1.

Romanian president praises countrymen for doing British jobs in attack on 'lazy Westerners' The president of Romania has publicly thanked the tens of thousands of his countrymen who do jobs in Britain instead of claiming benefits back home.In an extraordinary TV broadcast, Traian Basescu paid tribute to the two million Romanians who live and work abroad instead of claiming benefits at home. 'Imagine if the two million Romanians working in Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, came to ask for unemployment benefits in Romania,' he said. 'So to these people we have to thank them for what they are doing for Romania.' Reality check: Romanian President Traian Basescu has praised his countrymen for claiming benefits in EU countries like BritainAnd Mr Basescu blamed the boom in emigrant Romanian workers on lazy Westerners. 'In those countries, the social protection is at a level that makes it more comfortable to be unemployed.''Romanians do that hard labour for them and to earn better and make more money than they could at home,' claimed President Basescu.Romanians workers have flooded into Britain with other eastern European citizens after joining the EU following the collapse of Communism.When they they arrive the immigrants are immediately entitled to child benefit, Tax Credits and housing support.After 12 months in Britain they can receive generous income-related benefits like unemployment benefit.At home in Romania, they would receive just 20 a week for 12 months. Mr Basescu said Romania did not have enough jobs for its workforce: 'Romania comes in behind states like Italy and Spain. In those countries , their social protection is at a level that makes Italians and Spanish, for example, feel comfortable to stay unemployed rather than working in hard manual tasks.'Romanians do that hard labour for them to earn better and make more money than they could at home.'Fiona McEvoy of the Taxpayers' Alliance said: 'President Basescu has held a mirror up to our welfare culture and identified the lack of incentives to work that mean so many UK nationals pick welfare over work, and so many migrants flock here to cash in'.Mr Basescu's attack comes as Hungary gets set to hand passports to millions of people living outside the EU - raising the prospect of a new wave of immigration into Britain. From next year, Hungarys leaders will begin a huge passport giveaway to minority groups who have historic or ethnic ties to the East European country but live elsewhere. Most of the beneficiaries live in impoverished countries on the fringes of Europe. Once they are given a passport, they will be entitled to full access to the rest of the EU including Britain.Similar passport handout schemes - which are legal under EU laws - are under way in Romania and Bulgaria. Together, it is estimated the three countries could add nearly five million citizens to the continents population, at a time when it is struggling to bounce back from a deeply damaging recession and financial crisis. Although they have come control for Romanian and Bulgarian nationals, UK ministers are powerless to place restrictions on arrivals from Hungary. That means the potential impact on Britain of two million new Hungarian passports is much larger. Hungary was one of eight Eastern European nations which joined the EU in 2004. But Labour ministers, unlike their counterparts in Germany and Austria, rejected the option of imposing work permit controls that would have limited the numbers coming here. That led to an estimated one million arrivals from Eastern Europe despite predictions the number would be fewer than 20,000. The restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian nationals will expire in 2013 opening the door to the UK. Critics called for limits on the number of new passports member states could hand out to those living outside their borders. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch think-tank, said: The sheer scale of this risks getting out of hand. 'When we granted equal access to EU citizens we had no idea that member states would be dishing out passports to anybody they could think of that had some previous link to their countries. There has to be some limit to what member states are allowed to do in this respect. From January, Hungary intends to offer passports to millions of ethnic Hungarians living outside its borders. That includes 300,000 living in Serbia and 160,000 in the Ukraine, neither of which is a EU member.

2.Europe's dark secret. They might not like to admit it, but Europeans don't mind a bit of capitalism WHEN history comes to write the tale of the euro-zone crisis, the chief villains, if Europes leaders have any say, will be not dissembling Greeks or dithering Germans, but the financial markets. Traders subjected Greece to psychological terror, declared George Papandreou, its prime minister. They were making money on the back of the unhappiness of the people, lamented Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the single market. The crisis was blamed on wolf-pack markets (Anders Borg, Swedens finance minister), cynical hedge funds, cocky credit-ratings agencies, neoconservative capitalism (Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, Spains prime minister), a duplicitous Anglo-Saxon press (Mr Zapatero again), and other wicked forces still.Not all Europeans demonise the market. Ex-communist Europe, which only recently threw off the command economy, is less hostile. So are the Germans, with their smallbusiness Mittelstand and consensual labour relations. Elsewhere, though, market-aversion seems to go deeper than mere disapproval of extravagant stock options or bonuses (which is common to marketfriendly Britain and America too). Fully 29% of Spaniards and Italians, and 43% of the French, told a global poll last October that free-market capitalism was fatally flawed. Only 13% of Americans shared that view. Nowhere is contempt for free enterprise, and its linked evils of wealth and profits, more intense than in France. Nicolas Sarkozy has declared laissez-faire capitalism finished. Almost alone in Europe, France imposes a yearly fortune tax on most biggish assets. In literature and philosophy, from Molire and Balzac to Sartre, the French have denounced the corrupting power of money, and ridiculed the grasping nouveau riche. Todays bosses, always cigar-chomping, are subject to satire, scorn and even bossnapping. Communists, Trotskyites and the New Anti-Capitalist Party are treated not as curiosities, but serious talk-show guests. Why is France such an outlier? It could be Catholic guilt, or lingering Marxism (economics textbooks teach pupils about the conflict between capital and labour). It may be the enduring romance of revolutionary rebellion, or the creedor at least mythof equality. Whatever its cause, suspicion of wealth is one reason that Mr Sarkozy is in trouble over his partys links to Frances richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, the LOral heiress. The same reflex may even inhibit Dominique StraussKahn, boss of the IMF and the Socialists most competent leader, from running for the presidency in 2012: he is damaged by his big pay packet and the link to Washington money. Elsewhere, material success is readily admiredbillionaires are applauded (and envied), bosses are acclaimed, self-made men celebrated, writes Alain Duhamel, a French political commentator. In France, not at all. Wealth embodies evil, money the devil.Perhaps, however, it is time to let the French, as well as other corners of marketaverse Europe, in on a dark secret. The truth is that theirs is a capitalist society. For while Europes leaders rail against profits and wealth, its firms stride into new markets and rack up giant profits. Spains Inditex dresses men and women in Zara outfits in 76 countries. Belgiums Anheuser-Busch InBev, which makes Budweiser, is the worlds leading brewer. France boasts more Fortune 500 companies than Germany. A French company, Sodexo, is chief caterer to the American marine corps. Such firms strut unapologetically into China, India and Brazil, vaunting their sales-driven, consumer-centric mission to achieve worldclass efficiency. And (whisper it) they also create the riches that the French, Belgians, Spanish, Greeks and others say they despise (but are happy to redistribute). Fitch, one of the global credit-ratings agencies denounced by Mr Sarkozy, may have its headquarters in New York, but, via a holding company called Fimalac, is actually French-owned. Does all this matter? Up to a point, corporate profit-seeking and political profit-denunciation can rub along together. The French seem to have no trouble filling up their shopping trolleys with American-branded washing powder or cheap plastic swimming pools made in China, selected from a vast choice stacked in hangar-like suburban hypermarkets. They like the low prices global competition brings them, just not the profits their supermarkets make. Mr Sarkozy can declare that he will not accept French carmakers building their products in low-cost European countries in order to sell them in France. But, thanks to the European single market, Renault continues to do so.The reason that all this does matter is that France is supplying so many of the new ideas for the European Union. Whether these concern an economic government for the euro zone, tax harmonisation, environmental border tariffs or what Mr Barnier calls a more humane, social Europe, these tend to drag the whole EU project disproportionately to the left. The worry in Brussels is that when French leaders pander to French fears about unfair competition, they are undermining the principle of the single market. Or that when they call for economic government, they mean imposing costly social rules on all. Everybody knows that Mr Sarkozy often makes more noise than trouble. But with Europe suffering high unemployment, low growth and belt-tightening austerity, the danger is that such talk slides into growth-choking regulation, if not outright protectionism. At best, too much meddling in markets will condemn Europe to gentle decline. At worst, it will undermine the capitalist enterprises on which its prosperity and social model depend. A few years ago, an ambitious centre-right French politician seemed to agree. For 25 years, France has never

stopped discouraging initiative and punishing success, he said. Preventing the most dynamic from getting rich has by consequence impoverished all the others. His name? Nicolas Sarkozy. 3. Foreign exchange. No francs THE latest print edition of The Economist features a look at the difficulties that face economies with too-strong currencies: Switzerland is blessed with a commodity prized more than iron ore or soyabeans in uncertain times: safety. As a haven currency, the franc strengthens when American share prices weaken, bond prices rise or the currency markets wobble, according to Angelo Ranaldo of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Paul Sderlind of the University of St Gallen. It rose by 3% against the dollar within two hours of the first plane hitting the World Trade Centre ten years ago... In August the SNB said that the massive overvaluation of the franc poses a threat to the development of the economy. It proceeded to weaken the currency by greatly expanding the money supply and promising to take further measures if necessary. Some suggest the Swiss ought to announce a peg to the euro or engineer a negative nominal interest rate. Today, the Swiss National Bank did just that, announcing in a strongly worded statement that it would no longer tolerate an exchange rate against the euro below 1.20 Swiss francs. In early August, the france rose to near parity with the euro, driving Swiss exporters to despair. The Swiss central bank released a statement designed to remove any doubt about its intentions, noting: The SNB will enforce this minimum rate with the utmost determination and is prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities. The move has thrown markets for a loop. The franc quickly fell back to 1.20, and European exchanges reversed early gains. The action has also sparked two interesting, and intense, debates. One concerns whether the Swiss National Bank's promise is credible. FT alphaville quotes a foreign exchange analysis suggesting that the peg is likely to stick. As the SNB says in its statement, 1.20 is still a high value for the franc, which means that intervention is likely pushing the currency toward its fundamental value rather than away from it. More importantly, Swiss inflation is dropping, which means that SNB intervention will be useful in fighting a disinflationary threat. It's much easier for a central bank to hold a peg when its currency sales aren't feeding an existing inflation problem. The other debate centres on whether this interventionand others like itare healthy for a stricken global economy. Buttonwood has called similar such interventions "passing the deflationary parcel". Stuck with a rising currency and a corresponding fall in foreign demand for its products, a country intervenes in foreign exchange markets, selling its currency and buying others, thereby forcing appreciation onto another country, which must deal with the problem of falling export demand. Paul Krugman has voiced similar concerns about the Chinese dollar peg, arguing that in an environment of insufficient global growth, the peg amounts to hoarding of demand.Whether or not such interventions are harmful to the global economy depends on the reaction of other governments. The Swiss are printing money to buy euros in order to bring down the value of the franc and raise the value of the euro. What will the European Central Bank do? If it sits on its hands, the net effect of the policy on the euro-zone economy will be mildly deflationary and mildly contractionary. But what if the ECB were to respond in kind? If it printed euros to buy francs, then it could prevent a currency appreciation, denying Switzerland the benefits of devaluation. The net effect of the policy would nonetheless be beneficial, thanks to the expansionary impact of money printing in the euro zone and Switzerland. The foreign exchange game is a wash, but both economies get a sorely needed monetary boost. This is basically what occurred when countries left the gold standard during the 1930s. The aim may have been to capture an economic boost through devaluation, but the most beneficial effect was the freeing of monetary

policy.But what if the intervening foreign government sterilises its purchases, as in the Chinese case? Central banks can still print money, taxing the foreign government's ability to sterilise until it relents, and in the meantime supporting the domestic economy. Alternatively, a government in this position can use the free loans provided by the intervening foreign government to directly stimulate the economy, through fiscal spending and investment.In other words, the effect of a policy like the SNB's can be deflationary and harmful, but only if foreign governments stand by instead of counteracting the deflationary impact with expansionary moves of their own. What the SNB's move ought to highlight is the extent to which governments and central banks across the rich world have failed to provide appropriate support to their domestic economies.

