Camil Stoenescu's blog

New York Times ne spune cum mai stau țările membre UE la capitolul datorii și împrumuturi:

Reteaua datoriilor

Reclame vechi românești…

de aici.

Ierarhia este calculată – de către Forbes – pe  baza a 4 indicatori: vânzări, profit, active și valoarea estimată pe piață.

The Forbes Global 2000 are the biggest, most powerful listed companies in the world. These global giants usually reorder themselves at a glacial pace, but sometimes–as with the volatile financial sector of late–with more abruptness.

Extreme vagaries of business or poor performance can take them off the list entirely. In any case, our composite ranking is the best snapshot of just how these titans compare. As we show, the corporate dominance of the developed nations is steadily receding. With respect not just to size but to what investors care most about, see our Global High Performers, an elite list of companies that set the pace in their respective industries.

În 2010 clasamentul arată în felul următor:

Câteva observații subiective:

• deși trăim în „era informației/tehnologiei”, primele 20 de locuri sunt ocupate de companii ce activează cu precădere în domeniul financiar și în ce al energiei și petrolului – industrii și activități vechi de peste o sută de ani (în cazul băncilor putem vorbi de mii de ani); doar AT&T se ocupă de telecomunicații;
• dintre primele 20 de companii, 9 sunt americane, 3 chineze, 2 britanice și 2 franceze. Spania, Olanda, Rusia, Brazilia au fiecare câte o companie; raportul de forțe în plan economic, la nivel global, reiese astfel destul de clar;
• cea mai mare companie software din lume, Microsoft, ocupă „abia” locul 49; cu toate acestea, valoarea sa de piață (254 miliarde dolari) este enormă. Concurentul direct – Apple – se situează pe poziția 75;

Marele perdant? Toyota, din rațiuni evidente.

De asemenea, puteți arunca o privire și aici.

Discussions about migration typically start from the perspective of fows from developing countries into the rich countries of Europe, North America and Australasia. Yet most movement in the world does not take place between developing and developed countries; it does not even take place between countries. Te overwhelming majority of people who move do so inside their own country. Using a conservative defnition, we estimate that approximately 740 million people are internal migrants—almost four times as many as those who have moved internationally. Among people who have moved across national borders, just over a third moved from a developing to a developed country—fewer than 70 million people. Most of the world’s 200 million international migrants moved from one developing country to another or between developed countries (map 1).

Most migrants, internal and international, reap gains in the form of higher incomes, better access to education and health, and improved prospects for their children (fgure 1). Surveys of migrants report that most are happy in their destination, despite the range of adjustments and obstacles typically involved in moving. Once established, migrants are ofen more likely than local residents to join unions or religious and other groups. Yet there are trade-ofs and the gains from mobility are unequally distributed.

In general, however, people move of their own volition, to better-of places. More than three quarters of international migrants go to a country with a higher level of human development than their country of origin (fgure 2). Yet, they are signifcantly constrained, both by policies that impose barriers to entry and by the resources they have available to enable their move. People in poor countries are the least mobile: for example, fewer than 1 percent of Africans have moved to Europe. Indeed, history and contemporary evidence suggest that development and migration go hand in hand: the median emigration rate in a country with low human development is below 4 percent, compared to more than 8 percent from countries with high levels of human development.

De aici.

Înainte de toate, ce este Indicele de Dezvoltare Umană (Human Development Index)?

Pe scurt, un indicator compozit, orientat pe 3 direcții principale:

• durata și calitatea vieții (o viață lungă și sănătoasă);
• nivelul de educație (alfabetizare, studii superioare etc);
• un standard de viață decent, măsurat în venit/putere de cumpărare;

The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).

Practic, combinând și cuantificând aspecte diferite (și fundamentale) ale vieții, HDI descrie mult mai bine gradul de dezvoltare și bunăstare al unei țări decât alți indicatori, unidimensionali (precum GDP/capita). În esență, HDI măsoară calitatea vieții dintr-un anumit stat.

The HDI sets a minimum and a maximum for each dimension, called goalposts, and then shows where each country stands in relation to these goalposts, expressed as a value between 0 and 1.

