Double-digit growth has its downsides, in the form of inflation of 40%-plus and foreign currency reserves that cover no more than six weeks of imports.
Since 2004 the Ethiopian economy has enjoyed double-digit growth rates, but this success has come at the cost of rapid inflation and a steep fall in foreign currency reserves. Surging coffee prices have played a major role in spurring accelerated growth, while inflation is being largely driven by the steep rise in world food and oil prices. ...
AMERICANS have a remarkable talent for creating transparently pointless political rituals. The most pointless of all is the “spin room”. The first thing that journalism’s finest do after every debate is rush off, notebooks in hand, to a special room where the candidate’s surrogates brief them about how well their man (or woman) did. Dennis Kucinich is building up unstoppable momentum! Tom Tancredo has the Republican nomination in the bag! The spinmeisters manage to impart all this nonsense not just with a straight face but with a look of complete sincerity. ...
THE battle against the opium poppy in Afghanistan is not being won. Last year production reached another high of 8,200 tonnes, and a record 193,000 hectares of land were used for growing poppies. But the latest “Afghan Opium Survey” published by the UN on Tuesday August 26th gives some reasons for cheer. A combination of drought, higher wheat prices and stronger leadership by local governors will cause production to fall to 7,700 tonnes in 2008, and the land dedicated to poppy-growing will drop to 157,000 hectares. The global opium supply has outstripped demand in the past three years and prices have fallen accordingly. Attempts by big drug dealers to hold back some surplus to boost prices have had little luck.
JOURNALISTS moaned about China’s internet controls and thuggish police. Human-rights groups complained that it broke promises to allow protests. Spectators and residents alike grumbled about tight security and visa restrictions that kept people away from Beijing. But the Olympics earned more than enough praise to bolster China’s confidence in its ability to impress the world.
From the world’s biggest airport terminal, where the athletes and visitors arrived, to the colossal new “bird’s nest” stadium and the lavish opening and closing ceremonies involving thousands of costumed soldiers drilled to perfection, China wanted to inspire awe, and leave visitors and viewers alike impressed by the country’s grandeur, immensity and a national will to succeed. ...
Saudi Arabia opens its stockmarket, at last, to foreign investors. They are likely to take full advantage
The gradual process of opening the Saudi stockmarket to foreign investors has taken a significant step forward with the announcement that non-residents will be entitled to trade in local stocks through Saudi intermediaries. The news prompted an immediate rally in the market—which has lost ground so far this year—in apparent anticipation of a surge in foreign interest. That optimism is well-founded, as there is plenty of value to be found on the Saudi bourse, which is by far the largest in the Middle East by market capitalisation, and most of the big names in global equity investment have a presence in Riyadh.
The announcement from the Capital Market Authority (CMA) on August 20th stated that "authorised persons" (in other words local entities licensed by the CMA) may enter into swap agreements with non-resident foreign investors, both individual and corporate, to transfer the economic benefits of shares listed in the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul). Legal ownership of the shares will reside with the Saudi intermediary. ...
Pakistan's government splits; its probable next president, Asif Zardari, is said to be ill
ALWAYS incredible, Pakistan’s governing coalition sundered on Monday August 25th when its second biggest component, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) walked out. Nawaz Sharif, the PML(N)’s leader, objected, among other things, to Asif Zardari, who leads the coalition’s main member, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), making himself a candidate for a presidential election due on September 6th.
With its other smaller allies, the PPP-led government will not fold. And if Mr Zardari is elected president, with the dictatorial powers that the job confers, as seems likely, the government will look more solid. If so, Mr Zardari might be seen to have bested both Pervez Musharraf, the former president, who resigned on August 19th to escape impeachment, and Mr Sharif, leader of the PPP’s biggest rival. For a man who recently stepped into the shoes of his dead wife, Benazir Bhutto, the PPP’s murdered leader, and who is reported to have serious mental illnesses, this would be an Olympian achievement. ...
Having held the world's attention for the past 17 days, Beijing symbolically handed the Olympic flag to London in a closing ceremony on August 24th. As a sporting event the Games were a huge success—particularly for China, which topped the gold-medal table by a wide margin. But the government's success in achieving its political objectives was mixed.
Billed as China's "coming-out party", the Beijing Games were meant to burnish the country's image both at home and abroad by showcasing the country's remarkable achievements over the past three decades. There is little doubt that this message came across loud and clear domestically, helping to cement the loyalty of China's citizens. The popular legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party increasingly derives from its ability to deliver material prosperity and international prestige, and the Olympics showed that the regime is capable of marshalling extraordinary resources and determination—and that China commands international respect. Beijing's spectacular opening and closing ceremonies, state-of-the-art venues and flawlessly organised sporting events all underlined the country's extraordinarily rapid re-emergence as a great power. ...