4. Europe's Europe crisis. Insiders and outsiders IF THE European Central Banker were printing money like newspapers print columns proposing solutions to the euro-zone crisis, Europe might finally face some of that dangerous inflation Jean-Claude Trichet keeps warning us about. There is no shortage of ideas for ways out of this mess. Some solutions are elegant, some rely on brute force, but solutions do exist. What a booming business in euro-solutions hasn't managed to accomplish is an implementation strategy; however clever the policy proposals, euro-zone governments have been reluctant to act at all, to say nothing of boldly, unless pushed to the brink by markets.It's possible that the cycle of brinksmanship will move the euro zone step-by-step toward a sustainable union, and that the bickering and dithering is primarily about negotiation over the allocation of the costs of this process. I'm not sure that's right, however.Europe's leaders know what they'll have to do to stabilise the situation. The key question now is: what is the set of euro-zone countries consistent with the political will to save the currency area? Europeans in Europe's core will share a currency with "outsider" countries, but they won't fight to save them. So who are the outsiders? Who has to go to convince core voters that the cost of saving the euro zone is worth bearing?Greece is likely to be a necessary victim. Some argue that the whole of southern Europe will need to exit. German business leader Hans-Olaf Henkel argued in the Financial Times that a tiny union consisting of Austria, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands would prove sustainable. A key question concerns whether Italy must go. Yesterday, a colleague of mine argued that the European core understood that their economies were sufficiently tied up with Italy's as to make an Italian departure untenable. And obviously, one must consider the impact of an Italian default on the North's large holdings of Italian debt.But this is the key question, I think. With which countries do core voters sufficiently identify themselves as to make a large, ongoing commitment acceptable? Answer that, and you probably have a good idea how this mess will end. 5. Greek banks. Dance of the dead. Banks in Greece are banding together. Even that may not save them NAVIGATING Greeces banks through the shoals of economic crisis is a labour worthy of Heracles. With merely mortal powers, the executives running the countrys biggest banks have not done too bad a job. They entered the crisis with relatively prudent balance-sheets and several raised capital earlier this year, when markets were more forgiving. They are also starting to band together to cut costs and plump up their capital cushions.On August 29th investors cheered the merger of the countrys second- and third-largest banks, Eurobank EFG and Alphabank, to form what will be Greeces biggest. They also managed to secure a promise of an investment from Qatar and announced plans to issue shares to raise capital.The news prompted a sharp rally in Greek banking shares, which jumped by almost 30% as investors forecast more mergers. Although the euphoria was ephemeral shares fell the following daythe deal may do something to help stabilise an embattled financial system.The big advantages of the deal are that it will allow the banks to cut costs, mainly by trimming their branch network, and thus to improve capital ratios. Executives say that within three years the merged bank will reduce its

annual costs by 650m ($936m). That would be enough to restore it to profitability if there were no further write-downs on its holdings of Greek government bonds.Yet talk of profitability looks ambitious given the bleak economic outlook. The two banks posted an alarming rise in bad loans during the first half of the year. Executives say things have improved since, but the trend will not go properly into reverse as long as the Greek economy keeps contracting. Deposits have been flowing out of the system, in part because Greeks are running down their savings to make ends meet. That bodes ill for loan losses, too.The risk of a big shock still looms as well. There are worries about whether enough holders of Greek government bonds will take part in the privatesector bail-out package agreed in July for it to take effect. This week the interest rate on one-year government bonds surged to 60%, suggesting that many investors think a default is imminent. Despite their best efforts, Greek banks still risk being swamped.

6.German politics. The ties that don't bond EUROBONDS" are the idea that won't go away in Berlin. Officially the government dismisses the idea of mutual bonds guaranteed by all members of the euro zone as not the right way to address the crisis in the currency area. At her meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris earlier this week Angela Merkel, the chancellor, ruled them out for now. But behind the scenes a rift is opening up in her coalition.The two junior parties, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), reject the idea. Philipp Rsler (pictured above with Mrs Merkel), the economy minister and FDP chairman, and Guido Westerwelle, the foreign minister and Mr Rsler's predecessor as party chairman, say that mutualising the euro zone's debt would create a transfer union that would remove the incentive for indebted countries to tighten their finances.But some members of Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the biggest party in the coalition and the sister party of the CSU, are quietly saying that Eurobonds should at least be debated in the Bundestag. Moreover, say some, with the European Central Bank buying billions of euros of Italian and Spanish government bonds, the transfer union is already here.The problem for Mrs Merkel is that nothing she has done so far has shaken off speculation that something drastic will need to be done to preserve the euro, and soon. At their meeting this week she and Mr Sarkozy made a number of proposals to shore up the markets: strengthening euro-zone "economic government" (Mr Sarkozy's favourite phrase), encouraging countries to write laws mandating balanced budgets, introducing a financial-transaction tax and harmonising corporate tax.All were well meant, but together they don't amount to much. Markets tend to put a net present value on expectations, and lurking somewhere is a prediction that Eurobonds will come.Yet in Berlin, some speculate that the issue could drive the coalition apart. The biggest victim of a split could be the FDP, languishing in the opinion polls. The CDU/CSU union might find it prudent to abandon ship. Yet there appears to be no stomach for early elections, so Mrs Merkel may attempt to build a grand coalition with the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), which has warmer feelings towards Eurobonds.After its previous stint in a grand coalition with Mrs Merkel, the SPD lost badly in 2009's general election. But the feeling that there is a crisis to manage could prove overwhelming. Peer Steinbrck, an effective finance minister during the 2008 crisis, could be persuaded to take the helm again.Each twist and turn of the euro crisis has been more worrying than the last. If this pattern continues, Eurobonds are likely to stay at the top of everyone's minds. Mrs Merkel may have a fight on her hands to keep her coalition together. 7. Government and business in China. Privatisation with Chinese characteristics. The hidden costs of state capitalism AFTER a deadly high-speed train crash in Zhejiang province in July, the authorities sent bulldozers to bury the wreckage. The crash was an embarrassment; a reminder that Chinas state-directed rush to modernise has involved cut corners, shoddy safety standards and a staggering amount of corruption. That contradicted the official storyline, in which China has become the worlds second-largest economy thanks to the Communist

Partys wise guidance. Rather than grapple with awkward counter-evidence, the party tried to bury it.No wonder it is so hard to judge Chinas state-led economic model. The governments actions lie hidden beneath hundreds of tonnes of secrecy, and beyond easy measurement. But as our briefing this week makes clear, Chinas semi-privatised companies are both more varied and less admirable than is popularly understood. Under Mao, it was simple. The government controlled everything and ran it into the ground. Those days are gone. Since 1993 Beijing has encouraged gaizhi for state-owned enterprises, which means changing the system. Between 1995 and 2001 the number of state-owned and state-controlled enterprises fell by nearly twothirds, from 1.2m to 468,000, and the proportion of urban workers employed in the state sector fell by nearly half, from 59% to 32%. Yet gaizhi is not simply a euphemism for privatisation; it has also created a variety of public-private hybrids.At one end of the spectrum are the giant state-controlled enterprises in industries which the government considers strategic, such as banking, telecoms or transport. Such firms may have sold minority stakes to private investors, but they operate more or less like government ministries. Examples include China Construction Bank, a huge backer of infrastructure projects, and China Mobile, a big mobilephone carrier.Next come the joint ventures between private (often foreign) companies and Chinese statebacked entities. Typically, the foreign firm brings technology and its Chinese partner provides access to the Chinese market. Joint ventures are common in fields such as carmaking, logistics and agriculture.A third group of firms appears to be fully private, in that the government owns no direct stake in them. Their bosses are not political appointees, and they are rewarded for commercial success rather than meeting political goals. But they are still subject to frequent meddling. If they are favoured, state-controlled banks will provide them with cheap loans and bureaucrats will nobble their foreign competitors. Such meddling is common in areas such as energy and the internet.A fourth flavour of Chinese firm is fuelled by investment by local government, often through municipally owned venture-capital or private-equity funds. These funds typically back businesses that dabble in clean tech or hire locals.These firms with their various sorts of state influence have several strengths. They invest patiently, unruffled by the short-term demands of the stockmarket. They help the government pursue its long-term goals, such as finding alternatives to fossil fuels. They build the roads, bridges, dams, ports and railways that China needs to sustain its rapid economic growth.But statism has big costs, too. The first is corruption. When local bigwigs can award contracts to firms which they themselves control, graft spreads like bird flu. Sometimes well-connected shell firms take a fat cut and then pass the real work on to subcontractors, with scant regard for standards. The second problem is that big state-backed enterprises crowd out small entrepreneurial ones. They gobble up capital that Chinas genuinely private firms could use far more efficiently, amassing bad debts that will eventually cause China big trouble. They rig the game in other ways, too, enjoying privileged access to land and permits. Small private firms are often unsure whether what they do is even legal. The rise of local-government venture funds creates yet more opportunities for abuse. Some of these funds will invest wisely, but many will pursue non-commercial goals, from job creation to crony enrichment.None of this has stopped China from growing at a dizzying pace. But the quality of growth matters too, as the middle-class protesters in Zhejiang indicate (see article). Chinas leaders should beware the hidden costs of state capitalism.

8. Doing business in Brazil. Rio or So Paulo?.For the first time in decades, Brazils Marvellous City looks attractive for business LAST year Paulo Rezende, a Brazilian private-equity investor, and two partners decided to set up a fund investing in suppliers to oil and gas companies. Although this industry is centred on Rio de Janeiro, Brazils second-largest city, with its huge offshore oilfieldsand fabulous beaches, dramatic scenery and outdoor lifestylethey instead established the Brasil Oil and Gas Fund 430km (270 miles) away, in So Paulos concrete sprawl. Even though it means flying to Rio once or twice a week, Mr Rezende, like many other businesspeople, decided that So Paulos economic heft outweighed Rios charms. But the choice is harder than it used to be.For many years, So Paulo has been the place for multinationals to open a Brazil office. It may be less glamorous

than Rio, as the two cities nicknames suggest: Rio is Cidade Maravilhosa (the Marvellous City); So Paulo is Cidade da Garoa (the City of Drizzle). But as Mr Rezende sadly concluded: So Paulo is the financial centre, and thats where the money is.Edilson Camara of Egon Zehnder International, an executive-search firm, does 12 searches in So Paulo for each one in Rio. The biggest mistake, he reckons, is for firms to let future expatriates visit Rio at all. They are seduced by the scenery and lifestyle, and its a move they can sell to their families. But many have ended up moving their office to So Paulo a couple of years later, with all the upheaval that entails.From a hamlet founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1554, So Paulo grew on coffee in the 19th century, industry in the first half of the 20thand then on the misfortunes of Rio, once Brazils capital and its richest, biggest city. The federal government abandoned Rio for the newly built Braslia in 1960, starting a halfcentury of decline. Misgoverned by politicians and fought over by drug gangs and corrupt police, Rio became dangerous, even by Brazilian standards. The exodus gained pace as businesses and the rich fled, mostly for So Paulo.Now, though, there are signs that the cost-benefit calculation is shifting. So Paulos economy has done well in Brazils recent boom years and it is still much bigger, but Rios is growing faster, boosted by oil discoveries and winning its bid to host the 2016 Olympics (see table). Last year Rio received $7.3 billion in foreign direct investmentseven times more than the year before, and more than twice as much as So Paulo. Prime office rents in Rio are now higher than anywhere else in the Americas, north or south, according to Cushman and Wakefield, a property consultancy.Community-policing projects are taming its infamous favelas, or shantytowns: its murder rate, though still very high at 26 per 100,000 people per year (2.5 times So Paulos), is at last falling. Brazils soaring real is pricing expats paid in foreign currencies out of So Paulos classy restaurants and shopping malls; Rios recipe of sun, sea and samba is still free. Even Hollywood seems to be on Rios side: an eponymous animation, with its lush depictions of rainforest and carnival, is one of the years highest-grossing films.Rios mayor, Eduardo Paes, has big plans for capitalising on the citys magic moment. He has set up a business-development agency, Rio Negcios, to market the city, help businesspeople find investment opportunities, and advise on paperwork and tax breaks. It concentrates on sectors where it reckons Rio has an edge: tourism, energy, infrastructure and creative industries such as fashion and film. A couple of years ago, foreign businessmen would come to Rio and ask what we had to offer, says Mr Paes. We had no answer. Now we roll out the red carpet.The political balance between the two cities has changed too. In the 1990s So Paulo was more influential and better run: it is the stronghold of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), the national party of government from 1995 to 2002. Now the PSDB is in its third term of opposition in Braslia, and though it still governs So Paulo state, it is weakened by internal feuds. In Rio, by contrast, the political stars are aligned. The state governor, Srgio Cabral, campaigned tirelessly for the current president, Dilma Rousseffand received his reward when police actions in an unruly favela late last year were backed up by federal forces.So Paulos socioeconomic segregation, long part of its appeal to expats, is starting to look like less of an advantage. Most of its nicer bits are clustered together, allowing rich paulistanos to ignore the vast favelas on the periphery. In Rio, selective blindness is harder with favelas perched on hilltops overlooking all the best neighbourhoods. But proximity seems to be teaching well-off cariocas that abandonment is no solution for poverty and violence. Community policing and urban-renewal schemes are bringing safety and public services. Chapu Mangueira and Babilnia, twin favelas a 20-minute uphill scramble from Copacabana beach, are being rebuilt, with a clinic, nursery and a 24-hour police presence. The price of nearby apartments has soared. Other slums are also getting similar make-overs.Rios Olympic preparations include extending its metro and building lots of dedicated bus lanes, including one linking the international airport to the city centre. By 2016, predicts City Hall, half of all journeys in the city will be by high-quality public transport, up from 16% today. So Paulos metro extensions are years behind schedule, and the city is grinding towards gridlock. Its plans to link the city centre to its main international airport (recently voted Latin Americas most-hated by business travellers) rely on a grandiose federal high-speed train project, bidding for which was recently postponed for the third time.Rio is still unpredictably dangerous, and decades of poor infrastructure maintenance have left their mark. Its mobile-phone and electricity networks are outage-prone; the lngua negra (black tongue, a sudden overflow of water and sewage) is a staple of the rainy season;

exploding manholes, caused by subterranean gas leaks, are a hazard all year round. All in all, still not an easy choice for a multinationalbut it is no longer foolish to let prospective expats fly down to Rio to take a look.

