Greece and its international creditors are currently putting the final touches to a multi-billion euro bailout to keep the debt-stricken nation financially ...
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How the world sees Greece
Monday, August 10, 2015
UPDATE 1-IMF thinks Greece needs third bailout worth 90 bln euros- German daily
Greece Sees Bailout Within Reach as Germany Says Deal Desirable
Greece and its creditors closed in on a deal setting out the terms of a third bailout, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government signaled its ...
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Greek bailout causes EU, IMF rift
Athens' lenders are at loggerheads over whether or not to grant the debt-ridden nation a haircut. But is there more to the transatlantic tiff than a tempest in a tea pot? DW's Zhang Danhong dissects their differences.
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Pace of migrants trying to cross Mediterranean is getting FASTER
Tens of thousands of people have been making their way from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands in inflatable dinghies, overwhelming cash-strapped and understaffed authorities.
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Greece hopes to wrap up bailout negotiations
Greece laid out the hope Monday that intensive talks with international creditors over another financial lifeline for the country could be concluded this ...
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Greece hopes to finalise bailout deal in days
… chapter on bailout talks for Greece, which fought against austerity terms … a sovereign wealth fund in Greece designed to raise €50 billion … IMF believes Greece needs a bigger bailout worth €90 billion. Greek banks …
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Germans and Slovaks stand ready to scupper Greek deal
… ;temporary" eurozone exit for Greece during eleventh hour summit talks … ; • Greece needs mass debt relief now His comments came as Greece… .3pc annual contraction in May. Greek industrial production fell 4.5 …
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Greece urged to put 'quality before speed' in bailout negotiations
Germany has urged Greece and its creditors to put “quality before speed” as negotiators in Athens strive to finalise a bailout worth up to €86bn (£61bn) ...
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Handelsblatt reports 3rd bailout package to Greece will 90bln Euros
Some EU countries cautious over package
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EU markets optimistic on deal between Greece and creditors
Banks borrowed less money from ECB this week
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Study: Germany made €100bn profit on Greek crisis
What? I don’t believe it! Rea-lly? Germany made a 100 billion euro profit on Greek crisis? No, kidding? HA! And yes, so it is! A study conducted by a German Economic Institute has shown that every time investors got bad news about Greece, they rushed to Germany’s ‘safe haven’ with […]
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VUCIC: Serbian approach different than Tsipras’s
Belgrade, August 10, 2015/ Independent Balkan News Agency By Milos Mitrovic “The difference between Serbia and Greece is in the fact that our path for overcoming the crisis is completely different than Greek way. I know that sometimes I annoy my friend Tsipras”, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said. Serbia is the only South-Eastern European […]
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Puerto Rico – 'Greeks' of the Caribbean
The loss of tax perks and its status as a commonwealth are just two of many reasons for Puerto Rico's bankruptcy. The island is now hoping that the default will give it leverage to restructure its debt.
