Social Capital Blog. The World Factbook. The Office of Public Affairs (OPA) is the single point of contact for all inquiries about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
We read every letter, fax, or e-mail we receive, and we will convey your comments to CIA officials outside OPA as appropriate. However, with limited staff and resources, we simply cannot respond to all who write to us. Contact Information Submit questions or comments online. Roubini: Five reasons to be gloomy about the world economy in 2013. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images The global economy this year will exhibit some similarities with the conditions that prevailed in 2012.
No surprise there: We face another year in which global growth will average about 3 percent, but with a multispeed recovery—a subpar, below-trend annual rate of 1 percent in the advanced economies, and close-to-trend rates of 5 percent in emerging markets. But there will be some important differences as well. Painful deleveraging—less spending and more saving to reduce debt and leverage—remains ongoing in most advanced economies, which implies slow economic growth.
But fiscal austerity will envelop most advanced economies this year, rather than just the Eurozone periphery and the United Kingdom. With growth anemic in most advanced economies, the rally in risky assets that began in the second half of 2012 has not been driven by improved fundamentals, but rather by fresh rounds of unconventional monetary policy. Moreover, several risks lie ahead. Star-Wars-Economics-Infographic.jpg (600×2477) Money as You Grow – Kids and Money – President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability. Oil barons and tech hipsters share a dark side. Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images Oil barons and technology hipsters seem very different.
But they share a dark side. The chief executive of U.S. explorer SandRidge Energy and some of his peers jet around at shareholders’ expense, while at Facebook and Google founder-bosses are insulated from owners by super-voting rights. Clubby boards also feature in both sectors. The U.S. oil and gas industry plumbs the depths of weak corporate governance and social responsibility, with 15 companies getting the worst F grade from consultancy GMI Ratings - far more than would be suggested by their weighting in the sample.
Silicon Valley’s governance shortcomings aren’t so brash. Although it manifests itself in different ways, the two sectors thus share a certain disregard for regular owners. A more complete picture of the iTunes economy. As it did yesterday, on occasion Apple reports the cumulative total downloads and payments to developers. Since this is done in variable time intervals, it makes analysis of the value of the app store difficult. But not impossible. Robot economics are overblown: Labor-saving technology isn't new. Derek Thompson throws a bit of cold water on excessive hand-wringing over robots taking our jobs, but I want to throw more and icier water on this.
The deployment of labor-saving technology is a real thing and people really do lose their jobs over it. But the use of the word "robots" as a synonym for "labor-saving technology" is a rhetorical trick to make long-standing trends seem new and alarming. The cotton gin was labor-saving technology. So was the forklift and the shipping container. Typesetters were put out of work by desktop publishing software in the late-'80s and early '90s, and digital photography cost jobs in the film development sector. None of this involves "robots," (unless everything related to computers is robots) but it all involves productivity-enhancing technological progress that increases overall economic output while negatively impacting specific individuals. Manufacturing rebound: Is it real? Project Syndicate economists. How Cash Keeps Poor People Poor, Digital Money Is Future.
A Giant Statistical Round-Up of the Income Inequality Crisis in 16 Charts - Derek Thompson. Now we are engaged in a great tug-of-war over a few points in the top tax rate in Washington. But even if the White House pulls hardest, it won't amount to much of a victory for the long-suffering middle class. The sources of their income stagnation are too deep, too varied, and too long-term for Clinton-era tax rates to cure them.
"There is a huge amount of focus on progressive taxes in our policy world but progressive taxes are not much of a solution to this," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. History: As you were. Study: Income Inequality Kills Economic Growth. Corporate chieftains often claim that fixing the US economy requires signing new free trade deals, lowering government debt, and attracting lots of foreign investment.
But a major new study has found that those things matter less than an economic driver that CEOs hate talking about: equality. "Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world's economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. Photos of Children From Around the World With Their Most Prized Possessions.
ATUS and productivity: Why so much economics data is garbage and how that distorts policy. iStockphoto/Thinkstock.
Economists are a smart bunch, and in San Diego over the weekend for the annual meeting of the American Economic Association lots of impressive analytical chops were on display. Sometimes, though, the analysis seems to badly overreach the data.