying to ramp up its work in fighting the Ebola outbreak and other global challenges, and maintain its relevance.

The cuts, announced on Thursday, represent about an 11 percent reduction in the 4,500-employee workforce of the bank's internal-facing divisions, including finance, human resources, research and security. These divisions employ about a quarter of the bank's total staff.

Since Badre was the architect of these cuts, many World Bank employees believed that he should share in the pain instead of being rewarded for getting rid of so many jobs:

The World Bank chief financial officer is giving up part of his bonus after an uproar over cost-cutting measures at the lender. Bertrand Badre will decline the remainder of his 94,000 dollar annual bonus, the bank said. The move was an attempt to appease staff, who were angry that he got a bonus while the bank was cutting jobs.

Mr. Badre had pushed for much of the cutbacks at the organization, which is being reorganized. World Bank president Jim Yong Kim reportedly made the announcement to applause during a staff meeting on Tuesday. “Of course staff unease is natural and understandable in any large organisation undergoing such a large-scale realignment,” World Bank spokesman David Theis said.

The internal unrest was such that there was a strike of sorts occurred in which employees downed their tools:

For the first time in its seven-decade-long history, World Bank staff staged a work stoppage earlier this month. Staff are unhappy about the “Change Process,” the ongoing internal reorganization that President Jim Yong Kim initiated on his arrival at the Bank now more than two years ago...

One tell-tale indication of the internal turmoil: Recently, the vice president for Africa “resigned” just days before last month’s Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF — only to be brought back two weeks later. From outside, it is easy to assume that a well-paid staff is grousing about losing status or position or even employment itself because of a reorganization. But after living through and observing reorganizations at the World Bank over the last 30 years, I have the sense that the media get that part of the story mostly wrong.

A recurrent complaint is that instead of streamlining the World Bank, the so-called reforms are making matters worse to get things done on the ground. From longtime World Bank follower and development stalwart Nancy Birdsall:

Staff, it seems, do not believe this reorganization is done — nowhere near done, let alone at the stage of fine-tuning. Their specific concerns are fundamental:
1. The new reorganization has created 14 silos where there were four — and more, not fewer management layers.
2. Decision-making is more centralized, not less.
3. Transaction costs to organize teams are higher than ever and budgeting for work with clients is not flowing.
4. A few senior managers get bonuses, while a big budget cut is slashing travel budgets. Surely management should share in the austerity.
It sounds as though structure and incentives are less aligned than before. Something is wrong, and it seems right to ask President Kim to say so and fix it

The funny thing about the World Bank is that it views labor militancy as an obstacle to development and investment when you have these well-paid economists--and they are mostly economists--complaining about losing parking spaces and breakfast allowances. It is sad that some want to strike over such meaningless perks in a world full of poverty they are supposedly committed to fight.

Meanwhile, morale at the World Bank continues to sag.

Today the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was born.

This is a continuation of a previous post on the US wanting Chinese competition in development lending to just go away despite the likes of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank lauding the developmental benefits of competition. You know, when it comes to actual competition in development lending, the usual American BS, posturing and hypocrisy rear their ugly head. How will China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank survive? Depending on your point of view whether this is a good or bad thing, the US has largely succeeded in discouraging developed countries from pledging any funding to the PRC's brainchild. When th1e signatories gather tomorrow, not a one is going to be a developed country. Australia which the PRC courted is playing dumb, for instance:

U.S. officials have attempted to sway countries not to join, publicly raising concerns about China’s ability to ensure international standards of governance at the institution. No developed countries will be present on Friday, according to an Indian government official. India will sign the agreement—a step toward the later formal establishment of the bank—along with roughly 20 other countries from across Asia, the official said.

Beijing was betting on the participation of Australia, a major trade partner which relies on Chinese demand for its natural resources and is currently negotiating a trade pact with China. An Australian government official said the country hadn’t decided whether to join and was unaware of the agreement to be signed Friday.

The Americans and their lackeys naturally express doubts and pooh-pooh the effort in demanding US-style conditionalities and whatnot:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew , at a conference earlier this month in Washington, raised concerns about whether the bank would adhere to international lending norms such as those followed by the World Bank. “The critical question is, ‘Do they follow the same kinds of practices that are working to help economies grow and to maintain strong and stable foundations?’” Mr. Lew said.

