Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
A Violent End to Iraq's Brief Economic Rebound
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| Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Iraqi special forces deploy their troops outside of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Iraq on June 12
Just when things were starting to look so promising, Iraq has tipped back into a state of violence and chaos that threatens to undo years of economic progress. After a blitz campaign that no one saw coming, a Sunni militant group called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controls three key cities in northern Iraq: Mosul, Tikrit, and Baiji, home to Iraq’s biggest oil refinery. Although militants hold the town, Iraqi special forces are guarding the refinery, keeping it in government control for now.
Even though most of Iraq’s oil production and export facilities are in southern parts of the country, far from the new conflict, oil prices are starting to react in a big way. Both Brent crude and its U.S. equivalent, West Texas Intermediate, rose more than 2 percent Thursday morning.
“The Iraq development is the main driver for oil prices today and increases nervousness over the security of supply from the country,” Carsten Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt, told Bloomberg News. Iraqi officials have reportedly requested U.S. airstrikes in Northern Iraq against the militants, which the White House has so far declined. The possibility of U.S. intervention in Iraq “is another sign of how desperate the situation is and how weak the government has become,” says Fritsch.
We may look back on this week as the start of a new civil war in Iraq and, if so, the end of whatever optimism existed about the country. Yet so much had been going right recently. After eight years of war and decades more of economic sanctions, Iraq had made progress rebuilding its energy industry. In 2012 it passed Iran to become OPEC’s second-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia. This spring, Iraqi oil production hit a 35-year high at 3.4 million barrels a day. Government oil officials talked about being able to produce as much as 9 million barrels a day by 2020. Iraq’s borrowing costs were down; economic growth was up. Earlier this year the International Monetary Fund forecast that Iraq’s economy would grow 6.3 percent this year and 8.25 percent by 2016, the fastest of all 22 economies it surveyed in the region.
“This definitely marks the end of the brief period when we could feel good about progress in Iraq,” says Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Things won’t come to a crashing halt, but it’s likely that the violence will simmer for some time.” It’s also possible that this could spark what many have always feared: that Iraq breaks up into its tribal areas along ethnic lines.
For now, the big questions are how far south ISIS can move and whether it will eventually be able to seize control of Iraq’s larger oil fields. These are tough, battle-hardened fighters we’re talking about. Some reports from Syria suggest that ISIS is so violent and extreme, it was disavowed by Al Qaeda. The worst-case scenario would be something akin to what’s happened in Libya, where militants took control of the country’s ports and succeeded in shutting down the country’s entire oil system. Considering that the south of Iraq is mostly held by Shias, that seems unlikely, “but it’s not unimaginable,” says Pollack.
If ISIS stays in the north, it may not be able to disrupt current oil prodiction, but it can do a lot to kill Iraq’s plans for growth. Most of the extra oil Iraq was hoping to pump over the next decade is in the northern and Kurdish regions of the country, where there’s lots of untapped, easy-access crude. Continued fighting between ISIS and the army will “make it largely impossible to develop the resources in the northern and eastern parts of the country,” Tom Pugh of Capital Economics, wrote in a Thursday note. That would severely reduce Iraq’s ability to lift output.
American oil companies have been gradually trimming their operations in Iraq because of the risk of precisely this kind of instability. ExxonMobil (XOM) has decided that the Kurds are a better bet than Baghdad. Chinese oil companies, however, don’t have that luxury, because China needs oil so badly. PetroChina(PTR) bought a large stake in southern Iraq’s West Qurna oil field from Exxon last year. The most recent violence could leave them in a geopolitical pickle.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
China’s Environment Goes From Bad to Worse (BusinessWeek)
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| Pollution levels in several of China's major rivers has grown more severe since 2010
Each year, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) releases a “state of the environment” report (PDF); it’s a rather grim annual ritual. For all the talk about China’s new “war on pollution” and money pouring into wind farms and river cleanup campaigns, the reality is that, according to most metrics, China’s environmental situation is getting worse, not better.
Air pollution in China receives the most attention globally. Despite a recent stretch of fairly nice days in Beijing, according to the MEP’s report, in 2013 only three major Chinese cities met the government’s own standards for urban air quality.
Water pollution—and water shortages—may be an even graver problem. The pollution level in several major rivers, including the Yangtze and its tributaries, has grown more severe since 2010. Meanwhile 11 percent of the land in the Yangtze’s watershed and adjacent areas was watered by acid rain. Sixty percent of groundwater-testing sites nations wide ranked as “poor” or “very poor” in water quality.
Polluted irrigation water and deposition of evaporated heavy metals (mercury, for instance, vaporizes at high temperatures in coal-fired power plants) also taint cropland in China. According to a report released in April by the government, 16 percent of China’s total land area—and 19 of its agricultural land—is polluted.
Heavy metals deposited in the soil can be absorbed by crops. Last May, the provincial government of Guangzhou revealed that 44 percent of rice samples it tested in local restaurants contained elevated levels of cadmium, which has been linked to the bone-weakening itai-itai disease in Japan.