9. Perus new government. Mining and the man. A calm start for Humala AFTER narrowly winning a divisive presidential election, Ollanta Humala has got off to an unexpectedly calm start as Perus president. A former army officer without any government experience, he has moved quickly to implement some of his campaign promises: his government has negotiated a new tax on mining companies and pushed through a law requiring that local communities be consulted before mining and oil and gas projects can go ahead. But Mr Humala and his prime minister, Salomn Lerner, have also stressed that they will stick to responsible economic policies and that change will be gradual. That has disarmed some of their opponentsfor the moment at least.Mr Lerner, a businessman, told Perus new Congress last month that he had struck an agreement with mining companies under which they will pay an additional tax on profits totalling around $1 billion a year over the next five years. The details have not yet been spelt out. But negotiators have said that some of the money will go into a fund that mining companies can spend on projects in the communities where they operate. There will also be changes to the way that royalties are charged.Mr Lerner said that the new tax will not jeopardise planned investment of $30 billion over the next five years. Mining companies, which include many multinationals, expressed relief that the tax was not heavier, and said that Peru would remain competitive with Chile as an investment destination. But since the new tax replaces a more or less voluntary contribution paid to local governments, implementation of the change may throw up problems.So may the new law requiring prior consultation with indigenous communities over extractive projects on their land. Long debated, this measure will bring Peru into line with the International Labour Organisations convention on indigenous peoples, which the country ratified in 1993. The government hopes the law will reduce the number of social conflicts involving mining and hydrocarbons.Bizarrely, officials say that consultations will be organised by the culture ministry, which Mr Humala has entrusted to a singer. They will not be binding. The risk is that the whole process raises expectations that are not met, says Cynthia Sanborn, a political scientist at Limas Pacfico University. Environmental lawyers say the new law will only work if the government sets out clear guidelines on who will be consulted about what.Mr Humala also says he will personally lead efforts to cut crime and improve security, matters of widespread public concern. But his critics worry that to do so he is relying too much on his army friends. The government swiftly got itself into a muddle over drugs policy. An official announced that it would halt eradication of coca (the raw material for cocaine), which is increasingly being cultivated, only for Mr Humala to countermand him days later.While the previous president, Alan Garca, hogged the headlines, constantly presenting plans and inaugurating public works, Mr Humala has closeted himself in the presidential palace, issuing occasional Tweets. That suggests a man who is learning on the job.

10.Brazils economy. Changing direction. Fiscal tightening, monetary loosening ON AUGUST 31st Brazils monetary-policy committee decided to cut the Central Banks benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point, to 12%. It was the committees most unpredictable meeting for many months. Just a week earlier, analysts were split between those who pointed to inflation at 7.1%, above the 6.5% ceiling of the banks target, as reason to expect another risethe years sixthand those who felt that turmoil abroad and a cooling economy at home were reason to expect the committee to stay its hand.But on August 29th the calculations changed. The president, Dilma Rousseff, said that because tax receipts this year had been higher than expected, an extra 10 billion reais ($6.25 billion) would be set aside to pay interest on public debt. Later that day the finance minister, Guido Mantega, spelt out the implications for monetary policy. Raising the primary fiscal surplus (from 3.1% to about 3.4% of GDP) would open up space to cut rates, he said, whenever the Central Bank thinks it is possible. But analysts were still surprised by the speed and scale of the banks reaction.The timing of Mr Mantegas announcementthe day before the monetary policy committee started its

deliberationsraised some eyebrows. Though in recent years the Central Bank has been largely free to set interest rates without government interference, it is not formally independent. The banks governor, Alexandre Tombini, is closer to the finance ministry than was his predecessor, Henrique Meirelles.

Others welcomed better co-ordination between monetary and fiscal policy. The increase in the primary surplus came from higher tax revenues and cuts in investment, points out Marcelo Carvalho of BNP Paribas, rather than by reining in day-to-day spending as would have been preferable. But it was still an indication that the government wants to improve Brazils policy mix. For years the economy has been run with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake, he says, with the government increasing spending and the Central Bank raising interest rates in response (see chart).If fiscal rectitude leads to lower interest rates, that could allow spending to fall still further. Though Brazils stock of public debt is not particularly high, the steep interest rates on government bonds mean debt-service payments are 6% of GDP, higher than in any other G20 country.The decision to start loosening monetary policy was influenced, too, by a worsening economic outlook abroad and at home. Figures published on August 31st showed industrial output rose by an anaemic 0.5% in July, after a bigger fall the previous month. A strong currency has exposed domestic manufacturers to fierce competition from imports. In June the IMF cut its forecast for Brazils economic growth by around half a percentage point for each of 2011 and 2012 (to 4.1% and 3.6% respectively), a sharper revision than for anywhere else except earthquake-hit Japan. It now thinks Brazil will grow less than most other emerging economies.Inflationary pressures, however, remain strong. A promised rise in the minimum wage next year of 7.5% in real terms will put pressure on government spending, since state pensions must rise in line. Consumer demand is still strong and unemployment at a record low. The first in a series of wage negotiations widely used as benchmarks by other unions ended on August 27th with metalworkers in So Paulo winning a 10% wage increase. Brazils Central Bank faces a tricky balancing act for some time to come.

11. Oil in Russia. Exxonerated. Where BP failed, Exxon succeeds FOR BP it could hardly have been worse. On August 30th Exxon Mobil struck a deal with Rosneft to explore the same icy blocks of the Arctic Kara Sea that slipped from BPs grasp when its vaunted tie-up with the Russian state-controlled oil firm collapsed in the spring. Then things did get worse: the next day, one of BPs Moscow offices was raided by bailiffs.The deal is a triumph for Exxon, giving it access to one of oils richest frontiers, with none of the nasty add-ons that tripped up BP. The British firms proposed link with Rosneft would have meant giving the Russian firm 5% of its shares, an arrangement that BPs existing Russian partner, AAR, objected to. AAR took legal action and successfully blocked the deal.Exxon, in contrast, is neither swapping shares nor violating any previous agreement. It has pledged to spend $2.2 billion exploring the potentially oilrich Kara and $1 billion prospecting in the Black Sea. In return, it will allow Rosneft to take minority stakes in its deep-water projects in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in Texas.If all goes well, Exxons total investment in Russian Arctic oil could run into hundreds of billions of dollars over a decadea figure Russias prime minister, Vladimir Putin, at a ceremony to launch the deal, described as scary to utter. Whether such terrifying sums materialise will depend partly on the financial terms of Arctic exploration and the Kremlins flexibility over the tax status of the project. These are yet to be decided.Yet Exxons plans already look more promising than BPs did. When announcing that proposal, Bob Dudley, BPs boss, trumpeted his knowledge of Russian politics. In fact it was BPs misjudgment of Russian politics and corporate culture that did for the deal. Mr Dudley wrongly believed that getting into bed with a powerful Kremlin firm would cow his existing oligarch partners. Having now alienated both, BP appears to have little protection against being pushed around in Russiaas the raid on

its offices may suggest.To Exxons great advantage, its deal is more important to Russia, which desperately needs foreign investment and expertise in its oil industry, than it is for Exxon, the worlds biggest private oil firm. Rosnefts share price jumped 8% after the announcement. (It also jumped 8% the previous day in the local market, suggesting insider dealing.) Exxons shareholders were less giddy, perhaps reflecting on the pitfalls of doing business in Russia.They have experienced them. In 2003 Exxon considered buying a large stake in Yukos, then Russias largest oil firm. Yet shortly after Lee Raymond, Exxons chief executive, flew to Moscow to negotiate the deal with Mr Putin, Yukoss main shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested, Yukos was dismantled and its assets were swallowed by Rosneft.That outrage could yet cast a shadow over the Exxon deal in America, where politicians continue to condemn the Kremlin over it. Indeed, this may be one reason why Igor Sechin, Mr Putins right-hand man, who oversaw the destruction of Yukos and the Exxon deal, has kept away from America. But American oil firms are a different matter: as Exxon has shown, so long as you sit on colossal oil reserves, they will always be happy to do business. 12.Toyota le d ultimatum furnizorilor: scad preurile sau sunt nlocuii

Toyota le-a spus furnizorilor din Japonia s reduc preurile pieselor, n caz contrar urmnd s fie nlocuii cu ali productori de piese de peste hotare, n contextul n care yenul se apreciaz, au dezvluit patru persoane implicate n discuii.Toyota pierde 34 miliarde yeni (443 milioane dolari) profit operaional pentru fiecare apreciere de 1 yen a monedei japoneze n faa dolarului. Din acest motiv, productorul auto japonez vrea s scad costurile, unor furnizori cerndu-le chiar i costuri sczute la jumate, pentru a compensa aprecierea yenului. Toyota le-a cerut scderea preurilor celor 219 mari furnizori pe care i are n Japonia, n cadrul unei
ntlniri de la sfritul lunii august. Purttorul de cuvnt al productorului auto a refuzat s comenteze pe marginea acestui subiect, informeaz Autonews.Yen-ul s-a apreciat la un nivel record, ajungnd n august la 75,95 yeni/dolar. De la nceputul acestui an fiscal, de la 1 aprilie, cursul mediu a fost de 79,54 yeni/dolar, fa de 88,68 yeni/dolar n aceeai perioad a anului trecut. 13. Belgia, luat n vizor de ageniile de rating. Datoria public n 2010 96,9% din PIB Agenia Moody's a avertizat c ar putea retrograda ratingul Belgiei din cauza cheltuielilor pentru susinerea financiar a grupului franco-belgian Dexa, conform Reuters.Agenia a pus sub supraveghere ratingul Aa1 al Belgiei i ar putea s l revizuiasc. Moody's s-a alturat, astfel, ageniilor Standard&Poor's i Fitch, care au pus calificativele Belgiei sub supraveghere, cu perspectiv negativ.Ageniile au artat c lipsa unui guvern nvestit submineaz eforturile de echilibrare a bugetului n Belgia, ar care se confrunt cu serioase probleme din punct de vedere al datoriilor.Dexia, ale crui aciuni au sczut cu 42% n ultimele zile, este pe cale de a fi divizat de Belgia i Frana, din cauza expunerii masive la datoriile Greciei i a dificultilor de a se finana.Belgia va suporta probabil costul naionalizrii operaiunilor bancare belgiene ale Dexia, dar i partea sa de garanii pentru activele neperformante ale bncii.Belgia nu are guvern de la alegerile parlamentare din iunie 2010. Datoriile sectorului public au fost anul trecut de 96,9% din PIB. Astfel, Belgia s-a clasat pe locul trei n zona euro, ntr-un top nefast al datoriilor, la egalitate cu Irlanda i n urma Greciei i Italiei.Guvernul interimar al Belgiei vrea s limiteze deficitul bugetar din acest an la 3,3% din PIB iar anul viitor la 2,8%. 14. Merkel: Intrarea Greciei n incapacitate de plat ar distruge ncrederea n Europa

A permite intrarea Greciei n incapacitate de plat ar nsemna distrugerea ncrederii investitorilor n zona euro i ar putea declana un efect de contagiune similar celui propagat n 2008 de falimentul Lehman Brothers, avertizeaz cancelarul german Angela Merkel."Trebuie s lum msuri pe care le putem controla", a subliniat cancelarul german Angela Merkel, fcnd o paralel ntre situaia Greciei i cea a Lehman Brothers, al crui faliment a dus la declanarea crizei financiare globale. "Nu putem s distrugem la jumtatea drumului ncrederea tuturor investitorilor i s ajungem ntr-o situaie n care acetia ar spune c dac am fcut asta pentru Grecia, vom face acelai lucru pentru Spania, Belgia sau orice alt ar. Atunci, nimeni nu va mai investi n Europa", a declarat Merkel, citat de Reuters. ntr-un interviu cu privire la criza din zona euro,
cancelarul german a afirmat c se bazeaz pe analiza Fondului Monetar Internaional cnd evalueaz modul n

care trebuie abordate problemele Greciei. Aadar, ct timp FMI este convins c datoria de stat a Greciei este sustenabil, Merkel va susine aceast poziie, a artat ea. 15. Transferul de generaii n multinaionale: Vor reui tinerii din era Facebook & iPhone s conduc afaceri cu tradiie de zeci de ani? n civa ani fotoliile actualilor CEO din marile multinaionale vor fi ocupate de tinerii manageri care fac parte din generaia Y, adic de ctre angajaii pentru care modelul de carier este Steve Jobs i care intr pe Facebook nainte de a-i verifica e-mail-ul atunci cnd ajung dimineaa la birou. Diferenele de mentalitate dintre cele dou generaii aflate la un moment de cotitur fac subiectul unor ample dezbateri n rndul oamenilor de HR, care ntmpin adesea dificulti n a nelege care sunt cele mai bune metode de a motiva i de a ndeplini ateptrile managerilor de astzi, dar i pe cele ale viitorilor manageri. Angajaii din generaia Y (nscui dup