A Japanese finance ministry official said the country wouldn’t join because it sees no need for an alternative to the Asian Development Bank, which is dominated by Tokyo. Japan also has concerns about governance and transparency issues at the new bank, the official said. South Korea hasn’t decided whether to join and is still “looking at the governance and decision-making process” as well as the “economic benefit,” a government official said. 

That said, Southeast Asian nations with the exception of Indonesia have signed up to the program These include Philippines and Vietnam which have heated territorial disputes with China. Apparently, the lure of increased infrastructure funding with fewer strings attached was too hard to resist for these countries with large and growing infrastructure needs:

India will be the only large economy to sign up to the Chinese initiative at the ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday morning, according to people familiar with the matter. It will be joined by Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and all of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations except Indonesia. Indonesia excused itself from being involved at this stage, saying the newly installed government had not yet had time to consider Beijing's proposal. 

Money talks, I guess, and more than a few are willing to give China a chance if it really is opening up its wallet. Speaking of "governance," the irony is that the Chinese are establishing their own development lender with a catchy refrain on infrastructure development precisely because the West and countries friendly to it (read: Japan) have refused to accommodate changes in the world economy since the turn of the millennium. As for China, the interesting thing to watch is whether there will be real participation allowed among the other countries signing up to this venture as opposed to being National People's Congress-style rubber stampers. Alternatively, they may be treated like Hong Kong administrators--serfs in all but name.

UPDATE 1: David Dollar (no relation to Eddie Money), formerly of the World Bank, lauds the creation of the AIIB in a New York Times op-ed. He too harps on the value of competition:

But as the new bank will also try to be leaner and faster than the existing banks, it will provide some healthy competition. And hopefully the success of the bank will encourage more rapid reform of the old institutions [i.e., the World Bank and ADB]. That would be the best global outcome of all. If we want China to buy fully into the existing institutions, then we have to give it the seat at the table that it deserves. 

UPDATE 2: More on today's event in Beijing--who was there who was not:

But other than China, among Asia's 10 largest economies only India and Singapore signed the AIIB memorandum, with three of the top five--Japan, South Korea and Indonesia--notably absent. The Japanese head of the Asian Development Bank, another regional lender, said Thursday that questions remained over the AIIB's structure and it needed to adhere to international standards. "Our position about AIIB is first that it is understandable because there is a very big financing need in the region," ADB President Takehiko Nakao told reporters. But he said he was still awaiting details about the bank such as membership, shareholdings, the location of its headquarters and who will head it.

Japanese, Chinese want the "Gujarat Model" replicated across India.

The selection of Najendra Modi as India's prime minister is taken as a sign that the rest of the country wishes to follow in the footsteps of Gujarat state that he used to govern--a liberalizing, open-for-business attitude that has seen it attract a considerable amount of foreign investment. The Japanese, in particular, seems excited. Having invested a lot in Gujarat, they look forward to similar liberalization and FDI-friendly measures being put into place nationwide:

Japanese executives at the meeting were also ebullient, praising the business sense and management capabilities of the Gujarat government, which Modi presided over for 13 years. "We don't have a very cordial relationship with China," Japanese attorney Tatsuhiro Kubo said at the Ahmedabad gathering, explaining why Japanese industry likes Gujarat, "so bonding with India is only natural."

More than a year ago, Jetro [Japan Export Trade Organization--Japan's trade promotion body] took the rare step of establishing a regional office in Ahmedabad . Suzuki Motor and Hitachi are among the Japanese companies that have invested in Gujarat. "Nearly 50 Japanese companies are in the process of setting up plants in Gujarat," said Mukesh Patel, president of the Indo-Japan Friendship Association.

In a meeting with Anandiben Patel, who replaced Modi as Gujarat's chief minister, Takeshi Yagi, Japan's ambassador to India, on June 7 expressed support for an exclusive Japanese industrial cluster in Gujarat, saying the number of Japanese companies operating in the state will soon rise from 60 to more than 100. Earlier this month, that industrial cluster began to take shape near Suzuki's existing plant in Gujarat.

Essentially, the elections in May gave Indian voters their first opportunity to say "yea" or "nay" to an economic model. Modi's party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, described what Modi accomplished in Gujarat as an "economic miracle," one that Modi promised to repeat across the country if he were to ascend to the prime minister's post.

