The Problem with Fair Trade Coffee. Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in consumer familiarity and sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers. By failing to address these problems, industry confidence in Fair Trade coffee is slipping. Jesus Lopez Hernandez picks ripe coffee cherries on a farm associated with Cooperativo Las Brumas, near Matagala, Nicaragua. (Photo by Janet Jarman/Corbis) Peter Giuliano is in many ways the model of a Fair Trade coffee advocate. He began his career as a humble barista, worked his way up the ladder, and in 1995 co-founded Counter Culture Coffee, a wholesale roasting and coffee education enterprise in Durham, N.C. In his role as the green coffee buyer, Giuliano has developed close working relationships with farmers throughout the coffee-growing world, traveling extensively to Latin America, Indonesia, and Africa. Why do we care about fairly traded coffee?
UK consumers go bananas for Fairtrade | Environment. Sales of fairly traded products have bucked the trend of decline in the UK retail market to grow by 12% in the last year. The value of Fairtrade products sold through shops reached £1.32bn in 2011, compared to £1.17bn in 2010, according to figures from the Fairtrade Foundation, as it launches its annual marketing fortnight on Monday.
Unlike other premium sectors such as the organic market, which have lost ground as consumers struggle with the combination of rising food and energy prices and stagnant incomes, the Fairtrade market has continued to expand. The growth largely reflects a move among major supermarkets to sell Fairtrade goods at the same price as conventionally produced equivalents.
Alternatively they have switched whole ranges to the Fairtrade sector rather than pass on the premium paid to farmers as a higher cost to consumers. All the Co-operative's own-brand tea, coffee and sugar are now Fairtrade. U.S. Rule Set for Cameras at Cars’ Rear. Now, auto safety regulators have decided to do something about it. Federal regulators plan to announce this week that automakers will be required to put rearview cameras in all passenger vehicles by 2014 to help drivers see what is behind them. The , which proposed the mandate in late 2010, is expected to send a final version of the rule to Congress on Wednesday. Cars are filled with safety features that have been mandated by government regulators over the years, including air bags and the Liddy Light, the third brake light named for Elizabeth Dole, who made it standard as secretary of transportation in the 1980s.
But the rearview camera requirement is one of the biggest steps taken to protect people outside of a vehicle. “We haven’t done anything else to protect pedestrians,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington. “This is one thing we can do and should do.” “In terms of absolute numbers of lives saved, it certainly isn’t the highest,” Mr. Untitled. Farewell To James Q. Wilson, The Most Accomplished Social Scientist Of The Last Half-Century. Q&A: Greek debt crisis. 27 November 2012Last updated at 07:16 ET Continue reading the main story What went wrong in Greece? Greece's economic reforms, which led to it abandoning the drachma as its currency in favour of the euro in 2002, made it easier for the country to borrow money. Greece went on a big, debt-funded spending spree, including paying for high-profile projects such as the 2004 Athens Olympics, which went well over its budget.
The country was hit by the downturn, which meant it had to spend more on benefits and received less in taxes. Greece's economic problems meant lenders started charging higher interest rates to lend it money. There have been demonstrations against the government's austerity measures to deal with its debt, such as cuts to public sector pay and pensions, reduced benefits and increased taxes. In 2010, the EU, IMF and ECB agreed a bailout worth 110bn euros (£92bn; $145bn) for Greece.
BACK 1 of 10 NEXT Why is Greece in trouble? What has been done to help Greece? In short, a lot. Default. Police privatisation plans defended by senior officers | UK news. Senior police officers have strongly defended the radical extension of the role of private companies in policing, saying they should be involved in protecting the public and bringing offenders to justice. The comments from the Association of Chief Police Officers follow the disclosure by the Guardian that the West Midlands and Surrey police authorities have invited private security companies to bid for a wide range of services, including criminal investigations, patrolling neighbourhoods and detaining suspects.
Greater Manchester chief constable Peter Fahy, Acpo's spokesman on workforce development, said that only "radical and fundamental" change would allow forces to cope with the "enormous challenge of the financial cuts" and maintain the protection of the public. He said all forces were watching the £1.5bn West Midlands/Surrey tendering process very closely "to examine where the limits of the involvement of other bodies in policing should lie".
