Turning Lemonade into Pixx
Below is an article that my (newspaper), the Boston Globe, thought worthy of taking off the wire and putting in its July 6, 2008 issue. I give you the whole thing but the key points are related to the words I bolded. I provide my simple commentary parenthetically.
Questions on Group of 8's reach linger as summit nears
Poverty, soaring costs of food, fuel on agenda
By Linda Sieg, Reuters
TOYAKO, Japan - Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial nations will meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with a raft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to African poverty and global warming, but there are doubts about how much the annual diplomatic summit can achieve.
Officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United States will meet tomorrow through Wednesday at a luxury hotel in the lakeside resort of Toyako. They will be joined by the heads of other major economies, including China and India, and seven African states.
That makes this the largest such gathering since the event began more than three decades ago when the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, and Italy met at the Chateau de Rambouillet outside Paris in November 1975 to discuss the oil crisis and a world recession.
The themes sound familiar, but the scale of the summitry, which draws huge media coverage, countless activists, and sometimes violent protests, has some alleging that the event has got out of hand.
"The first summit was a very small affair. They got in a room, said they were facing a crisis, did a little horse trading, and came up with a plan," said Robert Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo.
"It has become something of a carnival . . . and got away from the original intent, which was to sit in a room together - the human side of negotiating and getting things done," Feldman said.
"It's unwieldy and it's not leading to a lot of results."
At the same time, the relative clout of the core group has shrunk.
The then-Group of Six accounted for about 48 percent of the world's gross domestic product in 1975, but by 2006 the Group of Eight's share had slipped to about 43 percent.
Over the same period, the share of five big emerging economies that call themselves the Group of Five - China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa - grew to 27 percent from 12 percent, measured by the purchasing power of their currencies.
(Bloggers Note: Then the Group of then-Six now-Eight has been fantastically successful in combating global poverty if wealth has been more globally distributed!! Do the Eight share the Nobel Peace Prize?)
One reason for higher food and fuel prices is growing demand from such emerging economies, making it hard for the G-8 alone to come up with solutions.
"The emerging markets have become a much more important part of total economic activity, but the monetary policies they are running are too easy. That is spurring inflation in these countries, and that tends to push up commodities prices," said Peter Morgan, chief Asian economist at HSBC in Hong Kong.
"In the 1970s it was the developed economies that were running too easy monetary policies, so they could address it. But now they are passive receptors of the inflation burst from emerging markets."
A Major Economies Meeting on Wednesday will bring together the G-8, the G-5, and Indonesia, South Korea, and Australia, which account for about 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.
The United Nations opened talks last year on a climate change agreement to replace the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States has not ratified, when it expires at the end of 2012. Negotiators face a deadline of December 2009, when some 190 nations will meet in Denmark.
President Bush is reluctant to sign on to targets to cut emissions without big developing countries such as China and India on board.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is among those who advocate formally expanding the G-8 to include China and others, although Japan for one is not keen to see its Asian rival join the group.
Sarkozy repeated the call for expansion yesterday in Paris.
"I think it is not reasonable to continue to meet as eight to solve the big questions of the world, forgetting China - 1 billion, 300 million people - and not inviting India - 1 billion people," he said.
The problems to be tackled have also become increasingly complex and intertwined, further limiting what G-8 leaders can do to solve them in three days of meetings and socializing.
At last year's summit in Germany, the leaders declared that the global economy was in "good condition."
Since then, oil costs have continued to rise and the US subprime mortgage crisis roiled credit markets and battered major financial firms.
Efforts to reduce dependence on oil and cut greenhouse gas emissions have led many countries, the United States in particular, to turn to biofuels. That has, in turn, helped push up food prices, (Bloggers Note: Where’s the praise from the environmentalists for President Bush?! Over nad over I read about rising food prices because of President Bush's push for increased biofuel usage yet I can find no praise from the liberal extremists.) as has rising demand from emerging countries and volatile weather that many attribute to climate change. (End of Reuters article.)