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Germany 'gained from Greek crisis'
The Greek debt crisis has saved the German government some €100bn in lower borrowing costs, a study finds.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.bbc.co.uk |
Greek policeman suspended for 'abusing migrant'
Police order inquiry into photographs posted on social media that portrayed "reprehensible actions" of policeman.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.aljazeera.com |
The Festival That Was Matwaala: South Asian Poets Celebrating Poetry and Love
Something extraordinary, even magical, happened in Austin, Texas over the weekend of Aug. 1-2. South Asian poets from different nations and around the country--and many local ones too--came at the invitation of Usha Akella--an indefatigable presence on the Austin poetry scene--to the inaugural South Asian Poets in the Diaspora Festival (aka Matwaala) without quite knowing what to expect. As the weekend progressed it went beyond a formal convocation to listen to poetry and became instead a celebration of the rarefied stuff that goes into making poetry. Matwaala is an appropriate name for the festival. I found this definition online: "Matwaala is literally Hindi for someone who is drunk, inebriated. But more than that the word is used in a transferred sense for someone who is a free spirit, someone who doesn't care for things, someone who does what he/she wishes to do." The word "junoon" is a close parallel in Urdu, implying delirium. And indeed, this was the tone dominating the festival, a spirit of freedom and liberation, sheer joy in the adventure that is poetry rather than worrying about its business aspects or feeling like one had to put on any kind of front. If you already feel accepted, then there is no need to put pressure on yourself. We started off Saturday morning--in a get-acquainted poetry jam session--at Austin Community College's delightful Rio Grande campus, under the auspices of Lyman Grant, who has taught there for close to forty years. We moved on to Usha's dream house--if you have a fantasy about a spacious abode that functions as a retreat, a safe haven, an artist's home par excellence with enormous wide-open sky blue space inside, then Usha's house is the one. Ravi Shankar reading at Austin Community College Here the Matwaala poets were made to feel very special--and I understood at last that this was not the typical conference where writers remain in their shell, straining to be heard above the din, but that we had already been heard, and were to be recognized and celebrated, which defined the complexion of the get-together not as competitive but relaxing. A number of poets and guests sang, performed poetry, and danced, making it the perfect tone-setter for our collective visit that evening to the very hospitable Raindrop Turkish House, where under the aegis of the Dialogue Institute we had another round of memorable poetry readings. Guner Arslan of the Austin Raindrop Turkish Center introducing the concept behind the Dialogue Institute Phinder Dulai reading at Raindrop Turkish House The next day's packed schedule took place at Casa de Luz, the quintessential Southwestern retreat/healing center, in the shadow of downtown--though it felt a million miles away. Here we presented a diverse range of papers (I'll get to the protagonists in a minute): Keki Daruwalla's on the distinction between a poetry of commitment versus a poetry of playfulness, Sasha Pramasad's on silence, Saleem Piradina's on the Bombay poetry revolution of the 1970s, Pramila Venkateswaran's on the representation of South Asians in the top journals and presses, and Ravi Shankar's on the concept of Bhakti in his forthcoming book. Some of the audience at Casa de Luz Each presenter was hilariously introduced by Usha's lovely daughter Anannya and her friend Rehana in hysterical limericks--Keki's went: "Too much easy rhyme we confess: Akella, Matwaala, Daruwaala, / While coming to the point, we'll mention he is an Oxford wallah, / Let's learn to do it better with Keki, / God forbid we mention that Englishman Shelley, / But it's cool to toast the Persians and Greeks in Fire Alta!"--and the sense of celebration and high spirits never left us, all the way through the violin recitation by the twelve-year-old virtuoso Kai Cole, to the rigorous exertions of the Natyalaya dance, presented by Vinitha Subramaniam, and concluding with Lebanese-American singer Julie Slim-Nassif's sweet Arabic and French songs. Anannya and Rehana introducing Sasha Parmasad at Casa de Luz As for the people of delirium, or matwaalas, let me briefly describe some of them, beginning with our keynote speaker and chief guest of honor. Keki Daruwalla is a Delhi-based author of many books of poetry and fiction. He is a Parsi (Zoroastrian), a member of a highly accomplished community that embodies a cosmopolitan outlook and traditions of tolerance and peacefulness because of their mercantile inheritance. Keki was an officer with the Indian Police Service, a director of India's RAW (Research and Intelligence Wing), and special adviser to the prime