More Americans are questioning the role of religion in politics
RELIGION has always played an important role in American politics. But a new survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that a narrow majority of Americans now think that churches and other religious organisations should keep quiet when it comes to social and political matters. Most notable is the sharp increase since 2004 in Republicans who believe that churches should keep out of politics. This shift in opinion may represent frustration and disillusionment among social conservatives rather than a genuine desire for a political system free of religious influence.
IT’S official: extracting oil from Canada’s vast deposits of bitumenous sand is unsustainable. So, at any rate, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) implicitly concluded when it ruled that Royal Dutch Shell was misleading the public by describing its tar-sands operation as “sustainable”.
WWF, the environmental NGO that lodged the complaint with the ASA, dislikes the tar sands (or oil sands, as Shell prefers to call them) because turning them into fuel consumes much more energy than refining crude oil does. If that energy is made by burning natural gas—as it is in all tar-sands projects at the moment—and so involves extra emissions of greenhouse gases, then the resulting fuel is two or three times as bad for the atmosphere as normal petrol or diesel. That is no good for the world’s climate, and so, in WWF’s view, unsustainable. ...
Unexpected frolics in a newly happy Yorkshire town
GREAT cold sheets of rain thump down on Castleford, but the doughty families out to enjoy what remains of the Yorkshire summer are undeterred. Pulling up the hood of my coat, I feel a bit envious of a toddler being zipped into the waterproof bubble around his buggy. He, on the other hand, is waging a furious campaign to be let out.
That’s the spirit. Castleford has been rained on long and hard in the last couple of decades, but it remains unstoppably brassy. The closure of most of the coal mines in West Yorkshire that used to support the place left a fifth of Castleford men unemployed during the worst part of the 1980s, and even now it is among the poorest parts of the country. ...
Olympic sports we would like to see at London 2012
THE Beijing Olympics may be over, but the long run-up to the London Olympics has begun. In 2012 baseball and softball will be dropped as Olympic events. Played by only a handful of countries, they join a long list of discontinued Olympic events. The 100m freestyle swim for sailors survived just one Olympics after being limited to sailors from the host country. If some other events are dropped—farewell to rhythmic gymnastics or synchronised swimming?—there might be space to bring back more unusual sports. Perhaps it is time again for live pigeon-shooting (in Trafalgar Square) or an old favourite, the tug-of-war.
The Democratic convention gets under way in Denver, Colorado
SHORT speeches at party conventions used to be taken as a lack of respect for delegates who had travelled from afar, according to Michael Beschloss, a political historian. The demands of television mean this is no longer the case. Speechifying is kept to a minimum; a small mercy for viewers witnessing the parade of Democratic Party apparatchiks and union leaders on stage at Denver’s Pepsi Centre.
A few speakers will be heard with intense care. Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, delivers the primetime address on Monday. Joe Biden, Mr Obama’s running mate, speaks on Wednesday about security policy. Pundits will study every word that Hillary Clinton utters in her slot on Tuesday night for indications of her commitment to Mr Obama’s victory. ...
Israel plans to release some 200 Palestinian prisoners, and other news
• THE Democratic Party begins its four-day national convention in Denver, Colorado, on Monday August 25th. Barack Obama, who will become the official nominee, will have his widely praised powers of speechmaking put to the test when he addresses a crowd of some 70,000 at a local stadium. A huge TV audience is expected to tune in, too. Mr Obama has failed to establish a lead in the polls over his ageing Republican rival, John McCain, although he remains the bookmakers' favourite to win. If he still lacks a lead in the polls after the convention, and after the announcement of Joe Biden as his running mate, doubts about the Democratic candidate's ability to appeal to ordinary voters may spread.
AS HEAD of the corporate-finance department of Goldman Sachs in London, Tim Bunting could boast that he had visited New Zealand three times without staying the night. But he found himself burnt out by his mid-thirties; he quit his job after attending 27 dinners on consecutive evenings. Fortunately, he retired quite wealthy, and decided to spend much of his time and money on his collection of cricket books. His collection soon became an obsession.
Cricket books, he says, account for one-half of all books written on all sports. He owns more than 25,000 of them—the largest collection of cricket books in the world—and he built a library in an old rectory in rural Hampshire to hold them. ...
LIKE much else about Barack Obama's campaign, his announcement of a running-made was unconventional. It came in the form of emails and text-messages released simultaneously to the tens of thousands of people who had signed up to receive them, at the distinctly unconventional hour of 3am Eastern time. “Dear [recipient's name], I have some important news that I want to make official”, read the message, purportedly sent by the candidate himself. “I've chosen Joe Biden to be my running-mate.”
After an entire week of press-teasing over the timing of the announcement, some might be forgiven for feeling slightly let down. Mr Biden, a six-term senator and head of the Senate foreign relations committee, was neither a surprise nor, for all his qualities, an especially exciting choice, as the selection of Hillary Clinton or Al Gore would have been. ...