1980) sunt caracterizai prin faptul c au crescut n era noilor tehnologii, dein tot felul de gadgeturi i sunt inventivi, le place s lucreze n echip i i uimesc uneori efii cu rapiditatea rezultatelor pe care le livreaz, vor salarii mari, peste media pieei, se plictisesc uor la job i se ateapt la promovri rapide. La polul opus stau angajaii din generaia X, care au vrste cuprinse ntre 40 i 50 de ani, prefer s lucreze mai mult individual dect n echip (consider c se descurc i singuri), nu iau o decizie pn cnd nu analizeaz toate riscurile pe care le implic i se ghideaz dup modelul promovat de prinii lor, care petreceau mult timp n fabric sau la birou i care aveau un job stabil."Generaia X este generaia cu cheia de gt, o generaie independent, dar i sceptic. Generaia Y sau generaia Net este plin de speran i cu mare determinare, care vrea totul rapid, acum i aici, orientat pe acum. Generaia X funcioneaz exact pe dos, uor, dar sigur, gndim pe termen lung, planificm. n esen, aceste dou generaii nu se prea plac.Cei mai deschii exponeni ai generaiei X neleg diferenele dintre generaia lor i generaia Y i acioneaz n sensul dezvoltrii i reteniei n companii a tinerilor", este de prere Mihaela Perianu, managing partner n cadrul cadrul companiei cu activiti n domeniul resurselor umane AIMS Executive Search & Consulting.Mihai Matyas, 54 de ani, executivul care a fost director general i vicepreedinte pe investiii i dezvoltare al mbuteliatorului Quadrant Amroq-Beverages (QAB), actualul Pepsi Americas, admite c managerii tineri vor, accept i sunt deschii noilor provocri, c au realizri deosebite i livreaz rezultate rapide."Am observat c n ultimii ani s-a schimbat percepia n ceea ce privete motivarea, pentru c dac nainte un manager primea bonus de performan o dat pe an, n prezent tinerii vor motivaii semestrial sau trimestrial. E o schimbare de viziune a echipei manageriale, exist o dinamicitate a mediului informaional i a joburilor pe care nainte nu o aveau. Cred c i timpul petrecut n aceeai companie se scurteaz i de aceea motivarea pe termen lung e mai puin relevant dect cea pe termen scurt. ns eu cred c este esenial pentru retenia angajatului o mbinare ntre motivarea pe termen lung i cea pe termen scurt", spune Matyas, care este n prezent directorul general al La Fntna, cel mai mare mbuteliator local de ap n watercoolere (sisteme de rcire-nclzire) i care conduce o echip de manageri cu vrsta medie cuprins ntre 36 i 38 de ani. Matyas se numr printre managerii din prima linie formai n QAB care au optat pentru plecarea din companie dup integrarea acesteia n Pepsi Americas. El recunoate totui c firmele pe care le-a condus au fost ntotdeauna dinamice i au oferit proiecte noi angajailor."Exist diferene ntre managerii vechi cei pe care i-am avut eu - i cei tineri, n sensul c cei vechi erau mai calzi, iar cei tineri erau mai reci, adic aplic strict regulile de business. Cei vechi au crescut n comunism, acionau mai mult dup feeling, prin prisma unor preconcepii sociale, ei nu aveau cunotine de management bine structurate. Ei aveau ns acea component subiectiv a managementului", precizeaz Matyas.n opinia lui Ionu Balintoni, managing partner n cadrul companiei Qualia, cu activiti n domeniile executive search, evaluare de personal i analiz organizaional, rolul managerilor din generaia X este de a-i ndruma, iniia i acompania pe managerii din generaia Y, ns fr s le "taie aripile"."Feedback-ul constructiv n locul criticilor demotivante, ntlnirile informale n locul edinelor plictisitoare, discuiile deschise despre aspecte critice ale proiectelor n locul schimburilor de e-mail-uri pot fi cteva metode. Astfel poate fi realizat transferul de informaii i de experien de la un X la un Y. Interaciunea dintre generaii este benefic, iar nevoia companiilor de a-i asigura succesori pentru urmtorii ani este vital. Este necesar s fie creat un echilibru ntre nvatul la locul de munc - learning on the job, mentoring i nvatul n sala de curs n cadrul programelor de training", explic Balintoni.Mihaela Perianu de la Aims este de prere c armonizarea celor dou generaii este destul de complicat i de aceea unele companii ofer programe de mentorat pentru generaia Y, job- rotation o dat la 1 an i 8 luni (pentru c

dup maximum 2 ani un Y se plictisete ngrozitor), program flexibil de munc i multe cursuri."n esen, managerul din generaia X poate motiva un Y doar dac l nelege. Stilul de management preferat de generaia Y este cel bazat pe comunicare i colaborare. Managerul trebuie s fie onest, deschis, s ofere on the job coaching, s ofere sfaturi pentru planificarea carierei, s dea ansa generaiei Y de a contribui cu idei i s fie ct mai apropiai de ei (nu formali, relaie de tip ef-subaltern. Generaia Y urte ierarhia)", a spus Perianu.Cu alte cuvinte, dac angajaii generaiei Y vor un job interesant, dinamic i provocator n fiecare zi, angajaii care formeaz generaia X vor un loc de munc stabil i un management n care s poat avea ncredere. Din acest punct de vedere, un angajator atractiv pentru generaia Y este o companie care se implic n proiecte sociale (cum ar fi campaniile de Corporate Social Responsibility) sau care este activ n social media."Generaia Y vrea s promoveze rapid, dar nu din dorina de efie, ci din dorina de a nva rapid ct mai mult. Se plictisesc repede i este bine ca atunci cnd i angajezi s tii c dac vrei s performeze, trebuie s le asiguri provocri, feedback frecvent i autentic i s ai rbdare pentru a le fi mentor", mai explic Perianu.Managerii din generaia X pot manifesta o anumit rigiditate dat de caracteristicile perioadei n care s-au dezvoltat sau din cauza sistemului, iar aceste caracteristici s-au transmis i la nivel individual."S nu uitm ca aceste concepte, generaia X, Y etc. provin din SUA, iar contextul respectiv nu se aplic 100% i pe plan local. n timp ce generaia X s-a dezvoltat n SUA n perioada capitalist, generaia X din Romnia s-a dezvoltat n sistemul comunist, un sistem rigid, de uniformizare, n care toi trebuia s fie egali (nu era ncurajat iniiativa, libertatea de cuvnt etc.), ceea ce mpiedica dezvoltarea aptitudinilor de leadership. Un exemplu n acest sens a fost desfiinarea Facultii de Psihologie n 1977, pe motiv de discriminare", adaug Balintoni.Specialitii spun c motivaia financiar a generaiei Y este s fac bani pentru hobby-uri, pe cnd generaia X vrea bani pentru cas i familie. De aceea, angajaii din generaia X a crescut fr pretenii de tipul teambuilding-urilor n America i/sau mese de pingpong la birou i din acest motiv accept greu dorinele generaiei Y de a beneficia de astfel de faciliti - camera de relaxare, competiii sportive, camera Wii etc."Generaia X consider c generaia Y este prea rsfat i cu prea multe pretenii, dar sunt industrii n care marjele de profit se fac cu ajutorul generaiei Y i atunci nelegerea i acomodarea lor este esenial. Baby Boomers au fost singura generaie child centric, ei se neleg foarte bine cu generaia Y. Boomerii erau i ei ca arhetip ca generaia Y, respectiv o generaie idealist", mai adaug Perianu de la Aims. Ea crede c arhetipul generaiei X este independena, iar arhetipul generaiei Y este plin de speran. Generaia Y prefer s lucreze n echipe, s mprteasc i dorina lor de afiliere este foarte mare."Din acest punct de vedere, generaia X are de nvat de la generaia Y. Noi, cei din generaia X, putem nva de la generaia Y foarte multe. Mai mult optimism (vs. abordarea sceptic), lucrul n echip, curajul de a iei din status-quo", spune Perianu.Generaia Y a crescut, a nvat i s-a dezvoltat folosind internetul, gadget-urile i interacionnd cu persoane att n mediul real, ct i n cel virtual, cptnd abilitii de socializare mult mai dezvoltate dect cei din generaia X. Dac cei din generaia Y pot nva de la managerii X rigoarea, stabilitatea i aprofundarea, reprezentanii generaiei X pot mprumuta de la cei din generaia Y curajul i ndrzneala."Managerii din generaia X au multe de nvat de la generaia Y n materie de comunicare personal i dezinvoltur, nu neaprat n ceea ce privete lucrul n echip. De multe ori, generaia Y este foarte individualist, pentru c Internetul, jocurile pe computer i limbajul specific mediului virtual i in departe de socializarea fa n fa", mai spune Balintoni.Industria IT& C este o industrie potrivit pentru generaia Y, pentru c este dinamic, inovatoare i are nevoie de o industrie dinamic, inovatoare, care are nevoie de talentul generaiei Y n tehnologie."Armonizarea celor dou generaii i diminuarea prpastiei dintre cele ele se poate face n dou moduri: prin nelegerea i respectarea diferenelor dintre ele i prin nvarea unui stil de comunicare pe gustul fiecrei generaii", conchide Perianu.
Generaia X (1964 - 1978) Au un job stabil, lucreaz de mult timp n aceeai companie Au o abordare sceptic Au viziune pe termen lung, le place s aib totul bine planificat Prefer s lucreze individual dect n echip; sunt obinuii s se descurce i singuri Particip la multe edine i nu iau o decizie pn cnd nu sunt siguri de toate efectele ei Au exemplul prinilor, care petreceau mult timp n fabric sau la birou Sunt dezamgii de faptul c nu mai au timp pentru viaa personal

Generaia Y (1979 - 1990) Cunosctori ai tehnologiei: au iPhone i iPad, folosesc Facebook i Twitter i schimb des jobul, sunt oportuniti tiu s lucreze n echip i de aceea livreaz rezultate bune n timp scurt Vneaz salarii mari, cer 1.000 de euro la angajare Sunt ncreztori n forele proprii i se plictisesc repede Vor s fie promovai rapid, vor program flexibil Merg la traininguri n strintate, au sli de billiard/ping pong/fusball la locul de munc Vor feedback pozitiv de la manageri, iau decizii rapide Sunt entuziati i comunic uor; folosirea unui limbaj precum cel de pe reelele de socializare cu managerii arat c se consider egali cu superiorii 16. Ministerele codae risc s piard fondurile de la UE Janusz Lewandowski, comisarul european pentru Buget, crede c Romnia trebuie s devin mai credibil pe plan extern Leonard Orban, noul ministru nsrcinat cu atragerea de fonduri europene, va propune realocarea banilor de la ministerele care au o rat mic de absorbie ctre altele cu rate mai mari. Janusz Lewandowski, comisarul european pentru Buget, i Leonard Orban susin redirecionarea fondurilor ctre ministerele harnice. Elena Udrea a cerut deja bani de la ali minitri.Ministerele codae la absorbia de fonduri europene ar putea rmne fr finanarea nerambursabil de la UE, iar banii s fie redirecionai ctre alte ministere mai harnice, cu rate mai mari de accesare a fondurilor. Leonard Orban, noul ministru pentru Afaceri Europene, al crui obiectiv este majorarea gradului de absorbie al Romniei, a declarat ieri c va propune realocarea banilor acolo unde pot fi cheltuii". De aceeai prere este i Janusz Lewandowski, comisarul european pentru Planificare Financiar i Buget, care a declarat c trebuie s se discute despre redirecionarea fondurilor, iar calitatea cheltuielilor trebuie mbuntit pentru a reduce risipa".Declaraiile lui Orban au venit la numai cteva minute dup ce Elena Udrea, ministrul Dezvoltrii Regionale i Turismului, a declarat c a solicitat aplicarea acestei msuri. Trebuie s avem n vedere nevoia Romniei de a aduce aceti bani n ar. tiu c exist orgolii, dar trebuie s urmrim interesul rii i s ducem banii care se pare c nu pot fi folosii acolo unde este nevoie de ei i se pot cheltui imediat", a declarat Udrea, prezent la o dezbatere pe teme economice, la care au participat i Orban i Lewandowski. ntrebat dac sprijin propunerea, Orban a declarat: Nu doar c o susin, ci o voi propune". Udrea a adugat c ar fi mulumit dac ministerul pe care l conduce va primi prin realocare de la celelalte ministere un miliard de euro. Orban a precizat ns c o astfel de decizie va fi luat doar pe baza unor analize amnunite. Propunerea ar urma s fie naintat Guvernului spre aprobare i, dup aceea, s fie trimis Comisiei Europene, fr al crei aviz msura nu poate fi introdus. Orban a avertizat ns c nu trebuie s ne ateptm la creterea semnificativ a ratei de absorbie n viitorul apropiat, singura int naintat de acesta fiind aducerea gradului la 20% pn la sfritul lui 2012. Pn n noiembrie, plile pe tot ce nseamn programe care sunt legate de achiziiile publice sunt ntrerupte pe baza unei decizii a prii romne, n ideea de a schimba mecanismul de funcionare a sistemului de achiziii publice", a anunat ieri Orban, preciznd c acest lucru va determina o mbuntire minim, limitat a gradului de absorbie". Tot sistemul de achiziii publice va trebui s fie reacreditat", a adugat ministrul. Potrivit lui Orban, n ciuda gradului redus al absorbiei de fonduri europene, Romnia iese pe plus" n ceea ce privete contribuia la UE i fondurile atrase efectiv. De la nceputul lui ianuarie 2007 i pn la sfritul lui iunie 2011, balana - diferena dintre fondurile pe care le-a primit Romnia i sumele pe care le-a vrsat la bugetul UE - este favorabil, la peste 4,9 miliarde de euro. n niciun caz Romnia nu este un contributor net la bugetul UE", a spus Orban. Cu toate acestea, Lewandowski a atras atenia c balana este pozitiv doar att timp ct se iau n calcul i subveniile directe acordate fermierilor. Eu cred c balana pozitiv nu este datorit utilizrii fondurilor din coeziune, ci datorit fondurilor care vin n Romnia pentru fermieri, prin intermediul plilor directe i a fondurilor de dezvoltare rural care au crescut anul acesta", a declarat comisarul European. Dacian Ciolo, comisarul european pentru Agricultur, a propus limitarea subveniilor directe la hectar (limitarea pe suprafa, nu n termeni nominali), astfel nct marii latinfundiari s nu mai ia subvenii n valoare de mii de euro, a declarat ministrul Afacerilor Europene, Leonard Orban. Ministerele Economiei i Mediului sunt codae la absorbia de fonduri de la Uniunea European, acestea neatingndu-i parametrii fixai pentru primele ase luni ale acestui an, reiese din analiza realizat n august de comitetul interministerial pentru monitorizarea absorbiei fondurilor. Minitrii de resort au invocat problemele de ordin tehnic cu care s-au confruntat n procesul de utilizare a fondurilor.