Ironically given the Japanese lawyer's comments on their investment partly being based on India simply not being China, the model which Gujarat resembles is the so-called "Shenzen model" according to admiring Chinese (see this China Daily op-ed). Speaking of whom, the Chinese are also looking to invest in India despite historical grievances over border disputes. I guess commerce cannot be ignored:

While there is talk that Japanese investors saw which way the winds were about to blow, Chinese analysts also want to be seen as clairvoyant; they have been saying Modi's Gujarat model was built around China's Shenzhen model of development.

A direct comparision with Shenzhen, or even Guangdong, is somewhat outlandish, but there are a few similarities. During his four visits to China, Modi made inquiries into the country's system of special economic zones, which he considered important tools for rapid industrial development. Now China -- which might be looking for an edge in India -- has been pushing for special economic zones in the country. The Modi government recently gave an "in principal" approval to the request.

The coming months -- as the Modi government deals closely with investors from Japan, China and other countries -- will give a clear picture of the model Modi is working with.

As Jagdish Bhagwati put it, Indians and other Asians seemingly agree with Modi that growth must be created before it can be redistributed.

We've heard all that before, unfortunately, BRICS.

Grand plans to supplant the (American-designed) postwar global financial architecture lie thick on the ground. As I noted in 2007, poor countries have championed the G-77, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), New International Economic Order (NIEO), and UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as alternatives giving poor countries a larger voice in global economic governance. Interestingly enough, the BRICs grouping which was formed out of Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill acronyms has had regular meetings discussing reform of the world's financial architecture. (South Africa has been included in these discussions, hence BRICS instead of BRICs.) Wouldn't it be nice if poor countries could look out for one another instead of having to bow to Western-led interests as prescribed by the World Bank and IMF?

In the most recent BRICS meeting in Fortoleza, Brazil, participants have upped the (rhetorical) ante in proposing alternatives to not one but both Bretton Woods institutions the World Bank and the IMF. In place of the World Bank, consider this description of the supposedly forthcoming, Shanghai-based New Development Bank:

The New Development Bank, as it will be called, is intended to finance infrastructure projects in the founding members of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and in other emerging-market countries as well. The NDB still needs approval from each Brics countries' lawmakers, which could take years.

But when it is finally set up, the bank will provide an alternative source of financing for the Brics and other emerging markets and give them much greater control over funding decisions that affect them directly [read: instead of having Westerners ultimately decide]. 

The stated cause of plans to accelerate the so-called NDB's formation is delayed reform of the Bretton Woods institutions:

The new institution, whose first chief executive will be from India, will start out with capital of $50 billion, to be paid in equally by all five Brics countries. Capital is planned to grow eventually to $100 billion, according to the memorandum released after the meeting in Brazil of the heads of government of the five countries.

The Brics have been trying for years to reform the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the backbone of the world's global financial structure, to give emerging markets more influence over those institutions, but with little success. "In the IMF and the World Bank, the U.S. and a handful of allies really do make almost all the decisions, and the vast majority of the world…doesn't really have a voice," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. 

Also consider the mooted IMF alternative, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement:

In addition to the new bank, a new monetary fund was also launched at the Fortaleza summit. The five leaders signed a memorandum establishing a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) - a $100 billion contingency fund, which member states can draw on in financial emergencies when their foreign exchange reserves become dangerously depleted. The BRICS countries currently have the world's largest foreign currency reserves, and the new institution offers an opportunity to invest those savings at a profit. China contributed $41 billion to the capital stock; India, Brazil and Russia each paid in $18 billion, and South Africa's share is $5 billion.

The CRA is meant to provide an alternative to International Monetary Fund's emergency lending. In the CRA, emergency loans of up to 30 percent of a member nation's contribution will be decided by a simple majority. Bigger loans will require the consent of all CRA members.

After hearing dozens of these plans being aired without having much to show for in terms of results, my take here is simple: I will believe them when I see the NDB and CRA fully funded by the BRICS. Climate change has probably been exacerbated by so much hot air about South-South groupings (see the institutions mentioned in the first paragraph). Unless these countries really put their money where their mouths are at, it's better to consider these Bretton Woods alternatives with a grain of salt.

Adidas takes the trophy for World Cup 2014's most horrendously prescient ad campaign.