minister. He is worldly and gentlemanly, and kind and generous, in the way only larger-than-life figures who've earned their stateliness and grace can be: his is the meaningful life experience from which poets and writers ought to be made, and Keki has it--that charisma--in abundance. Yet this charisma is employed not in the service of making people think of him or his talent as something other than what it is, but to bring out the best in others. I've noted this characteristic in many great writers. Keki Daruwalla reading at Casa de Luz There was Saleem Peeradina who has taught at Sienna Heights University in Michigan for almost three decades, since he moved from Bombay. He was one of the figures responsible for bringing about the Bombay revolution: the rejection of outmoded romantic/sentimental tropes for a more realist, modernist poetry, of which Saleem--and others he mentioned in his talk--was one of the avatars. On the way to the airport on Monday, Keki and Pramila were talking about some of the important moments in the rise of Indian English poetry over the course of 45 years, since around 1970, a movement in which Keki was a central figure. Like Saleem, he mentioned poets like Nissim Ezekiel and Arun Kolatkar who are not familiar to me but about whom I now have an intense curiosity. Saleem Peeradina at Casa de Luz Saleem regaled us with his singing of ghazals and classic Indian songs at Usha's home after lunch on the first day, and we also heard Thom Worldpoet (now that I've heard this magnificent Austin bard, I understand why this appellation perfectly suits him). Thom Worldpoet at Usha's house Saleem's own student from the mid-1970s in Bombay, Pramila Venkateswaran (now poet laureate of Suffolk County, New York, and professor at Nassau Community College), whom Pramila credits with her own development as a poet, was present as well. Pramila came to the U.S. to do her PhD in literature in 1982, and in the last decade has published a spate of books. Pramila and I got a chance to interview each other for television--thanks, Farid Mohammadi!--and talk about the different phases of our writing over the years. Pramila is also an astute critic and her migration from one culture to another is surely responsible in large part for her ability to have a macro view of literature, to understand how things fit in context. Pramila Venkateswaran at Casa de Luz Ravi Shankar was also part of the festivities. He teaches at Central Connecticut State University and is founding editor of one of the earliest and best online literary journals, Drunken Boat. Ravi is a poet of well-developed aesthetic sensibilities, steeped in the canon, responding to the sound and flavor of others' investigations of art and poetry. He read mostly from his new book of ekphrastic and collaborationist poetry, What Else Could It Be, from Carolina Wren Press. Ravi is what we call a poet's poet, who takes the art very seriously. Then there was Phinder Dulai from Vancouver, British Columbia, an accomplished poet whose third book, dream/arteries, caused a stir at the festival. The book is about the fate of marooned Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu migrants on board the Japanese ship Komagata Maru, stranded in Vancouver harbor for two months in 1914 and eventually forced to return to India because exclusionary laws wouldn't permit their entry. The book is evocative of the statelessness many experience in the current iteration of globalization. Phinder's ability to give voice to the forgotten group of people on board that ship struck a chord in me, because I've had a similar project in mind, and I recognized that Phinder had totally nailed the voice(s) a book like this needs, he'd got the tone just right. It's exciting to see a poet take on, so successfully, some of the overdue challenges from the poetry that Ezra Pound instigated a hundred years ago. We all loved Sasha Parmasad, originally from Trinidad, who studied in New York and now teaches Transcendental Meditation in Iowa. Sasha's poems, and her paper at Casa de Luz, were about poetry and silence. Silence in poetry, or silence and poetry, have for me emerged in recent months as a recurrent issue in conversations with other poets. We all admired Sasha's honest vulnerability, her gentle soul, because if poetry cannot produce a soul one wants to be near to, then what is it for? Sasha Parmasad reading at Raindrop Turkish House I gave a talk on whether or not I think of myself as an immigrant poet (the answer, in the essay I'd originally written for an anthology just out from Black Lawrence Press, was largely no), and I was delighted to find that it was very much in tune with the preoccupations of many others at the festival. I admire immigrant writing that reaches for utopian ideals of justice and equality--as has been true of many Jewish writers of the diaspora--but I'm also aware of the trap the neoliberal culture industry sets by segregating different branches of writing into insular ghettos, cultural zones cordoned off from economic concerns. Anis Shivani reading at Casa de Luz We heard from rising poets like Shubh Bala