17. Tot mai multe credite ajung n restan

Valoarea cumulat a ratelor nepltite la timp de populaiei companii a depit 20 miliarde de lei (4,7 mld. euro) la sfritul lunii august, ceea ce reprezint 9,3% din stocul total al creditelor, potrivit datelor BNR. Valoarea cumulat a restanelor la credite - n lei i valut - a urcat cu 36% n luna august fa de aceeai perioad din 2010. Creditele n lei, n cea mai mare parte finanri de consum fr garanii, le dau cele mai mari emoii bancherilor, ponderea ratelor restante pe acest segment depind 11%. Totui, dac la nceputul crizei cel mai rapid avans era nregistrat de creditele n lei, n ultimele luni ntrzierile la plata mprumuturilor n valut au accelerat mai puternic. n cazul restanelor la valut creterea a fost de peste 50% n ultimul an. ntrzierile la rambursarea creditelor n valut echivalau cu 11 miliarde lei (2,6 mld. euro), n timp ce valoarea cumulat a restanelor la lei era de 9 miliarde lei. Potrivit unor informaii transmise de BNR la jumtatea lunii septembrie,
n totalul creditelor mari (de peste 5.000 de euro) restanele nsumeaz abia 4% din totalul creditelor. Cele mai multe restane sunt la creditele mici (sub 5.000 de euro) unde restanele au o pondere de 40 la sut din total. BNR a dat asigurri c, n momentul de fa, creditele neperformante din sistemul bancar romnesc sunt acoperite n proporie de 96 la sut cu provizioane. Iar dac lum n calcul i garaniile colaterale, gradul de acoperire depete 100 la sut.Maximul creditelor neperformante ar putea s fie atins n acest an, ns exist o serie de factori, precum gradul mare de ndatorare a populaiei i eficiena moderat a procesului de restructurare, care menin presiunea asupra portofoliilor de credite, potrivit Raportului asupra Stabilitii Financiare publicat de BNR.Perspectivele privind evoluia ratei de neperforman sunt mixte. Pe de o parte, revenirea economic i posibilitatea recuperrii venitului disponibil diminuat, temperarea semnificativ a ritmului de cretere a restanelor, diminuarea numrului debitorilor care dein credite mai mari de 20.000 lei i care au nregistrat pentru prima dat ntrzieri la plat de peste 90 de zile i mbuntirea ratei de revenire a creditelor cu ntrziere de cel puin o zi pledeaz pentru atingerea punctului maxim al neperformanei n anul 2011, se menioneaz n raport.Pe de alt parte, exist o serie de factori care menin presiunea asupra calitii portofoliului de credite, cum ar fi gradul mare de ndatorare a populaiei (n special n valut).

TEXTE PENTRU SEMINARUL CU DOMNISOARA PROFESOARA PETRUTA NAIDUT 1. Schumpeter. Angst for the educated. A university degree no longer confers financial security MILLIONS of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at university. Some are inspired by a pure love of learning. But most also believe that spending three or four years at universityand accumulating huge debts in the processwill boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.Their elders have always told them that education is the best way to equip themselves to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see their jobs offshored and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped insecurity. But the graduate elite will have the world at its feet. There is some evidence to support this view. A recent study from Georgetown Universitys Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it. Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings: an American with a professional degree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a high-school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelors degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than But is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to changeand that the current recessiondriven downturn in the demand for Western graduates will morph into something structural. The gale of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.The supply of university graduates is increasing rapidly. The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including 70m in Asia. Emerging economiesespecially Chinaare pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional-services firms such as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduates and turn them into world-class computer programmers and consultants. The best and the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best and the brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for less money.At the same time, the demand for educated labour is being reconfigured by technology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labour was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labour in the 20th. Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings. They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire a fleshand-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software package) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.Several economists, including Paul Krugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterised not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great hollowing out, as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine.

Alan Blinder, of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if anything more offshorable than low-wage ones. A plumber or lorry-drivers job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmers can.A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of the great guilds, such as medicine, law and academia, that provide secure and well-paying jobs. Over the 20th century these guilds did a wonderful job of raising barriers to entrysometimes for good reasons (nobody wants to be operated on by a barber) and sometimes for self-interested ones. But these guilds are beginning to buckle. Newspapers are fighting a losing battle with the blogosphere. Universities are replacing tenure-track professors with non-tenured staff. Law firms are contracting out routine work such as discovery (digging up documents relevant to a lawsuit) to computerised-search specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened, as patients find advice online and treatment in Walmarts new health centres.Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changesautomation, globalisation and deregulationmay be part of a bigger change: the application of the division of labour to brain-work. Just as Adam Smiths factory managers broke the production of pins into 18 components, so companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.These changes will undoubtedly improve the productivity of brainworkers. They will allow consumers to sidestep the professional guilds that have extracted high rents for their services. And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the reconfiguration of brain-work will also make life far less cosy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.

2.Europes debt crisis. Fudge, the final frontier. European leaders are at a fork in the road. Theyll probably go straight on.

SEPTEMBER is a cruel month in international monetary history, when regimes that once seemed inviolate have shattered. In 1931 it was the month when Britain went off the gold standard. In September 1992 the same country was booted out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This month will not see the end of the euro, but could go a long way to deciding its fate.The brief period of calm brought about by the European Central Bank (ECB) wading into the bond markets from early August to buy Italian and Spanish government debt is over. That intervention at first lowered Italian ten-year bond yields down from over 6% to around 5%. But yields have been creeping up since late August, and jumped above 5.5% on September 5th (see chart 1).Equity markets, which had taken a battering over the summer, have been clobbered again this week. Germanys Dax 30 index fell by over 5% on September 5th alone. Since the start of July it has declined by 27%. Italys benchmark index is down by 29%, Frances by 23%. Such falls have outplunged America, where the S&P 500 has lost 11% over the same period.European banks have suffered still steeper drops. German banks are down by 36% since early July, Italian ones by 38% and French banks by 43%. Plenty of spectres stalk the sector, among them the naming on September 2nd of some big European lenders in lawsuits filed by the US Federal Housing Finance Agency for mis-selling mortgage-backed debt. But the biggest by far is the potential loss that European banks face on their holdings of sovereign debt. Credit-default swaps on European banks are above even the levels they reached in late 2008.In running from some markets, investors have overwhelmed others. The inexorable rise of the Swiss franc, in demand as a haven in troubled times, is threatening the health of Swiss exporters. The Swiss National Bank this week announced that it would cap its value against the single currency (see article). That will mean even greater demand for German Bunds, whose ten-year yields fell to a record low of 1.85%.The market volatility reflects three sources of uncertainty. The first surrounds the ability of Europes political classes to carry out their promises. Euro-zone bigwigs agreed in July to put together a new rescue package for Greece and to ramp up the scale and remit of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the euro areas bail-out fund. One hurdle was negotiated on September 7th when the German

constitutional court endorsed the legality of bailing out European countries. But the plan still needs to be ratified by all 17 euro-zone parliaments.The willingness of pressurised countries to get their houses in order is also in doubt. The flip-flopping of Silvio Berlusconis government in pushing through the austerity measures it pledged for Italy during the summer has perturbed investors. Officials from the IMF and Europe reviewing Greeces bail-out programme suspended talks and pulled out of Athens on September 2nd because of reform slippage.The second source of uncertainty centres on Europes capacity to grow even as euro-zone countries rush to pass national laws that bind them to the mast of budgetary restraint: Spain, for example, is enshrining a budget-deficit cap in its constitution. The euro area grew by a paltry 0.2% in the second quarter, suffering both from the global slowdown and weakness in domestic sources of demand, with consumer spending falling by 0.2%, the first decline for two years.The economic-sentiment index published by the European Commission, which tends to track GDP growth, fell in August by 4.7 points to 98.3, taking it below its long-run average over the past two decades. This composite measure of confidence took a particular tumble in Germany, hitting hopes that the euro areas biggest economy could help pull southern Europe out of the mire. The premature tightening in monetary policy this year has done nothing to help, although the ECB was expected to keep its main interest rate unchanged at 1.5% on September 8th (after The Economist had gone to press).The third and biggest source of uncertainty is the inadequacy of the euro zones bail-out arsenal. A beefier EFSFwith an effective lending capacity of 440 billion ($620 billion), some of it already committedcan cope with small economies like Ireland and Portugal and provide help for Spain. But the moment markets started to fret about Italy in July, the strategy looked broken-backed. The third-biggest economy in the euro area, with total debt of 1.9 trillion, is simply too big for the EFSF to rescue. Charles Wyplosz, an economist at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, says that this was the critical moment when the scale of a potential rescue overwhelmed the resources available to mount one.Since the EFSF is too puny to do the job it has been given, the solution might appear obvious: to bulk it up still further. But the EFSFs borrowing is backed by guarantees from euro-area states, each of which vouches for an amount roughly in line with its share of the euro-area economy. The bigger these commitments get the more they add to worries about countries overstretched public finances. Ratings downgrades would reduce the EFSFs resources or force it to operate as a less highly rated, and more expensive, borrower.Relying upon the ECB to hold the fort is tricky, too. The central bank made its latest bond purchases with ill-disguised reluctance and, importantly, they were opposed by Jens Weidmann, the president of the German Bundesbank. Whatever its legal independence and ability to finance the purchases by creating money, the ECB depends implicitly upon support from the German public. An extended programme of bond purchases could forfeit that indeed, trust in the institution is already waning .A more fundamental step towards a fiscal union may be needed. One way forward is to introduce Eurobonds, which would pledge joint and several liability. In theory that could mean that a small state is on the line for such debt; in practice it would mean Germany. Advocates of Eurobonds point out that the public finances of the euro area, taken as a whole, compare favourably with other big economies such as America and Britain, whose governments are currently able to borrow at record low yields. If the euro area were able to borrow as a whole, it too should benefit from low borrowing costs, helped by the liquidity advantage of creating what could become a vast government-bond market.But critics of Eurobonds say that creating them within the current framework would actually weaken budgetary discipline, reducing the incentives for weaker states to get their finances in order. The legal obstacles are daunting: unlike the EFSF, they would require changes to European treaties. The political barriers are higher still: their introduction would push up Germanys borrowing costs quite steeply. The German and French governments have ruled them out, at least for now.If a big leap towards fiscal union is unlikely, what of the opposite outcome, a break-up of the single currency? Until recently the idea of the euro area fragmenting seemed far-fetched. It says something about the pass to which Europe has come that this is now a possibility being seriously discussed.There are two ways in which a break-up could occur. First, weaker countries like Greece could decide that life outside the single currency might be more tolerable than life inside it. If output continues to slide not just this year but next and unemployment continues to rise, political pressures may mount within Greece to leave the club.The second break-up scenario would be for Germany and some small creditworthy economies like the Netherlands to set up

a new currency. The dilemma for Germany, says David Marsh, an historian of the euro, is that there is now an agonising trade-off between being European and achieving the countrys cherished goal of economic and monetary stability. Even so, he does not expect Germany to break away. Its political class remains resolutely pro-European. The ruling CDU party is proud of its heritage as a European party; the opposition parties favour solutions like Eurobonds. More to the point, policymakers who have repeatedly bailed out Greece (2.5% of euro-zone GDP) for fear of the consequences of default will surely be petrified of the impact of a wider breakup.Barry Eichengreen, a monetary historian at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the economic costs of disintegration would be catastrophic for Europe and beyond. In the case of Greece, he fears the result would be a 1930s-style Depression brought about in particular by the collapse of the financial system. If Germany were to leave, its export-based manufacturing economy would take a body blow as the new currency soared. Other costs are incalculable because much would depend on responses that cannot readily be modelled: a Greek exit, say, could spark bank runs in other peripheral countries.Not everyone accepts these dire warnings. Daniel Gros of CEPS, a think-tank in Belgium, thinks that the impact on other vulnerable countries of a Greek exit could be contained as long as European leaders made clear that they would be protected. Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School argues that Greece could ultimately benefit by leaving because it would bring about both the harsh default needed to restore debt sustainability and the big devaluation needed to restore the countrys competitiveness. As for Germany, it has a knack of coping with a high exchange rate.Fear of the consequences of break-up is the strongest reason why fiscal union seems a more probable outcome than a fragmentation of the euro. But Europes institutional and political capacity to take bold decisions in a crisis is feeble. That is why the immediate focus of debate is on how to gear up the EFSF so that even with its limited resources it could do more.The facility should be turned into a bank, say Mr Gros and Thomas Mayer of Deutsche Bank. It could then do a lot more by borrowing from the ECB to finance its activities. An alternative suggestion, from Mr Wyplosz, is that the ECB issues guarantees for sovereign bondholders. These warranties would be partial, but they would put a floor on potential losses. Another option is for the EFSF to offer investors protection against a first loss on bonds, and for the ECB to provide those investors with cheap, non-recourse loans. Euro-zone leaders decry the financial engineering that sparked the banking crisis. They are coming to appreciate its merits 3. Exchange-rate targets. Francly wrong. The Swiss take fright at the strength of their currency and set an unfortunate example WHEN the going gets tough, the tough buy Swiss francs. That was true in the 1970s, when the Swiss were forced to impose negative interest rates on foreign depositors. And it has been true in recent years, with Switzerlands currency rising by 43% against the euro between the start of 2010 and mid-August this year.The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has decreed that it will target an exchange rate of SFr1.20 to the euro, a policy that it will apply with the utmost determination by being prepared to purchase foreign exchange in unlimited quantities. The announcement had its intended result, driving down the franc by 8.2% within minutes to the targeted level (see article ). Central banks have much greater scope to push down their currencies than they do to prop them up; whereas the Bank of England had to deplete its foreign-exchange reserves defending the pound in 1992, the Swiss can create francs without limit.This newspaper is not generally in favour of policies that distort markets, but the Swiss deserve some sympathy. More orthodox measures aimed at limiting the francs rise have proved ineffective. The Swiss currency has been an innocent bystander in a world where the euro zones politicians have failed to sort out their sovereign-debt crisis, Americas economic policy seems intent on spooking investors and the Japanese have intervened to hold down the value of the yen. The Swiss franc has looked like the only paper currency that could act as a safe haven; a kind of Alpine gold.Our roughand-ready Big Mac index calculated in July that the franc was as much as 98% overvalued against the dollar. This has been causing problems for Swiss companies: several have recently released profit warnings and some have talked about moving operations out of the country. This is definitely not a case of a country trying to steal