The educational component of the HDI is comprised of adult literacy rates and the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, weighted to give adult literacy more significance in the statistic. Since the minimum adult literacy rate is 0% and the maximum is 100%, the literacy component of knowledge for a country where the literacy rate is 75% would be 0.75, the statistic for combined gross enrolment is calculated in a analogous manner. The life expectancy component of the HDI is calculated using a minimum value for life expectancy of 25 years and maximum value of 85 years, so the longevity component for a country where life expectancy is 55 years would be 0.5. For the wealth component, the goalpost for minimum income is $100 (PPP) and the maximum is $40,000 (PPP). The HDI uses the logarithm of income, to reflect the diminishing importance of income with increasing GDP. The scores for the three HDI components are then averaged in an overall index.

Mai jos, un exemplu – Norvegia și Australia,  primele două țări din topul HDI, dar despărțite de o diferență semnificativă în venitul mediu pe cap de locuitor – diferență ce se dovedește a nu fi atât de importantă în context mai larg:

Cum arată topul? Unde se situează România? Nu, nu suntem primii din coadă (aviz fanilor sintagmei „rromânia”), dar nici pe o poziție fruntașă. Loc de mai bine este berechet…

Mai multe detalii – aici și aici.

Conform estimărilor FMI, economia globală va crește anul acesta cu 4.2%, comparativ cu procentul de 3.9% considerat inițial. Totodată, în 2011 creșterea economică a țărilor industrializate va fi doar de 2.4%, pe când în economiile emergente (China, India), aceasta va atinge valori de 6.5%.

A Stimulus-Driven U.S. Recovery Is under Way

Asia Is Staging a Vigorous and Balanced Recovery

Europe Is Facing an Uneven Recovery and Complex Policy Challenges

The CIS Economies Are Recovering at a Moderate Pace

Latin America and the Caribbean Are Recovering at a Robust Pace

The Middle East and North Africa Region Is Recovering at a Good Pace

Africa Is Coming through the Crisis Well

De aici.

Au vrut să fie indepedenți de „asupritorii” britanici. Au vrut să înlocuiască „God save the queen” cu imnuri tribale. După trei decade de independență, acum culeg ce-au semănat.

Zimbabwe e un caz tipic pentru decolonizările din a doua jumătate a secolului XX. Clișeul ideologic se cunoaște: popoarele exploatate, lumea a treia – „nealiniată” – luptând împotriva imperialismului feroce simbolizat de fostele puteri coloniale. Luptând și obținând mult-dorita independență.

Rezultatul: masacrararea a milioane de oameni nevinovați, sărăcie endemică, dictaturi față de care cea a lui Ceaușescu pare o farsă. Așa s-a întâmplat în Burma/Myanmar, Indoezia, așa s-a întâmplat în Rwanda, Congo/Zair, Zimbabwe și încă o duzină de „state” africane. Odată plecați imperialiștii, respectivele „popoare” au început să se măcelărească în războaie civile fără de sfârșit…

Dar sunt independeți, au steag, au imn, au un loc un Adunarea Generală a ONU (aceeași care-l aplauda pe Idi Amin).  Și, în cazul zimbabwez, îl au pe Mugabe.

Știu, a trecut 1 aprilie, dar tot mi se pare haios

PEAK-oil theorists, who claim that oil supplies cannot keep rising to meet global demand, have long been dismissed as scaremongers. But in one area they are being proven right. It is becoming clear that reserves of olive oil will peak in the coming decade, as climate change wipes out most of the groves in the Mediterranean, the main production zone. The likes of Turkey will struggle to make up supply. Russia, however, expects to profit handsomely: its steppes, freed of permafrost, will soon host vast olive groves; .a series of pipelines will send extra-virgin supplies westwards. Yet not all are happy. A Russian deal to pipe oil directly to Germany has caused dismay in central European countries that will be bypassed, potentially leaving salads undressed.