Last year, Luis Suarez hit the headlines when he bit Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic and was suspended for ten Premier League matches. Aside from the horrific image it creates of one of football's most prolific strikers--he's led both the Dutch Eredivisie and English Premier League in scoring--another interesting aspect is the speed at which the Uruguayan media has sprung to his defense as he bit Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini in Uruguay's 1-0 victory over Italy that saw the latter bounced out of the competition. He'd done so to others and wanted to chew on the Italian during the 2013 Confederations Cup. For those Latin Americans, it was another example of a wealthier country taking advantage of a poorer country. Sure Uruguay advanced, but it is harder to imagine how they will advance in the knockout stages absent their greatest offensive threat after he was suspended no thanks to spiteful Westerners. Witness the emergent narratives:

A EUROPEAN 'MANHUNT'
 
"I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, but it seems that FIFA isn't interested in letting small countries such as Uruguay advance," said 62 year-old lawyer Andres Ramirez. Local media have lashed out at a British-led 'manhunt' against him, and even leftist president Jose Mujica spoke up for Suarez to be left alone.

"What is incomprehensible is the vitriol with which the English press, in particular, have gone after the Uruguayan. Far worse things have happened on the pitch, even where English players are concerned," said Uruguayan Andreas Campomar, author of "Golazo! A History of Latin American Football". For many Latin Americans the ban will have wider repercussions. It will be construed as the usual high-handedness Europe employs in relation to Latin America. A case of one rule for them and one rule for us."

Uruguay captain Diego Lugano: "Indignation, impotence, I think that's what we all feel. We'd all like a fairer world, but that world simply does not exist. Those who rule, rule, and the strong ones are the strong ones... Keep feeling proud of him, he deserves it. Nothing will stop us. We will carry on with humility, union, determination, recognition of mistakes, and with our heads always high."

As it so happens, Latin narratives of victimhood have a very long history. In the late 1950s, dependency theory or dependencia became all the rage in Latin American countries. That is, trade with rich countries did not make poor countries better off as per neoclassical economic theory--comparative advantage and all that stuff--but worse off as they were exploited mercilessly:

Dependency Theory developed in the late 1950s under the guidance of the Director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, Raul Prebisch. Prebisch and his colleagues were troubled by the fact that economic growth in the advanced industrialized countries did not necessarily lead to growth in the poorer countries. Indeed, their studies suggested that economic activity in the richer countries often led to serious economic problems in the poorer countries. Such a possibility was not predicted by neoclassical theory, which had assumed that economic growth was beneficial to all (Pareto optimal) even if the benefits were not always equally shared.

Prebisch's initial explanation for the phenomenon was very straightforward: poor countries exported primary commodities to the rich countries who then manufactured products out of those commodities and sold them back to the poorer countries. The "Value Added" by manufacturing a usable product always cost more than the primary products used to create those products. Therefore, poorer countries would never be earning enough from their export earnings to pay for their imports.

• Chiellini is a "snitch" trying to deflect attention away from Italy's elimination.
• Suarez's mouth inadvertently fell into Chiellini's shoulder / Chiellini thrust his shoulder into Suarez.
• the British media have "exaggerated the incident" and are untrustworthy after celebrating the country's 1966 World Cup win with "a goal that wasn't a goal".
• pictures of Chiellini's shoulder showing fresh bite marks are actually of an old scar.

France's Alcatel is an also-ran handset maker seeking to capitalize on Mozilla OS.

I got on the information superhighway in 1994. Back then, our 33,600-baud modem was a high-spec model even if pictures took minutes to load and I got disconnected many times over the course of an hour. No matter; I used Netscape Navigator then like everyone else--it wasn't the most stable program either but it got the job done. Twenty years later, my preferred browser is still a son-of-Netscape in Mozilla (Netscape's Mosaic + Godzilla) Firefox. The ethos of Mozilla Firefox do appeal to me in being an open source, non-profit institution.
An area where Firefox has fallen behind though is in adopting to the move to mobile devices. While there is a Firefox version for Google Android, there's none for Apple iOS. Now, however, Firefox is harnessing its open source advantage which could appeal to hardware manufacturers to duke it out with Google and Apple in mobile OS. With Microsoft's mobile OS something of a dud, there may be room for another competitor. What's more, Firefox is being strategic in seeking out emerging markets where lower licensing fees for its newfangled OS and hardware manufacturers seeking to customize it for entry-level smartphones may play to Firefox's advantage:

Like its namesake Web browser, the Firefox OS was created by Mozilla’s army of volunteer coders as an open alternative to company-owned standards. Mozilla, a portmanteau of “Mosaic” and “Godzilla,” began as an open-source development arm of Netscape before spinning off in 2003 as a nonprofit foundation dedicated to creating code for others to commercialize. These days, though, it’s making some serious money of its own, earning $100 million on $311 million in revenue in 2012, the most recent year it disclosed results. A bit more than 90 percent of the revenue came from a search traffic deal with Google.