Book Review: Free Market Fairness. How Keynes overwhelmed Hayek. Tim Congdon Nicholas WapshottKEYNES–HAYEKThe clash that defined modern economics382pp. Norton. £18.99 (US $28.95).978 0 393 07748 3 Published: 29 February 2012 I n 1929 the director of the London School of Economics, William Beveridge, appointed the thirty-one-year-old Lionel Robbins to the chair of political economy and so made him “the youngest professor in the country”.
Robbins had a definite agenda, in which the political side of “political economy” was just as prominent as the economic. For some years, Keynes’s principal activity had been to bring together in one place his understanding of both the theory of money, and the practice of banking and monetary policy. In London, Robbins had experienced Keynes’s less attractive side. According to Nicholas Wapshott in Keynes–Hayek: The clash that defined modern economics, the Keynes–Robbins quarrel on the Macmillan Committee had far-reaching consequences. Hayek’s review appeared technical in character, but it was politically charged. Book Review: Free Market Fairness. French Socialists on course to score absolute majority in parliament | World news.
French Socialists likely to win parliamentary majority – video Link to video: French Socialists likely to win parliamentary majority The left has scored well in the first round of French parliamentary elections, leaving the Socialist party within reach of an absolute majority that would give François Hollande, the president, a free hand in his approach to dealing with the economic crisis.
The Socialists need 289 out of the 577 seats in the national assembly to take an absolute majority in the final runoff on Sunday 17 June. This would ensure Hollande has backing for his delicate balancing act of cutting the deficit while attempting to boost growth. First-round results show the Socialists are predicted to take between 275 and 315 seats, according to polling company TNS Sofres, and could make up the numbers with the backing of their electoral allies, the Greens.
But although a Socialist absolute majority remains a possibility, it is far from a certainty. Opinion / EU fisheries: little learned 20 years later. BRUSSELS - EU ministers will gather in Brussels on Tuesday (12 June) for a crucial vote on the general approach for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The EU is sending its fleets to fish deeper and further out at sea (Photo: Bruno de Giusti) The developments of these last few weeks indicate that the European Parliament - the Council of Ministers' equal partner for the first time on fisheries issues - has already shown much more ambition than many national governments. Indeed, the direction of the council's discussions is worrying. A meeting last month clearly showed that that only a very small minority of member states is truly willing and ready to transform fisheries management in Europe.
Member states have consistently disregarded scientific recommendations and the EU continues to spend millions of euros on subsidies to artificially maintain an oversized and unprofitable fleet. The formula is simple. The MSY requirement by 2015 is not just another NGO talking point. European Economic Confidence Beats Estimates. Economic confidence in the euro area improved more than forecast in February, adding to signs the economy is stabilizing after a fourth-quarter contraction. An index of executive and consumer sentiment in the 17- nation euro area rose for a second month, increasing to 94.4 from 93.4 in January, the European Commission in Brussels said today. Economists had forecast a gain to 94, the median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, has helped soften the impact of tougher austerity measures across the region as companies boost output and hiring to meet export demand.
German business confidence rose more than economists forecast to a seven-month high in February and investors became more optimistic. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has said that while some euro-area nations may see a “mild” recession, the overall situation “seems to be stabilizing.” German Unemployment ‘Unusual Surge’ ‘Danger Zone’ ECB Bond Purchases. Goodbye, Keynes! Pakistan’s policy managers need to switch their economic theorist. John Maynard Keynes was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments.
PHOTO: AFP KARACHI: Pakistan’s macro-economic policies have usually treaded the well-beaten Keynesian path, as we have repeatedly attempted to jack up economic growth by increasing government expenditures – in particular, development expenditures. It is time we pay attention to John Maynard Keynes’ arch rival and contemporary, the Austrian Friedrich Hayek, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 for correctly predicting the Great Depression through his business cycle theory, which rests on the role of monetary expansion. Hayek’s contributions notwithstanding, it is Keynesians who continue to rule most democratic governments to date. Pakistan’s low and volatile growth trajectory can be termed Keynesian in characteristic.