a march on its trade competitors by holding its currency at an artificially cheap level.Nevertheless, the Swiss policy has its dangers. If the SNB fails to hold the line at SFr1.20, it could end up with a huge hit to its balancesheet; losses on previous rounds of intervention have sparked calls for the presidents resignation. Alternatively, unlimited intervention could eventually provoke inflation, although that still looks a distant prospect.The Swiss action will also put pressure on its euro-zone neighbours. The Swiss will probably end up buying French and German government bonds; that may widen the spread between the yields of such countries and those of weaker European countries like Italy and Spain. Wider spreads may be taken as a signal of greater risk aversion, the phenomenon that sparked the strength of the Swiss franc in the first place.Given sluggish domestic demand, most countries in the developed world would like to see their currencies depreciate. But the foreign-exchange markets are a zero-sum game: some currencies have to go up. The most obvious candidate, the Chinese yuan, is rising regrettably slowly. That puts pressure on market favourites like the Swiss franc and the yen. It is rather like a game of deflationary pass the parcel in which the loser is whoever gets landed with the strongest currency. The danger is that the countries which get left with the parcel may decide that foreignexchange intervention is not enough and resort to trade barriers instead. In the 1930s countries opted for tariffs not just beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations.Though understandable, then, the Swiss action is nonetheless regrettable. A globally co-ordinated round of monetary easing would be far better than a series of tit-for-tat measures that simply pass the buck (or franc). 4. Mexicos economy. Making the desert bloom. The Mexican economy has recovered somewhat from a scorching recession imported from America, but is still hobbled by domestic monopolies and cartels HOT and high in the Sierra Madre, the city of Saltillo is a long way from Wall Street. Stuffed goats keep an eye on customers in the high-street vaquera, or cowboy outfitter, where workers from the local car factories blow their pesos on snakeskin boots and $100 Stetsons. Pinstriped suits and silk ties are outnumbered by checked shirts and silver belt-buckles; pickups are prized over Porsches.The financial crisis of 2008 began on the trading floors of Manhattan, but the biggest tremors were felt in the desert south of the Rio Grande. Mexico suffered the steepest recession of any country in the Americas, bar a couple of Caribbean tiddlers. Its economy shrank by 6.1% in 2009 (see chart 1). Between the third quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, 700,000 jobs were lost, 260,000 of them in manufacturing. The slump was deepest in the prosperous north: worst hit was the border state of Coahuila. Saltillo, its capital, had grown rich exporting to America. The states output fell by 12.3% in 2009 as orders dried up.The recession turned a reasonable decade for Mexicos economy into a dreary one. In the ten years to 2010, income per person grew by 0.6% a year, one of the lowest rates in the world. In the early 2000s Mexico boasted Latin Americas biggest economy, measured at market exchange rates, but it was soon overtaken by Brazil, whose GDP is now twice as big and still pulling away, boosted by the soaring real. Soon Brazil will take the lead in oil production, which Mexico has allowed to dwindle. As Brazilians construct stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Mexicans, who last year celebrated the bicentenary of their independence from Spain, are building monuments to their past (and finishing them late).Yet Mexicos economy is packed with potential. Thanks to the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a string of bilateral deals, it trades more than Argentina and Brazil combined, and more per person than China. Last year it did $400 billion of business with the United States, more than any country bar Canada and China. The investment rate, at more than a fifth of GDP, is well ahead of Brazils. Income per person slipped below Brazils in 2009, but only because of the reals surge and the pesos weakness. After accounting for purchasing power, Mexicans are still better off than Brazilians.Though expatriates whinge about bureaucracy, the World Bank ranks Mexico the easiest place in Latin America to do business and the 35theasiest in the world, ahead of Italy and Spain. In Brazil (placed 127th) companies spend 2,600 hours a year filing taxes, six times more than in Mexico. Registering a business takes nine days in Mexico and 26 in Argentina. The working hours of supposedly siesta-loving Mexicans are among the longest in the world. And

although Mexicos schools are the worst in (mainly rich) OECD countries, they are the least bad in Latin America apart from Chiles.These strengths have helped Mexico to rebound smartly from its calamitous slump. Last year the economy grew by 5.4%, recovering much of the ground lost in 2009. Exports to the United States, having fallen by a fifth, have reached a record high. In the desert there are signs of life: Saltillos high street, where four out of ten shops closed during the recession, is busy again. CIFUNSA, a foundry that turns out some 400,000 tonnes of cast iron a year for customers such as Ford and Volkswagen, shed 40% of its staff in 2009, but has rehired most of them and is producing more than it did before the slump.However, the jobs market has yet to return to its pre-recession state. Nationally, the official unemployment rate is 5.4%, having peaked at 6.4% in 2009. Javier Lozano, Mexicos labour secretary, believes that the pre-recession mark of 4.1% will not be matched within the term of this government or the next (ie, before 2018). Whats more, the new jobs are not as good as those that were lost. Average pay last year was 5% lower than in 2008. Because of this, and rising food prices, more Mexicans have slipped into poverty: last year 46.2% of them were below the official poverty line (earning less than 2,114 pesos, or $167, per month), up from 44.5% in 2008.Just as recession came from the gringos, recovery depends partly on them. Many analysts who once predicted economic growth of 5% this year cut their forecasts to under 4% after a downward revision of American GDP in July. Exports account for nearly a third of Mexicos trillion-dollar GDP, and most go to the United States. Remittances provide $190 per person per year (down from $240 in 2007). Now America faces several years of lacklustre growth, which poses a dilemma for Mexico.Some look at the recent explosive growth of Brazil and wonder if it is time to follow its example and look to new markets. In 2009 only 3% of Mexicos exports went to Brazil, Russia, India or China, whereas Brazil sent 16% of its exports to its fellow BRICs. Industrialised countries receive less than half of Brazils exports but 90% of Mexicos. The Inter-American Development Bank, the biggest lender in the region, describes a two speed Latin America, in which economies, such as Mexico, which do most of their trade with developed countries, lag behind those, such as Brazil, that have forged links with emerging markets.Mexico has already diversified its exports. Americas share of them has fallen from 89% in 2000 to perhaps 78% this year and will fall further, according to Miguel Messmacher, head of economic planning at Mexicos finance ministry. Sales to Latin America and Asia are growing twice as fast as those to America. The automotive industry, Mexicos biggest exporter, is ahead of the trend: though exports to America continue to rise, they now make up only 65% of the total. Eduardo Sols, head of the industrys national association, says he would like to get the figure down to 50% by focusing on Latin America and Europe.Others say Mexicos economic future will always be to the north. We cant just become a commodity exporter and start sending soy beans to China, says Jorge Castaeda, a former foreign secretary. History, geography and natural resources have wedded Mexico to its wealthy neighbour: Its not something we chose, he says. If the American economy is growing slowly, Mexico will just have to get a bigger chunk of it.That task has been made harder by China. Since China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 its share of American imports has grown fast and is now the biggest. The shares of Canada and especially Japan have fallen. Mexicos share, which almost doubled in the seven years after NAFTA came into effect, slipped after 2001. But it is edging up again (see chart 2).Chinas low wages, which lured factories away from Mexico, are rising rapidly. In 2003 Mexican pay was three times Chinese rates but now it is only 20% higher, Mr Messmacher says. The rising yuan and the cheap peso accentuate this trend.Proximity to America, Mexicos trump card, has been made more valuable by the high oil price. The resolution in July of a long dispute has allowed Mexican lorries to make deliveries in America, which the Mexican government reckons will reduce firms shipping costs by 15%. The rise of China may also help Mexico too, by forcing American companies to compete more keenly. Detroit carmakers cannot export cars to South Korea, but a Mexican factory using American parts can, notes Luis de la Calle, a former trade minister.Luring foreign investors has been made trickier by a spike in violence. Since 2007, a crackdown on organised crime has caused Mexicos drug-trafficking cartels, as they are known (though they are in fact rather competitive), to splinter and fight. Last year the murder rate was 17 per 100,000 people, a little lower than Brazils, but more than twothirds up on 2007. Ernesto Cordero, the finance minister, has estimated that the violence knocks about a percentage point off Mexicos annual growth rate.The fighting is highly concentrated: last year 70% of mafia-

related killings took place in 3% of the countrys municipalities. In Yucatn state, where tourists scramble around Mayan ruins, the murder rate is no higher than in Belgium. Last July was the busiest ever for Mexicos foreign-tourist trade, but there are signs that the drip of bloody stories is starting to hurt bookings. In the first five months of this year, arrivals were 3.6% lower than last. Acapulco, which caters mainly to domestic tourists, has virtually emptied thanks to frequent shootings in the heart of the hotel zone.Many of the roughest areas are in the north, where foreign investment is concentrated. In Ciudad Jurez, a centre of maquila factories that assemble products for export, the murder rate has climbed to one of the highest in the world, as the Sinaloa and Jurez cartels battle for control of the border crossing, little restrained (and often aided) by the local police. In Tamaulipas, a border state where violence surged last year, the unemployment rate has risen to 7.5%, the highest in the country. The head of a Mexican multinational with operations there found recently that his local manager had been siphoning company money to the cartels. Many rich businessmen have moved their families to America; the governor of one border state is rumoured to have done the same (his office denies it).Investors have largely held their nerve. Foreign direct investment, which reached $30 billion in 2007 but fell to half that in 2009, is expected to recover to $20 billion this year. Businessmen play down the violence: Mr Sols admits that some car transporters have been robbed on highways, but says that this year has been better than last. This month Honda became the latest carmaker to announce plans to expand in Mexico, in spite of the insecurity. Still, insecurity adds costs and delays. The road from Saltillo to Monterrey, the nearest big airport, has become dicey, so more people rely on Saltillos own tiny airport, where a single airline offers flights to Mexico City for upwards of $400. Conferences, concerts and sporting fixtures have been cancelled in Monterrey. In Coahuila on August 20th a football match was abandoned after shots were fired outside the stadium. Some foreign companies are even nervous about sending executives to Mexico City, although it has a lower murder rate than many American cities.Despite Mexicos difficulties, one of its citizens is the richest person in the world. Carlos Slim, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, has made a fortune estimated by Forbes at $74 billion. The magazine reckons that last year his net worth rose by $20.5 billion.Nearly two-thirds of Mr Slims wealth is thought to lie in Amrica Mvil, the biggest or second-biggest mobile-phone operator everywhere in Latin America except Chile (where it is third). In Mexico Mr Slims grip is particularly strong, with 70% of the cellular market and 80% of landlines. In half the countrys 400 local areas, only his company has the infrastructure to put through calls to landlines. Not surprisingly, after accounting for purchasing power home landlines in Mexico cost 45% more than the OECD average and business lines 63% more (see chart 3). Mobiles are better value, particularly for those who do not make many calls. But basic broadband access costs nearly ten times more (per megabit per second of advertised speed) than in the rest of the OECD.Telecoms is not the only monopolised sector. A study by the OECD and Mexicos Federal Competition Commission (CFC) found that 31% of Mexican household spending went on products supplied in monopolistic or highly oligopolistic markets. The poorest tenth suffered most, 38% of their expenditure going on such things.The cost of these captive markets is ruinous. Until recently, for example, firms selling generic medicines were required by law to operate a plant in Mexico. This, along with a system that allows doctors to prescribe medicines by brand rather than by generic compound, means that the market is dominated by expensive brands. Generics account for less than 17% of the drugs market, against 66.5% in America. Medicine is a third pricier than in Britain.Transport is expensive too. The handful of budget airlines that arrived in the past decade have struggled to get take-off and landing slots at Mexico Citys airport, which are dished out by a committee dominated by incumbents. The CFC found that flights to and from Mexico City were between 40% and 80% dearer than those to less strangled airports. Intercity bus routes are dominated by four firms that have divided up the country. Fares are 10% higher than they ought to be, the CFC estimates.Banking is similarly uncompetitive. Two banks control almost half the market for deposit accounts and two-thirds of the credit- and debit-card markets. The lack of choice means that 95% of account-holders have never switched banks. Top of the list of Saltillo businesses complaints is the scarcity and cost of credit.Some of these pinch points are being addressed. The collapse last year of Mexicana, North Americas oldest airline, has presented an opportunity to auction landing slots to nimbler competitors.