Below is an article that my (newspaper), the Boston Globe, thought worthy of taking off the wire and putting in its July 6, 2008 issue. I give you the whole thing but the key points are related to the words I bolded. I provide my simple commentary parenthetically.
Questions on Group of 8's reach linger as summit nears
Poverty, soaring costs of food, fuel on agenda
By Linda Sieg, Reuters
TOYAKO, Japan - Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial nations will meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with a raft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to African poverty and global warming, but there are doubts about how much the annual diplomatic summit can achieve.
Officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United States will meet tomorrow through Wednesday at a luxury hotel in the lakeside resort of Toyako. They will be joined by the heads of other major economies, including China and India, and seven African states.
That makes this the largest such gathering since the event began more than three decades ago when the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, and Italy met at the Chateau de Rambouillet outside Paris in November 1975 to discuss the oil crisis and a world recession.
The themes sound familiar, but the scale of the summitry, which draws huge media coverage, countless activists, and sometimes violent protests, has some alleging that the event has got out of hand.
"The first summit was a very small affair. They got in a room, said they were facing a crisis, did a little horse trading, and came up with a plan," said Robert Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo.
"It has become something of a carnival . . . and got away from the original intent, which was to sit in a room together - the human side of negotiating and getting things done," Feldman said.
"It's unwieldy and it's not leading to a lot of results."
At the same time, the relative clout of the core group has shrunk.
The then-Group of Six accounted for about 48 percent of the world's gross domestic product in 1975, but by 2006 the Group of Eight's share had slipped to about 43 percent.
Over the same period, the share of five big emerging economies that call themselves the Group of Five - China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa - grew to 27 percent from 12 percent, measured by the purchasing power of their currencies.
(Bloggers Note: Then the Group of then-Six now-Eight has been fantastically successful in combating global poverty if wealth has been more globally distributed!! Do the Eight share the Nobel Peace Prize?)
One reason for higher food and fuel prices is growing demand from such emerging economies, making it hard for the G-8 alone to come up with solutions.
"The emerging markets have become a much more important part of total economic activity, but the monetary policies they are running are too easy. That is spurring inflation in these countries, and that tends to push up commodities prices," said Peter Morgan, chief Asian economist at HSBC in Hong Kong.
"In the 1970s it was the developed economies that were running too easy monetary policies, so they could address it. But now they are passive receptors of the inflation burst from emerging markets."
A Major Economies Meeting on Wednesday will bring together the G-8, the G-5, and Indonesia, South Korea, and Australia, which account for about 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.
The United Nations opened talks last year on a climate change agreement to replace the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States has not ratified, when it expires at the end of 2012. Negotiators face a deadline of December 2009, when some 190 nations will meet in Denmark.
President Bush is reluctant to sign on to targets to cut emissions without big developing countries such as China and India on board.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is among those who advocate formally expanding the G-8 to include China and others, although Japan for one is not keen to see its Asian rival join the group.
Sarkozy repeated the call for expansion yesterday in Paris.
"I think it is not reasonable to continue to meet as eight to solve the big questions of the world, forgetting China - 1 billion, 300 million people - and not inviting India - 1 billion people," he said.
The problems to be tackled have also become increasingly complex and intertwined, further limiting what G-8 leaders can do to solve them in three days of meetings and socializing.
At last year's summit in Germany, the leaders declared that the global economy was in "good condition."
Since then, oil costs have continued to rise and the US subprime mortgage crisis roiled credit markets and battered major financial firms.
Efforts to reduce dependence on oil and cut greenhouse gas emissions have led many countries, the United States in particular, to turn to biofuels. That has, in turn, helped push up food prices, (Bloggers Note: Where’s the praise from the environmentalists for President Bush?! Over nad over I read about rising food prices because of President Bush's push for increased biofuel usage yet I can find no praise from the liberal extremists.) as has rising demand from emerging countries and volatile weather that many attribute to climate change. (End of Reuters article.)
posted by Zack at 8:20 PM
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