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| Home Front Economy |
| A daily round-up of economic news: |
| 2007-04-10 |
| American payrolls grew by more than expected in March. The number of jobs grew by 180,000, pushing the unemployment rate down to 4.4%. Markets abroad were perked up by the news. Bad news for the Democrats and good news for Bush? This is getting very downplayed in the MSM. Prices for farm produces are soaring, driven in part by demand for carbohydrates to manufacture ethanol fuel. This is good news for farmers in places like Latin America, who have seen their incomes grow in recent years thanks ot a global commodity boom, but bad news for consumers who are facing inflationary pressure--and hunger in some poor areas. This is the beef I have with trying to use food to make fuel. In a lot of these countries food is already costly to the really poor. It will only get worse. Food supplies for the very poor will get more scarce. America is considering bringing its issues with Chinese piracy of intellectual property in front of the WTO. This is likely to strain not only already fractious relations with China, but also the WTO, which has found IP issues particularly contentious with its increasingly militant members from the developing world. Russia says that major gas exporting nations do indeed plan on forming an OPEC-like cartel, although these rumours were earlier denied by Iran and Qatar. This could make world energy markets even more volatile than currently, though it's unlikely that a gas cartel would be able to exert OPEC-like levels of control. The Financial Times reports that the World Bank is about to undertake a significant overhaul of its activities, refocusing on more productive efforts. No more "loans" to the Palestinians or other high-risk clients? |
| Posted by:Deacon Blues |