Schiesser, Archana Vemulapalli, Debangana Banerjee, and Mamata Misra, full of confidence, each with their distinct, sweet presence, their pure expression of joy. Certain themes kept coming up again and again, as they are bound to during an event as intimate and provocative as this one. What is South Asian poetry, what is distinctive about it, and what does it mean to be a poet of the diaspora today? How do we write, who do we write for, how do we make our presence felt, and what are the compromises and reconciliations necessary to get established as a poet? What makes us happiest as poets, what experiences and what immersions, and how can we protect the flickering candle, always in danger of being smothered, that is poetry? What did it mean for us to get together in this way, and could we rise above our immediate interests to preserve something of lasting beauty? The release of Usha Akella's new book at Casa de Luz Dustin Pickering of Transcendent Zero Press introducing Usha Akella's new book at Casa de Luz This event felt important. I'm trying to understand why the feeling is so strong. Perhaps it was the sense of intimacy and kinship, and freedom from cant and one-upmanship. It is rare indeed to walk into a community that feels like one's ideal collective of listeners and readers, fellow poets who value the art above all and have each lived through the experience of making sacrifices to get to the point where we feel that the designation of "poet" is not entirely unearned. The Julie Slim band delighting the audience at Casa de Luz These poets were fun to be with, full of positive energy and vitality, immersed in the life of the mind, precisely the shape one hopes a new intellectual community will take. A lot of us read different kinds of love poetry during the course of the festival. Sometimes we spontaneously broke out in songs or recitations of classical poetry (for example, Keki reciting Faiz or Faraz, along with his own translations, or Ghalib), and this was apt, because it was a festival as much about love as about poetry, or rather, the foundations of poetry in love. That's what made it so different and possibly unrepeatable, though we will surely try to recapture some of the magic in the coming years. This was an event celebrating poetry for itself, and we understood, even as it was unfolding, how precious and rare this emphasis is. Anannya Akella reading at Casa de Luz Many of us are familiar with the exhaustion and loss of inspiration that are often part and parcel of writing conferences. We've all experienced it and promised ourselves not to go through it again. Well, this festival was the antithesis of all those feelings. I came away full of hope and energy and a certain confidence that my trials and tribulations hadn't been wasted, that they were necessary, indeed inevitable. The Matwaala poets after the conclusion of the festival at Usha's house Thank you, Matwaalas everywhere, whether or not you came to this festival, we are full of spirit, intuiting songs about to set us free. Many circles were tied and many circles let loose here, in a whirl whose beginning and end we don't know and don't want to know. Part of the Natyalaya dance to conclude the proceedings at Casa de Luz You can listen to complete audio of the second day's events here, courtesy of Hemant Bhagawatula, and view more pictures of the festival here and here, and watch more videos here. Anis Shivani is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, the most recent of which is the novel Karachi Raj, released this summer. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Austerity bites Portugal as much as Greece. Why no populist movement?
At the height of Portugal’s economic crisis, Fernando Fernandes was forced to close seven of the 10 clothing stores he spent his life building – working so hard he missed the birth of his first son. Recommended: Test your Iberia IQ: How much do you know about Spain and Portugal? Portugal is held up as the poster child of austerity that works, having successfully exited its bailout program last year.
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Wall St. rises on Berkshire deal, China stimulus hopes
(Reuters) - Wall Street was up more than 1 percent on Monday, bouncing back sharply from last week's steep lows, buoyed by optimism around China and Greece, and as Warren Buffett's latest billion-dollar deal showed the M&A boom was alive and well.
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Greek yogurt giant Chobani seeks new investors to fuel growth, report says
For the second time in two years, the Upstate New York-based Greek yogurt giant Chobani is seeking an investor to help it grow in an increasingly ...
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Timeline: What's Next in the Greek Crisis Saga
Greek officials are confident an agreement will be reached before Aug. 20, when Greece must pay 3.2 billion euros to the European Central Bank for ...
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Merkel aide cracks down on bailout rebels
A growing number of German conservatives oppose the Greek rescue package.