Mozilla’s move into the mobile OS market makes it less of an ally and more an adversary to Google and Apple (AAPL). Android dominates this market, accounting for about 78 percent, compared with 18 percent for second-place Apple’s iOS, according to market researcher IDC. But neither was designed specifically for the lower-tech smartphones that mobile carriers are trying to sell in developing markets. By simplifying data management and cutting energy use, Firefox OS aims to attract people with less money and unpredictable access to networks and electricity.

To make a long story short, the features desired in the developing world are not necessarily those of interest in the developed world. For instance, European and North American users have no problems using 3G connections to stream music on the go, but FM--free music--is still the way to go in Brazil and Mexico where 3G is mainly for rich folks. Also, a less sophisticated OS may be desired so it can run on lesser-powered devices and use less power in places where power sockets aren't ubiquitous:

Mozilla and Telefónica agreed to first target Brazil, where the carrier controls almost 30 percent of the mobile market. “If you design for Brazil, it’s going to function in Mexico,” says Gal. “If you sit in Cupertino, it’s not going to work in Brazil or Mexico.” This has led to some innovations that may seem obvious but hadn’t been high priorities for OS designs aimed at the U.S. or Europe.

Because Mozilla isn’t yet working to put its OS on high-end phones, it can keep its code simple, yielding longer battery life. Firefox OS lets people easily monitor data use to keep costs down. It supports FM radio, a valuable feature in Latin American markets. To soften the learning curve for first-time smartphone users, it can search within multiple apps at once, unlike other systems. Gal’s example is a query for Madonna that yields a bio from Wikipedia and songs from a streaming service.

Definitely, I am sympathetic to Firefox's approach and wish they succeed. Having been successively trampled on by Microsoft, Google and Apple, however, let's just say the good open source, non-profit guys have their work cut out for them since the biggies won't likely take this challenge lying down. For instance, I can see price-slashing among Android and iOS devices to preempt Firefox from taking away market share in the rest of the developing world. Indeed, some are saying Firefox is doomed to fail as entry-level competitors increase but we'll see...

Just as you don't see fat or old people in Ricky Martin videos, something's missing here.

Brazil has long been the unwilling keeper of an image of radically high inequality, with fabulous wealth sitting alongside wretched squalor in any number of its cities. So many years after the black football player Pele won the hearts of the world with his magnificent displays, I am afraid that not all that much has changed. To be sure, the conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Familia which gives poor households grants upon meeting health and education criteria for their children has helped. That said, inequality remains radically high there, with Gini coefficients measuring inequality well above the 50 mark.

Earlier on, protests about the social wastefulness of hosting the World Cup were bolstered by a provocative image taken during the Confederations Cup also held in Brazil in which [rich, white] matchgoing fans threw garbage into a dumpster inhabited by a [poor, black] woman. Unfortunately, the supposedly progressive Brazilian leadership of Dilma Rousseff--formerly a Marxist guerrilla fighter--appears to be tone deaf to the sensitivities about race and inequality the sport raises. Alike the United States where [rich, white] basketball and football fans pay top dollar to watch sporting events dominated by black athletes, the symbolism is not lost:

Inside the stadium, crowds have been what you might expect at these large scale sporting beanos: basically a collection of rich people. This World Cup, like much of the London Olympics, is out of reach of those who cannot pay a premium for tickets. Welcome to the world. This was always going to be the case from the moment it became clear only 400,000 of 3.3m tickets would be made available to ordinary Brazilians, with most at prices beyond the reach of the average salary. There have been comments about the lack of non-white faces in the stadiums. This is not football-specific racism so much as a reflection of wider inequities. Brazil’s middle class is predominantly and historically white. These are not so much white people as rich people.