The Economist mai și glumește…

Din ciclul "marketing românesc de 2 bani”, dedicat celor cu adevărat imbecili:

De aici. Orice alte comentarii sunt de prisos:

Și așa arată bannerul lor de pe un blog oarecare, banner prin intermediul căruia am ajuns pe „site-ul mamă”:

Nu știu cum e mult-slăvitul curs de engleză, însă cu siguranță cei ce au însăilat respectiva afacere ar avea nevoie de un curs intensiv de limba română.

Conform World Trade Organization, Press Release 26 March 2010.

Câteva concluzii:

• comerțul mondial a înregistrat în 2009 cea mai mare scădere din ultimii 45 de ani, dar există semne de reviriment în 2010:

The 12% drop in the volume of world trade in 2009 was larger than most economists had predicted. This contraction also exceeded the WTO’s earlier forecast of a 10% decline. World trade volumes fell on three other occasions after 1965 (—0.2% in 2001, —2% in 1982, and —7% in 1975), but none of these episodes approached the magnitude of last year’s economic slide (Chart 1). Trade in current US dollar terms dropped even further than trade in volume terms (—23%), thanks in large part to falling prices of oil and other primary commodities.

Economists have suggested a number of reasons why trade declined so steeply, including the imposition of some of protectionist measures. But the consensus that has emerged centres on a sharp contraction in global demand as the primary cause. This was magnified by the product composition of the fall in demand, by the presence of global supply chains, and by the fact that the decline in trade was synchronized across countries and regions(1). The weakness in private sector demand was linked to the global recession triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. What began in the US financial sector soon spread to the real economy, with global repercussions. Limited availability of trade finance also played a role.

Evoluția prețului produselor primare (energie, metal, alimente) în ultimii 10 ani:

All countries and regions registered declines in the volume of their merchandise exports in 2009.

The United States (—13.9%), European Union (27) (—14.8%) and Japan (—24.9%) all registered declines larger than the world average of —12.2%, while the smallest declines were recorded by the oil exporting regions of Middle East (—4.9%), Africa (—5.6%) and South/Central America (—5.7%). Asia (—11.1%) and China (—10.5%) also saw their exports decline, but by slightly less than the world average. (Table 2)
The situation was reversed on the import side, where the two largest declining regions were oil exporters — the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (—20.2%) and South and Central America (—16.5%). Among the remaining countries, the United States (—16.5%) and the European Union (—14.5%) had declines greater than the world average, while Japan’s drop (—12.8%) was nearly equal to the world rate.

Cât despre viitor:

World trade and output are currently in a recovery phase. The fall in global output last year (—2.3%) was the first of its kind since the Great Depression in the 1920s and 30s, prompting strong fiscal and monetary policy responses from governments around the world.

Without any further upheavals in the global economy, world merchandise trade should resume its normal upward trajectory through the end of 2010, although some deviation from its previous trend line will persist indefinitely. The WTO Secretariat estimates that world exports in volume terms will grow by 9.5%, this year, while developed economies’ exports will expand 7.5% and the rest of the world (developing economies plus the Commonwealth of Independent States) will advance 11%. This projection assumes a resumption of global GDP growth in line with consensus estimates (2.9% at market exchange rates), as well as stability in oil prices and exchange rates. However, unexpectedly positive or negative economic news in the coming months could necessitate a revision of the trade forecast.

A 9.5% growth rate for trade is insufficient to bring about a return to pre-crisis levels this year, and even the 11% rate forecast for developing countries would not do the trick. However, two years of growth at this pace would result in trade levels surpassing the peaks of 2008. Developed economies, on the other hand, would require three years of growth to accomplish this.
These trade forecasts are more sensitive to changes in outcomes for developed countries than for developing ones, due to developed countries’ larger share of world trade.

Marele câștigător? China.

CHINA’S rise has long appeared inexorable. Despite a decline in total world trade, China has seen its exports fall less than those of other big powers. A new report by the World Trade Organisation calculates that the total value of merchandise exports fell by a staggering 23% in 2009. Among the top ten exporters, Japan’s shipments were worst affected (falling by 26%). Although China’s exports also fell (by 16%), the contraction was less painful than in Germany (down by 22%). As a result China is now the single largest exporter. (The Economist)