Drugs should get cheaper thanks to an auction system devised by the CFC for Mexicos social-security institute. In April a new competition law introduced penalties of up to ten years in jail for collusion, and empowered the CFC to make surprise inspections. The same month it fined Mr Slims mobile-phone operator a record $1 billion for abusing its market dominance.Banking has been opened to entrants such as Walmart, which has already shaken up Mexican retailing. Commercial credit is expanding: it stands at 19% of GDP, nearly double the ratio in 2003. Lending is still less than half of what it was before the banking crisis of 1994, suggesting plenty of room for growthcertainly more than in Brazil, where credit already equals about half of GDP.Forcing competition on cosy industries is still not easy. When the government decided in 2009 to shut down Luz y Fuerza, a state-run electricity company that was costing the taxpayer $3 billion a year, it required 1,000 police in riot gear to occupy the firms offices. Since Luz y Fuerza shut, the wait for new connections in Mexico City has fallen from ten months to four. But its ex-employees still bring parts of the capital to a halt with protests. Labour-reform efforts, to ease hiring and firing and allow six-month trial contracts, have met opposition in congress. Even with the new competition law, few people fancy the authorities chances against Mr Slims lawyers.The answer is to open the economy and let foreign competition force Mexican firms to adapt, believes Mr de la Calle. If you have free trade, you dont need structural reforms because the companies have to compete, he says. He cites the pork industry, which used to be blighted with hog cholera. Farmers resisted pressure to eradicate it, preferring to sell low volumes at high prices. When tariffs were dropped, cheap pork from America forced Mexican farmers to clean up their act. Cholera was eliminated, output rose and prices fell.Other industries are ripe for similar treatment. Oil is a prime candidate. Pemex, a state monopoly, handles everything from exploration to petrol pumps. Its profits contribute a third of government revenue, allowing Mexico to maintain a generous and feebly enforced tax regime. But decades of underinvestment have hurt production, which fell from 3.4m barrels a day in 2004 to 2.6m. Brazil, which has allowed foreign investment in its oilfields, is producing around 2m barrels a day and expects to be pumping 6m by 2020.Pemexs output has stabilised in the past year, and this month it awarded its first performance-based contracts, a precursor to getting oil majors to explore the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But efforts to make the company more efficient have been vetoed by the oil workers union. Refineries are poorly run; petrol stations forbid selfservice.The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think-tank, estimates that the GDP growth rate could be raised by 2.5 percentage points if the oil industry were opened up and labour and competition laws reformed. Reeling from an American-made recession, however, Mexico is hardly in the mood for a more open economy. With a presidential election next year, it would be easier to keep puttering along in the shadow of Brazil, an economy which in some ways Mexico outclasses. Mexicos rebound from slump and its resilience to lawlessness show its underlying strength. If it could only bust the monopolistic dams that have parched its economy, its desert might one day start to bloom.

5. The great mismatch. In the new world of work, unemployment is high yet skilled and talented people are in short supply. FAR AND AWAY the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing, observed Theodore Roosevelt, then Americas president, in a Labour day speech on September 7th 1903. Today the billions of people the world over who seek that prize are encountering simultaneous feast and famine. Even in developed economies that are currently struggling, many people, perhaps more than ever, are doing the job of their dreams, taking home both a good salary and a sense of having done something worthwhile. In booming emerging countries such as China and India, many at least have a better job than they ever thought possible. Yet at the same time in much of the world unemployment is persistently high and many of the jobs on offer are badly paid, onerous and unsatisfying.This has serious political implications, not least for Americas current president, Barack Obama, who risks losing his own dream job because of his perceived failure to have created

enough work for his fellow citizens. As Mr Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the countrys unemployment rate was about to climb above 8%, up from around 5% a year earlier. It has not recovered since and is currently around 9%. Until the presidential election in November next year Mr Obama is likely to be dogged by the phrase jobless recoveryalways assuming that the recovery does not double-dip into an even more jobless recession.Much as Americans complain, compared with some other countries their economy presents a picture of good health. In the weaker economies of the euro zone, jobs have been sacrificed in the name of austerity, especially in the public sector, to avoid defaulting on debts built up by free-spending governments. Anger at high unemployment has caused unrest and may have been a contributory factor in the riots in Britain last month. In late July thousands of unemployed young Spaniards, known as los indignados (the indignant), having protested in cities across their own country, began a long march to Brussels to draw attention to the shockingly high jobless rate of over 40% among their age group.Outside the rich world, the Arab Spring that brought down the governments of Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year was triggered in part by the lack of decent work for young people. Even in booming China and India policymakers worry about how to ensure there are enough decent jobs, especially for young people and graduates. Both countries still have hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty, especially in rural areas. A good job would be the best way out.Yet even as many people face a job famine, a minority is benefiting from an intensifying war for talent. That minority is well placed to demand interesting and fulfilling work and set its own terms and conditions. But above all the pay of such peoplefrom executives to investment bankers and software engineers in Silicon Valleyis soaring. The most talented increasingly get a multiple of the salary of the average performer. This has led to rising inequality in incomes in many countries which may be increasing social tensions.Mr Obama can reasonably point out that he was elected in the wake of a financial meltdown that had threatened to bring about another Great Depression, with an unemployment rate that would make the current one look like a lucky escape. The co-ordinated global stimulus by members of the G20 in 2009, though far from perfect, helped save the world from something much worsethough that probably provides little comfort to the 205m people round the globe who are now unemployed. Nor is there much scope for further stimulus.But todays jobs pain is about more than the aftermath of the financial crisis. Globalisation and technological innovation are bringing about long-term changes in the world economy that are altering the structure of the labour market. As a result, unemployment is likely to remain high in the rich economies even as it falls in the poorer ones. Edmund Phelps, a Nobel prize-winning economist, thinks that in America the natural rate of unemployment (below which higher demand would push up inflation) in the medium term is now around 7.5%, significantly higher than only a few years ago.Michael Spence, another Nobel prize-winning economist, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs agrees that technology is hitting jobs in America and other rich countries, but argues that globalisation is the more potent factor. Some 98% of the 27m net new jobs created in America between 1990 and 2008 were in the non-tradable sector of the economy, which remains relatively untouched by globalisation, and especially in government and health carethe first of which, at least, seems unlikely to generate many new jobs in the foreseeable future. At the same time, says Mr Spence, the mix of jobs available to Americans in the tradable sector (including manufacturing) that serves global markets is shifting rapidly, with a growing share of the positions suitable only for skilled and educated people.Fear of continuing high unemployment also made a bestseller of Tyler Cowens book, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. It argues that for much of its history America (and to some extent other rich countries) enjoyed the benefits of free land, lots of immigrant labour and powerful new technologies. But over the past 40 years these advantages have faded and America has found itself on a technological plateau, he says. To the obvious question about the internet, he retorts that the web has provided lots of utility for users but much less in the way of profitsand relatively few new jobs.Lowering this new natural rate of unemployment will require structural reforms, such as changing education to ensure that people enter work equipped with the sort of skills firms are willing to fight over, adjusting the tax system and modernising the welfare safety net, and more broadly creating a climate conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation. None of these reforms is easy, and all will take time to produce results, but governments around the

world should press ahead with them.As this special report will explain, the changes now under way will pose huge challenges not only to governments but also to employers and individual workers. Yet they also have the potential to create many new jobs and substantial new wealth.To understand why these changes are so exciting for some people and so scary for others, a good place to start is the oConomy section on the website of oDesk, one of several booming online marketplaces for freelance workers. In July some 250,000 firms paid some 1.3m registered contractors who ply their trade there for over 1.8m hours of work, nearly twice as many as a year earlier.ODesk, founded in Silicon Valley in 2003, is a game-changer, says Gary Swart, its chief executive. His marketplace takes outsourcing, widely adopted by big business over the past decade, to the level of the individual worker. According to Mr Swart, this labour as a service suits both employers, who can have workers on tap whenever they need them, and employees, who can earn money without the hassle of working for a big company, or even of leaving home.It is still small, but oDesk shows how globalisation and innovation in information technology, the two big trends that have been under way for some time, are moving the world nearer to a single market for labour. Much of the work on oDesk comes from firms in rich economies and goes to people in developing countries, above all the Philippines and India. Getting a job done through oDesk can bring the cost down to as little as 10% of the usual rate. So the movement of work abroad in search of lower labour costs is no longer confined to manufacturing but now also includes white-collar jobs, from computer programming to copywriting and back-office legal tasks. That is likely to have a big impact on pay rates everywhere.This is causing alarm among middle-grade white-collar workers in the rich world, who saw what happened to manufacturing jobs in their economies. But workers in emerging markets who have those sorts of skills and qualifications are delighted. Im making in a week on oDesk what I made in a month as a schoolteacher, and I get to spend far more time with my family, says Ayesha Sadaf Kamal, a freelance copywriter in Islamabad. Conversely, Janet Vetter, who used to have a full-time job as a copywriter for a magazine in New York, lost her job and now moves between part-time and freelance work. I feel isolated as a freelancer and have had no health insurance since the start of the year; its too expensive, she says.It is tempting to think of the globalisation of the labour market as a zero-sum game in which Mrs Kamal in Pakistan is benefiting at the direct expense of Ms Vetter in America. But economists point out that such calculations suffer from the lump of labour fallacythe belief that there is only a fixed amount of work to go round. A better explanation, they say, is the theory of comparative advantage, one of the least controversial ideas in economics, which suggests that free markets make the world better off because everyone can concentrate on doing what they are best at.A global labour market will not make every individual in the world better off: there will be losers as well as winners. All the same, a global labour market will not make every individual in the world better off: there will be losers as well as winners, and they may put up stiff resistance to change if the losses prove too painful. For instance, total global GDP could double if all barriers to the free movement of labour were removed, argues Michael Clemens in a recent paper, Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?. Yet the political implications of such mass migration make it improbable that governments, especially in rich countries, would unconditionally open their doors.Compared with previous bursts of global integration and technological upheaval, the changes now taking place in the labour market may produce an unusually large number of losers, partly because they have coincided with a particularly deep recession and partly because they are happening exceptionally fast. The priority for policymakers must be to keep the number of losers as small as possible.This special report will look at what this new world of work means for individuals and what they can do to ensure they are on the winning side. It will also look at the challenges facing companies as they compete to recruit the best talent. And it will examine what governments can do, even in these tough economic times, to equip their citizens to claim the prize described by Mr Roosevelt and to protect the losers.

6. An unpalatable solution. Eurobonds could restore confidence, but at a cost

WITH alarming speed, Europes debt crisis has spread this summer from small countries such as Greece on the rim of the single-currency area to large economies such as Italy at its heart. The European Central Bank (ECB) has restored calm in Italian and Spanish government-bond markets for the moment by making big purchases of their debt. But such bond-buying is a temporary palliative. Many are now calling for a more fundamental solution to the crisis: the issue of Eurobonds in order to provide a fiscal underpinning to the shaky monetary union.These Eurobonds are not to be confused with their namesakes invented in the early 1960s, when bankers severed the link between currency and country of issuance by helping international borrowers sell dollardenominated bonds in London. What advocates of new-style Eurobonds have in mind for the euro area would be even more far-reaching: they wish to sever the link between the creditworthiness of a country and its cost of borrowing. The 17 member states of the single-currency area would be able to borrow in bonds issued by a European debt agency. These would be jointly guaranteed by all euro-area countries and thus underwritten in particular by the most creditworthy of themabove all, Germany, because of its economic clout and top-notch credit rating.An underlying rationale for Eurobonds is that the public finances of the euro area as a whole look quite respectable, at least compared with those of other big rich economies. The IMF envisages that general government debt will reach 88% of the single-currency zones GDP this year. This is lower than Americas 98% and not much higher than Britains 83%. The euro areas projected budget deficit will be a bit above 4% of GDP, better than Americas 10% and Britains 8.5%. Neither Americadespite the recent downgrade of its debt by a rating agencynor Britain has been subject to a debilitating loss of confidence. This suggests that pooling debt could indeed put an end to the euro crisis.The successive waves of market attacks on countries have exposed an inherent fragility of a monetary union of states in which each stands behind its own debt but with the usual escape routes of devaluation and inflation no longer available. If investors lose confidence in a countrys fiscal prospects, their fear can become self-fulfilling by pushing up bond yields to unsustainable levels. The ECB can soothe markets by buying bonds, but beyond a certain point such purchases threaten its independence. By pooling risk, Eurobonds could be a more durable counter to such destabilising liquidity crises, argues Paul De Grauwe, an economist at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium.Another reason to introduce Eurobonds is that the existing defences drawn up to contain the crisis are starting to look too flimsy. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the rescue fund set up last year, is due to have 440 billion ($634 billion) of resources this autumn. Given its existing commitments to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, this would be barely enough to support Spain and insufficient for Italy if they were locked out of markets for any length of time. The obvious answer is to increase its size, but the fund has an inherent weakness. Unlike jointly underwritten Eurobonds, the national guarantees backing the EFSF puts each state on the line for only a share of it, broadly in line with its weight in the euro-area economy. This means that if France were to lose its top credit ratingthe latest fear in the marketsthe EFSF would lose a big chunk of its lending capacity (or its AAA rating).Until now the countries that call the shots in the euro areathose with strong public finances, notably Germanyhave viewed Eurobonds with horror. They have two main objections. First, the pooling of public debt in the 17 member states would raise the interest rates paid by the most creditworthy while lowering them in countries with weaker fiscal positions. The annual bill to German taxpayers of the additional borrowing costs could eventually reach 1.9% of German GDP, according to Kai Carstensen of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich. Second, Eurobonds would remove the pressure on improvident governments to put their public finances in order. Would Italy, for example, have pushed through its recent austerity budget had it not been pushed by the markets?Proponents of Eurobonds have an ingenious answer to both these objections. A policy proposal published last year by Bruegel, a think-tank, said that for each country they should be limited to 60% of GDP (the maximum ratio of debt to GDP first intended for the monetary union). Together with a liquidity premium that should arise from creating a much bigger market, in Eurobonds, than the national sovereign-debt markets, this limit would curtail the feared rise in borrowing costs. Countries would retain national responsibility for debt above the 60% threshold, which the authors dubbed red (as opposed to the blue Eurobonds). This would create an incentive for them to behave prudently, since borrowing costs on red bonds

would be higher.But the idea has two snags. First, by dividing sovereign debt into tranches, the enhanced safety of the blue bonds would come at the expense of the red oneswhich could become red-hot for risk-averse investors. Vulnerable countries could find themselves in an even trickier position if investors demanded higher yields on this portion. Second, the proposal assumes that the 60% limit could be maintained. In a future debt crisis, it might not be.Eurobonds would be a big sacrifice for the creditworthy nations of the euro area. The question for Germany in particular is whether this is a price worth paying to save the euro. The question for the other members of the monetary union is whether they can tolerate the much greater centralisation of fiscal policy that Germans would demand, as a bulwark against renewed budgetary indiscipline, in exchange for agreeing to Eurobonds.