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China's massive economic advantage over the world is about to disappear
We have finally arrived at a point in history that economists have been dreading for years: The moment when the total number of Chinese workers goes into decline for the first time in decades. Since way before the 1990s, China has had one huge economic advantage over the rest of the world: Year after year, the number of people of working age increased. Economic growth is closely tied to the growth in your working population. Simply put, the more people you have working, the more wealth and wages you're likely to create. You can get these extra workers two ways: By getting pregnant or by letting immigrants come live with you. For over four decades, China's industrial revolution has been pulling in new workers year after year. But that demographic wave is coming to an end and now the total size of the workforce is about to go into decline, as this chart from Morgan Stanley chief Asia economist Chetan Ahya shows: This is going to be disastrous for China's economy. Suddenly, the country will have an increasing population of older people who don't work, and they must be supported by a decreasing population of people who do work. You can see the problem in this chart of China's population in 2010 broken down by age. Right now, that big bulge is in the years when people are their most productive at work. That bulge is about to retire and stop producing, and the only workers available to support them are the children in that narrow "neck" area at the bottom of the chart: The population timebomb could not have come at a worse time, because demand for China's exports has collapsed: In an attempt to get more growth out of declining fundamentals, China has been investing more and more in its businesses and government enterprises. But the more it invests, the more marginal are the returns, as these two charts from Morgan Stanley show: As demand collapses, there has been deflation in the producer price index (PPI inflation is a bit like regular consumer price inflation, except it's for business products and services). Unfortunately, all of this has occurred at a time when China has just taken on a ton of debt, as these two charts show: As we explained earlier, China's debt situation is about the same size as Greece's debt situation. China is more capable of dealing with that debt than Greece is. But it's still a massive overhang on an economy that that is slowing down now, and — because of the population issue — about to slow down even more. The scary part is that China's economy is so huge it functions as both an engine and a supply source for the economy of the rest of the world. These charts indicate that engine just went into reverse.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Chilling predictions for what the world will look like in a decade
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New Greek Bailout Deal Looms
The deal would funnel up to 86 billion dollars to Athens, allowing the Greek government to make a 3.4 billion dollar payment to the European Central ...
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EU approves €2.4 billion to handle migration
The funds will go to the countries hit hardest with migrants, including Italy and Greece.
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Optimism for new Greek bailout deal despite German misgivings
Debt-ridden Greece and its creditors appeared on track Monday to finalise the terms of a third bailout agreement despite the misgivings of EU paymaster Germany.
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European Commission Approves 473 Million Euros to Greece for Migration Crisis
The European Commission approved on Monday a 2.4-billion-euro program for 19 European Union countries that aims to provide solutions to the migration crisis. Greece will receive a total of 473 million euros from two distinct funds. 259,348,877 euros of Greece’s funds will come from the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) that deals with migrant and refugee reception
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Greek Govt Spokeswoman: ‘The Government Is Not Considering Elections’
The Greek government is not considering elections and talk of elections at this point is not useful, government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said in a statement on Monday. “Election talk, which is promoted in the past few days, is neither useful, nor does it reflect reality. At the center of the government planning is, at this time,
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Study: Greek Crisis Benefited Germany More than 100 Billion Euros
A new study by a German think tank revealed that Germany has gained more than 100 billion euros since 2010 due to the Greek crisis. “The debt crisis resulted in a reduction in German bund rates of about 300 basis points (BP), yielding interest savings of more than 100 billion euros (or more than 3% of
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Greece's third bailout deal in final stretch: gov't sources
Greece's marathon negotiations with international lenders to finalize the third Greek bailout deal in five years were in the final stretch on Monday and "white smoke" could emerge as soon as Tuesday morning, according to government sources.
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Germany benefits massively from Greek crisis: study
Germany received significant benefits from the Greek crisis in recent years, saving more than 100 billion euros (about 109.7 billion US dollars) in interest payments on its debts, a study found on Monday.
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ECB funding to Greek banks falls by 1.5 bln euros in July
Greek banks have relied on the so-called emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) from the Greek central bank since February after being cut off from the ...
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Greek Debt Crisis: Even If Greece Defaults, German Taxpayers Will Come Out Ahead, Says ...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble have largely rejected calls for Greek debt relief. Reuters/Axel Schmidt.