The Guardian's Barney Ronay reads this one correctly: having ultimately funded the mega-stadiums hosting these events, the ordinary folks certainly had a right to normally priced tickets. In this day and age of media supersaturation, it simply does not look good when this supposed "melting pot" has stadiums filled with a sea of white faces. It hardly reflects the multiracial composition of the football team:

While football cannot be blamed for Brazil’s entrenched social issues, Fifa can and should be blamed for not insisting a huge tranche of tickets go on sale to Brazilians at fixed, affordable prices. And not simply over the internet, to which not all have access, but through local team memberships and stadium connections. Everyday Brazilians are often hugely passionate about club football. They should be sitting in those publicly funded seats at Brazil’s World Cup.

The attendance shocker of the World Cup so far was the group stage rematch of the last event's finalists Spain and the Netherlands featuring 3,500 seats. I'll put the no-shows down to corporate-sponsored seats. Again, what harm would it have done to sell those to average Brazilians who'd have been more than happy to attend?

We kicked out S Korea after it joined the OECD rich country club, but its UN chief attended anyway.

 Most of you are probably thinking, those guys are still around? The G-77 was forged during a time when developing countries began to recognize their shared interests and desired to make them better known at international organizations. Even now, it remains the premier grouping among developing countries at the UN General Assembly even if it receives minimal press attention. To commemorate its fiftieth birthday, the G-77 recently held an event in Bolivia. Being perfectly honest, the G-77 has often degenerated into a mouthpiece for anti-Americanism, which is obviously not developmental in itself. Nor has it been a significant forum in developing a common platform for the Global South.

Still, the latest event proved noteworthy in a few respects. First, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (is it just me or does he sound like a Sanrio character?) attended our shindig:

Mr Ban Ki Moon in his opening speech said the G77 and China had given the South a global voice, and the Group provides an immense contribution to the UN. He told President Morales that he appreciated his vision of Living Well, as development based on living well is humanity living in harmony with Nature and with each other. The Secretary General said the SDGs [sustainable development goals] require Global Partnership and the G77 has a key role to ensure its effectiveness. The Group should press for a fair trade regime, technology transfer and so on. The G77 and China plays a key role in the UN to formulate a post 2015 Development Agenda.

Aside from the Bolivian president, Argentina's Cristina Fernandez, also took to the mic together with other stalwarts of the Latin left:

With regard to the economic order, [she] said a crisis currently persists and affects many countries of the world, “my country had been affected before, this is happening is not capitalism, it is a complete and utter distortion, qualify as anarcho-capitalism.”

[S]he finished by thanking all present [for their] intervention and President Evo Morales, for the invitation “if we do not we should remove in time” [then] good “because we have to call to reach a new world order to continue living.” Prior to the president [of] Argentina, the presidents of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro; Cuba, Raul Castro and Uruguay, José “Pepe” Mujica, urged the G77 to move toward a new world order more just and equitable.

Speaking of the Uruguayan leader, he also went all ecological on us:

Uruguay's austere president is urging world leaders to fight a "culture of waste" in which poor nations try to emulate richer countries rather than live in balance with the environment.Speaking in Bolivia on Sunday to a summit of the Group of 77 and China, Jose Mujica calls the growth in consumerism "a trap" that will produce material gain at the cost of human development. Mujica is a former guerrilla leader and he has won attention for his no-frills lifestyle as Uruguay's president, including driving an old Volkswagen Beetle and living on a simple flower farm.

China rebutted Sunday night accusations made by Vietnam over the South China Sea, urging the Vietnamese side to immediately stop all the disruptive and destructive acts against China's legal operations in the sea. At the conclusion of the Group of 77 (G77) plus China summit in Bolivia, Le Hoai Trung, Vietnam's permanent representative to the United Nations, claimed that China operated a drilling rig "in the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam" and sent warships to drive away Vietnamese vessels, which "infringed Vietnam's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

While I certainly sympathize with the G-77--unlike South Korea we are the poor countries who stayed poor--I despair at the actual political clout we have. Reform at the IMF and World Bank remains stalled. The UN Security Council's permanent members are still the victors of WWII. We again issued a call for a new world order, but that's been the refrain for, oh, forty years now. So much has happened, but nothing's really changed I fear as the G-77 has become yet another "talk shop" with a slightly different cast of characters dominated by Latin blowhards and the like.