7. Agricultura va aduce 12 miliarde de euro n PIB, salvnd economia n acest an. Creterea economic va fi salvat n trimestrul al treilea de cel mai bun an agricol din ultimul deceniu. Producia agricol va trece 12 mld. euro, n cretere cu 20% fa de anul trecut. Agricultura va contribui semnificativ la creterea economic din acest an, vremea bun i preurile-record pentru produsele agroalimentare contribuind decisiv la un an agricol extrem de bun."Agricultura ar putea face diferena n acest an ns depinde i de ce se va ntmpla n ultimele luni ale anului. S-ar putea ca agricultura s fac diferena ntre plus i un plus i mai mare al creterii economice", spune Laurian Lungu, managing partner n cadrul Macroanalitica.Creterile din acest an ar putea determina i majorarea contribuiei agriculturii n PIB pn la circa 8%, nivel similar cu cel din 2005 sau 2006. n ultimii patru ani contribuia agriculturii n PIB intrase pe o pant descendent, astfel ajungnd n 2009 i 2010 la circa 6%7%.Recoltele de gru, porumb, rapi i floarea-soarelui, patru dintre cele mai importante produse agricole de pe piaa local, valoreaz n prezent 4,5 miliarde de euro, potrivit estimrilor ZF, ce iau n calcul preurile de pe bursele internaionale. Plusul fa de anul trecut este de 1,5 miliarde de euro, trei sferturi din avansul vizat de Valeriu Tabar - 2 mld. euro - fiind practic asigurat pentru c ntreaga producie de cereale se afl deja n hambare i n silozuri. Ministrul agriculturii Valeriu Tabr a susinut de mai multe ori c valoarea produciei agricole din acest an se va ridica la 12 miliarde de euro. Marii ctigtori ai anului agricol bun vor fi traderii internaionali de cereale, gigani precum Cargill, Alfred Toepfer sau Bunge urmnd s beneficieze att de rulajele mai mari, ct i de preurile-record de pe bursele internaionale, acolo unde aceste companii vnd producia de cereale a Romniei.Lucian Anghel, economist-ef al BCR, spunea n urm cu dou luni c agricultura va contribui n acest an cu 0,3%-0,5% la creterea Produsului Intern Brut.Datele de pn acum arat c valoarea produciei agricole va crete cu 20% n acest an avnd n vedere c valoarea recoltelor de cereale i plante oleaginoase s-a cifrat n anul 2010 la 10 miliarde de euro, potrivit datelor Institutului Naional de Statistic (INS).Fa de 2009 creterea total a valorii produciei agricole a fost de 1%, ns producia de cereale a nregistrat un avans de 6,6%. Totui avansul a fost tras n jos de producia animal care a nregistrat un declin de 6,8%. Zootehnia reprezint o treime din totalul produciei agricole, n timp ce restul este acoperit de cereale.Avansul produciei de cereale a fost determinat anul trecut n mare msur de creterea preurilor, avnd n vedere c recoltele din 2010 au fost modeste. Vara trecut preurile la gru, porumb, rapi sau floarea-soarelui au explodat pe pieele internaionale dup ce Rusia i Ucraina, doi dintre cei mai mari juctori pe aceast pia, au anunat c i suspend exporturile ca urmare a fenomenelor meteo extreme care au compromis o bun parte din recolta. n consecin cotaia grului a srit n numai dou luni din iunie 2010 pn n august 2010 de la 157 dolari/ton la 250 de dolari pe ton, potrivit datelor Fondului Monetar Internaional (FMI). n aceeai direcie au mers i cotaiile porumbului, floriisoarelui, rapiei sau orzului.Dac anul trecut plusul din agricultur a fost adus n mare parte de preuri, n acest an productori romni vorbesc att de preuri-record, ct i de cele mai mari producii de cereale din ultimii ani. "Probabil acest efect al creterii contribuiei agriculturii n PIB l vom vedea doar n acest an. Creterea nu e permanenent, are efect temporar", spune Laurian LunguRecolta de gru a nregistrat n acest an un avans de 24%, pn la 7,2 milioane de tone. Plusul cantitativ este depit ns de cel valoric, avnd n vedere c la preurile actuale producia de gru valoreaz circa 1,3 miliarde de euro, cu 40% mai mult fa de anul precedent, la un pre mediu de 180 de euro/ton pe piaa local. Dac sunt luate n considerare preurile de pe bursele internaionale, creterea ar putea fi i mai mare, avnd n vedere c n Romnia grul se tranzacioneaz pentru preuri cu 10% mai mici sub cotaiile de la Paris sau Londra. Spre exemplu, contractele futures pentru gru cu livrare n noiembrie tranzacionate pe bursa de la Paris au ncheiat sptmna trecut la

183 euro/ton, n scdere cu 3% fa de edina de tranzacionare anterioar.Pe plus este n acest an i recolta de porumb, care va atinge 10,4 milioane de tone, n cretere cu 15% fa de anul trecut, potrivit unor estimri anterioare ale Ministerului Agriculturii.Aceast cantitate ar putea aduce n conturile fermierilor circa 1,8 miliarde de euro, avnd n vedere un pre de 170 de euro pentru o ton de porumb. Ieri pe bursa din Chicago contractele futures pentru porumb cu livrare n decembrie se tranzacionau pentru 238 de dolari/ton (178 euro/ton).Romnia reuete n 2010 s se afle pentru al doilea an la rnd ntre primii zece productori de porumb la nivel mondial n faa unor ri agricole mari precum India sau Federaia Rus.Agricultorii romni sunt pe plus i la culturile de rapi sau floarea-soarelui. n cazul rapiei, unde producia este de 0,8 milioane de tone, similar cu cea de anul trecut, agricultorii au ctigat din preurile-record, care sunt cu o treime mai mari dect cele de vara trecut. La Paris o ton de rapi era vndut vineri cu 427 de euro/ton, n scdere cu 2% fa de ziua anterioar. Astfel, valoarea recoltei de rapi se ridic la circa 350 de milioane de euro. De cealalt parte, recoltele de floarea-soarelui au ajuns aproape de 2 milioane de tone, fiind cu dou treimi mai mari fa de cele de anul trecut, potrivit estimrilor MADR. Pe piaa local fermierii vnd o ton de floarea-soarelui la preuri ntre 470 de euro i 500 de euro. Astfel, n bani producia de floarea-soarelui va contribui la totalul produciei agricole cu circa 1 miliard de euro, potrivit estimrilor ZF.Totui creterea total a valorii produciei agricole va fi limitat de minusurile pe care le nregistreaz sectorul zootehnic. Astfel, n ultimii opt ani Romnia a pierdut un eptel de aproape 1 milion de bovine pentru c micii cresctori au renunat la animale ca urmare a preurilor mici oferite de abatoare sau de procesatorii de lapte.n sens negativ a influenat i presiunea pe pre dat de importurile carne de vit din vestul Europei sau din America Latin. Acum Romnia mai are circa 2 milioane de bovine, cu 32% mai puin ca n 2002, arat datele Recesmntului General Agricol fcut n 2010.i numrulul total al porcinelor din Romnia a nregistrat o scdere continu n ultimii cinci ani pn la circa 5,4 milioane de capete n 2010. Declinul a continuat i n prima parte a acestui an, astfel c dup primele apte luni numrul total al porcinelor se cifra la 5,1 milioane, potrivit datelor MADR. Unul dintre motivele acestui declin este interdicia de export al crnii de porc impus Romniei de ctre Comisia European n urm cu opt ani. n 2003 autoritile de la Bruxelles au impus acest embargo ca urmare a temerilor privind pesta porcin.

8. Companiile americane pleaca din China Cresterea costurilor de productie si a fortei de munca in China determina companiile americane sa-si evacueze intreprinderile din aceasta tara pana la sfarsitul acestui deceniu, ceea ce va conduce la aparitia in SUA a aproximativ 3 milioane de locuri de munca, arata un raport al cabinetuli Boston Consulting Group. Potrivit studiului, aproximativ 15% dintre brandurile americane care se fabrica, in prezent, in China, se vor intoarce in patrie. In acelasi timp, companiile chineze au inceput sa vada in SUA nu numai o piata de desfacere, dar si o oportunitate perfecta pentru dezvoltarea propriilor afaceri. In timp ce forta de munca se scumpeste in China, in SUA creste competitivitatea, a comentat pentru Financial Times coproprietarul grupului chinez Chesapeake Bay Candle, May Swu. Transferul capacitatilor de productie din China in SUA ofera companiilor inca un avantaj deloc de neglijat: apropierea punctului de fabricare de consumatori, ceea ce permite permite nu numai reducerea cheltuielilor de transport, dar si o mai rapida adaptare la preferintele clientilor.

9. 4,6 milioane dolari pentru cel mai batran automobil din lume A fost construit in 1884. Il cheama De Dion Bouton Et Trepardoux Dos-A-Dos Stream Runabout si este cel mai vechi automobil functionabil din lume. Scoasa la licitatie, masina, careia i se mai spune La Marquise, a fost vanduta cu 4,62 milioane de dolari, un record pentru categoria mijloacelor de transport rare. Licitatia a fost organizata de casa RM Autions, care nu a sperat sa obtina mai mult de 2 - 2,5 milioane de dolari. Identitatea cumparatorului, al cincilea proprietar din istoria automobilului nu a fost dezvaluita. Primul detinator a fost contele De Dion, care a participat, de altfel, la crearea masinii, vanduta in 1906 unui ofiter al armatei franceze, Henri Doriol, a carui familie a pastrat La Marquise pana in 1987. Urmatorul proprietar, Tim Moore, membru al clubului britanic de masini clasice, a reparat automobilului si l-a adus in stare perfecta de functionare. In 2007 el a fost cumparat de colectionarul american John OQuinn, care, potrivit informatiilor, a platit 3,63 milioane de dolari. In 2009, La Marquise a fost scoasa la licitatie de mostenitorii lui OQuinn. 10.Adrian Vasilescu (BNR): Dumnezeu ajut bncile romneti n faa crizei Dumnezeu ajut bncile romneti n faa crizei care afecteaz sistemul bancar european, consider Adrian Vasilescu, consilier al guvernatorului Bncii Naionale, relateaz Agerpres."Dumnezeu i Banca Naional ajut bncile romneti" n faa crizei, a declarat, astzi, la Antena3, consilierul guvernatorului Isrescu, ntrebat despre efectele crizei financiare asupra bncilor din zona euro.Vasilescu a dat asigurri c efectele crizei bancare europene nu se vor extinde asupra bncilor din Romnia. 'Bncile romneti sunt solide. Nu exist putregai n nici una dintre bncile din Romnia', a subliniat economistul.Recent, agenia de evaluare financiar Fitch a revizuit n scdere ratingul pentru datoriile pe termen lung ale Italiei, n valut i moned local, de la 'AA minus' la 'A plus', cu perspectiv negativ, iar calificativul pe termen scurt a fost retrogradat de la 'F1 plus' la 'F1'.Fitch a revizuit n scdere i ratingul pentru datoriile pe termen lung ale Spaniei, n valut i moned local, de la 'AA plus' la 'AA minus', cu perspectiv negativ.Standard and Poors a anunat, de asemenea, c profilul financiar al bncilor elene National Bank of Greece, EFG Eurobank, Alpha Bank i Piraeus Bank este expus unor riscuri semnificative.Agenia de evaluare financiar Moody's Investors Service a revizuit i ea n scdere ratingurile de credit ale bncilor franceze Credit Agricole i Societe Generale, citnd expunerea lor la datoria Greciei. De asemenea, Moody's a meninut ratingurile BNP Paribas sub revizuire, pentru o posibil retrogradare, anunnd c profitabilitatea i capitalul bncii furnizeaz un tampon adecvat pentru a sprijini expunerea bncii la Grecia, Portugalia i Irlanda.Sectoarele bancare din Bulgaria i Romnia sunt puternic dependente de industria bancar elen. Un colaps bancar n Bulgaria i Romnia va avea un efect devastator asupra Ungariei, consider analitii occidentali.Instituiile de creditare austriece, cum ar fi Erste Bank i Raiffeisen au interese considerabile n rile din Europa de Est, cum ar fi Romnia i Ungaria, fiind expuse astfel n cazul n care Europa de Est va resimi efectul devastator al intrrii Greciei n incapacitate de plat.BCE deine zeci de miliarde de euro din obligaiunile guvernamentale elene i a mprumutat bncilor din Grecia o sum estimat la peste 100 miliarde de euro.