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Greece's Aid Addiction
Indeed, the succession of bailouts for Greece embodies many of the same pathologies that for decades have pervaded the development agenda ...
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Landing in Kos
Source: blogs.ft.com - Monday, August 10, 2015 Syrian refugee from Kobani holds two children as he jumps off a dinghy as they arrive at a beach on the Greek island of Kos, after crossing a part of the Aegean sea from Turkey, on MondayAll Related
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IMF believes Greece needs third bailout worth 90 billion euros
BERLIN (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) thinks Greece needs a third bailout worth around 90 billion euros ($98.9 billion), Germany's Handelsblatt reported on Monday, citing high-ranking EU diplomats. The paper said the IMF believed Greece's creditors needed to increase the size of the future bailout due to a recession in Greece. Up until now, it had been expected that Athens would receive up to 86 billion euros in fresh loans. (Reporting by Caroline Copley)
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Unbelievable 1,251% increase in illegal immigrants entering Greece! (infographic)
Majority from Syria come in from Turkey
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Reuters: 10bln Euros could be released for Greek banks before stress tests
Stress tests not completed before October
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EU OK’s 2.6B Euros For Migrant Crisis
Greece will get 473 million euros ($519.18 million) over six years from the European Union to help cope with endless waves of illegal immigrants. The post EU OK’s 2.6B Euros For Migrant Crisis appeared first on The National Herald.
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TILT! Germany lost the ball and demanded “Greece to solve its refugee problem first, before 3. bailout agreed”
In pinball, the term TILT stands for GAVE OVER! Germany lost the pinball and tilted. Berlin run out of ideas as to what preconditions it can ask from Greece to undermine or better ‘boycott’ the 3. bailout package. And it came with the total absurdity. It connected the Refugee’s problem […]
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EU grants 2.4 billion euros to boost migration programs
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is granting 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) to EU nations to upgrade their migration programs with the biggest sums going to Greece and Italy where thousands of refugees have arrived this year.
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How America's Global Financial System Blocks Development
NEW YORK -- The Third International Conference on Financing for Development recently convened in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The conference came at a time when developing countries and emerging markets have demonstrated their ability to absorb huge amounts of money productively. Indeed, the tasks that these countries are undertaking -- investing in infrastructure (roads, electricity, ports and much else), building cities that will one day be home to billions and moving toward a green economy -- are truly enormous. At the same time, there is no shortage of money waiting to be put to productive use. Just a few years ago, Ben Bernanke, then the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, talked about a global savings glut. And yet investment projects with high social returns were being starved of funds. That remains true today. The problem, then as now, is that the world's financial markets, meant to intermediate efficiently between savings and investment opportunities, instead misallocate capital and create risk. There is another irony. Most of the investment projects that the emerging world needs are long term, as are much of the available savings -- the trillions in retirement accounts, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. But our increasingly shortsighted financial markets stand between the two. Much has changed in the 13 years since the first International Conference on Financing for Development was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002. Back then, the G-7 dominated global economic policymaking; today, China is the world's largest economy (in purchasing-power-parity terms), with savings some 50 percent larger than that of the U.S. In 2002, Western financial institutions were thought to be wizards at managing risk and allocating capital; today, we see that they are wizards at market manipulation and other deceptive practices. Western financial institutions were thought to be wizards at managing risk and allocating capital; today, we see that they are wizards at market manipulation and other deceptive practices. Gone are the calls for the developed countries to live up to their commitment to give at least 0.7 percent of their GNI in development aid. A few northern European countries -- Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and most surprisingly, the United Kingdom -- in the midst of its self-inflicted austerity -- fulfilled their pledges in 2014. But the United States (which gave 0.19 percent of GNI in 2014) lags far, far behind. Today, developing countries and emerging markets say to the U.S. and others: If you will not live up to your promises, at least get out of the way and let us create an international architecture for a global economy that works for the poor, too. Not surprisingly, the existing hegemons, led by the U.S., are doing whatever they can to thwart such efforts. When China proposed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to help recycle some of the surfeit of global savings to where financing is badly needed, the U.S. sought to torpedo the effort. President Barack Obama's administration suffered a stinging (and highly embarrassing) defeat. The U.S. is also blocking the world's path toward an international rule of law for debt and finance. If bond markets, for example, are to work well, an orderly way of resolving cases of sovereign insolvency must be found. But today, there is no such way. Ukraine, Greece and Argentina are all examples of the failure of existing international arrangements. The vast majority of countries have called for the creation of a framework for sovereign-debt restructuring. The U.S. remains the major obstacle. Private investment is important, too. But the new investment provisions embedded in the trade agreements that the Obama administration is negotiating across both oceans imply that accompanying any such foreign direct investment comes a marked reduction in governments' abilities to regulate the environment, health, working conditions and even the economy. The U.S. stance concerning the most disputed part of the Addis Ababa conference was particularly disappointing. As developing countries and emerging markets open themselves to multinationals, it becomes increasingly important that they can tax these behemoths on the profits generated by the business that occurs within their borders. Apple, Google and General Electric have demonstrated a genius for avoiding taxes that exceeds what they employed in creating innovative products. All countries -- both developed and developing -- have been losing billions of dollars in tax revenues. Last year, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released information about Luxembourg's tax rulings that exposed the scale of tax avoidance and evasion. While a rich country like the U.S. arguably can afford the behavior described in the so-called Luxembourg Leaks, the poor cannot. While a rich country like the U.S. arguably can afford the behavior described in the so-called Luxembourg Leaks, the poor cannot. I was a member of an international commission, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, examining ways to reform the current tax system. In a report presented to the International Conference on Financing for Development, we unanimously agreed that the current system is broken, and that minor tweaks will not fix it. We proposed an alternative -- similar to the way corporations are taxed within the U.S., with profits allocated to each state on the basis of the economic activity occurring within state borders. The U.S. and other advanced countries have been pushing for much smaller changes, to be recommended by the OECD, the advanced countries' club. In other words, the countries from which the politically powerful tax evaders and avoiders come are supposed to design a system to reduce tax evasion. Our commission explains why the OECD reforms were at best tweaks in a fundamentally flawed system and were simply inadequate. Developing countries and emerging markets, led by India, argued that the proper forum for discussing such global issues was an already established group within the United Nations, the Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters, whose status and funding needed to be elevated. The U.S. strongly opposed: it wanted to keep things the same as in the past, with global governance by and for the advanced countries. New geopolitical realities demand new forms of global governance, with a greater voice for developing and emerging countries. The U.S. prevailed in Addis, but it also showed itself to be on the wrong side of history. © Project Syndicate -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Germany cautions on rushing into third bailout deal for Greece
A new bailout for Greece is a controversial issue in Germany, which is the country's largest creditor. Germany's Bundestag and several other European ...
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Lessons of ancient Greek democracy for the modern world
In an interesting recent article in Foreign Policy, Josiah Ober – a leading academic expert on ancient Greek democracy – argues that there is much we ...
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Greek Bank Stocks Spur Biggest Gains in Europe on Bailout Talks
An agreement would allow the Greek parliament to pass new reforms, if required, in the middle of the week and pave the way for a meeting of ...
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11 things about the Greece crisis to get caught up
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — If you’re just catching up to it, here are the latest developments in the Greek economic crisis — and what you need to know. 1) Greece is getting closer to securing its third international bailout. The 86 billion ($96 billion ...
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CommentDon't get too comfortable over Greece
He warns that Greece and its creditors will need to ward off "at least" three other major problems between now and the end of the calendar year.
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How Greece's Drama Helped Balance Germany's Books
BERLIN–Germany will make a profit from the eurozone debt crisis and saving Greece, even if Athens doesn't pay back its debt, according to a leading ...
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Greece, lenders in stretch run to to seal new bailout
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece and international creditors sought to put final touches on a multi-billion euro bailout accord on Monday to keep the country financially afloat and meet an important debt repayment to the European Central Bank within days.
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