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Monday, June 9, 2014
(Some of) The best credit cards for Summer 2014 (mercado de Dinero USA)
MyRatePlan.com, a leading authority on credit cards, announced the best credit cards to use this summer. Summer is a time when spending is at its high point. There’s the extra activities, driving, vacations, and more. It goes without saying- summer purchases add up fast. Luckily, certain credit cards can help with these expenses. By using a credit card that rewards consumers for their purchases, cardholders will be able to save money and get rewarded this summer.
When determining the best credit cards for summer,MyRatePlan experts took into account many factors, including introductory offers, rewards programs, annual fees, balance transfer terms, customer reviews, and expert opinions. According to their findings, here are the best credit cards to use this summer:
Discover it
Discover it is one of the best cards to use this summer. Their generous cash back program rewards cardholders with 5% cash back on up to $1500 spent in rotating categories, such as gas, restaurant, movie purchases, and more. Cardholders also earn 1% cash back on all other purchases. There are no annual fees, overlimit fees, or foreign transaction fees, and users receive free FICO scores on all monthly statements.
There is also a 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for 14 months, and card members have access to Discover’s 100% U.S.-based customer service at all times.
Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard
The Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard is an excellent card to use for travel purchases this summer. Users earn 2x the miles on all purchases, and they can even earn 40,000 bonus miles when spending $3000 or more on purchases in the first 90 days of account opening.
Miles don’t expire as long as the account is open, active, and in good standing. Cardholders also receive 10% miles back when redeeming for travel statement credits. There are no foreign transaction fees, and active card members receive complimentary online FICO scores.
Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card
The Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card rounds off MyRatePlan’s list of the best credit cards for summer 2014. With this card, users earn 10 HHonors Bonus Points for every dollar spent on hotel stays within the Hilton HHonors portfolio, 5 HHonors Bonus Points for every dollar spent on airline and car rental purchases, and 3 HHonors Bonus Points for every dollar spent on all other eligible purchases.
Users can also earn 2 weekend night certificates at select hotels and resorts after spending $2500 in purchases in the first 4 months of account opening. There are no foreign transaction fees, and cardholders can travel with ease with the Citi chip card.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Cuando alguien falla en prepararse, se prepara para fallar Por: Ricardo Tribín Acosta
EN MI OPINION:
La
preparación es fundamental para alcanzar muchas cosas en la vida o quizás , lo
cual es más que suficiente, para poder comprender un poco mejor lo que ella
representa, aunque en este segundo caso la experiencia, derivada del
conocimiento bien aprendido, agrega el componente de la madurez. De ahí que se
insista mucho en que aquellos países que tienen bajos niveles de educación y
alfabetización propendan al máximo por mejorarlos, lo cual les garantizará el
establecimiento de unas clases dirigentes que los puedan dirigir mejor.
“El
burro”, y lo dibujaban con dos orejas largos, era la burla que se le hacía
muchos años a tras a los pequeños que poco estudiaban, pretendiendo de una
forma simpática, aunque severa ejercer sobre ellos una terapia de choque que
los llevase a ser mas dedicados y responsables en sus estudios.
Por
todo lo anterior y parodiando la frase aquella de que “pueblo con hambre, no
vota”, la cambiaría por algo de generación más positiva que expresara “pueblo
con educación, prepara a su nación para lo mejor”.
Miami,
Mayo 31 de 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Un-Remembering the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing (BusinessWeek)
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| Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, which began when the ruling Chinese Communist Party dispatched soldiers and tanks to break up student-led pro-democracy protests in central Beijing. It ended with at least several hundred—probably several thousand—dead.
The national tragedy has been effectively erased from China’s collective memory through careful editing of history textbooks and censorship that blocks foreign websites and books describing the events of June 4, 1989. (In state media, the killings are referred to only as a “political incident.”) In her excellent new book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia, Louisa Lim, a former Beijing correspondent for NPR, describes an informal poll of Beijing university students in which just 15 out of 100 could identify the famous “Tank Man” photo—the iconic image of a lone protestor trying to block a column of tanks in Beijing.
“Twenty-five years after the massacre, the topic remains taboo here,” noted Helen Gao, a young Chinese writer, in a New York Times op-ed published today. “I try to piece together the events of that spring through underground documentaries, foreign reports and conversations with my parents.” Yet, she adds, not all her peers are so curious. “The party is responsible for distorting my generation’s understanding of history through state education and blocking our access to sensitive information. Yet even those who are well-aware of the state’s meddling make little effort to seek truth and push for change.”
The generation born in the 1980s and ’90s often gets a bad rap in China as being careerist and allegedly selfish, single children more focused on getting ahead (or at least, not being left behind) in a very competitive job market than on forging broader social change. Maybe, suggested Gao, deep cynicism lies behind what she calls “this indifference toward politics and civil rights.” As she wrote: “If the previous generations learned the cost of political transgression through persecutions and crackdowns, today’s youth, especially those from elite backgrounds, instinctively understand the futility of challenging the system.”
Today I visited the leafy campus of elite Tsinghua University, often called the Harvard of China. In 1989, several thousand Tsinghua students joined the demonstrations. Today no visible or widely known public activities cite those events, according to students I spoke with. (Not least because campus authorities would quickly squash any such vigils.) One young professor I interviewed told me he liked history books; when I asked him if would do anything to mark today’s anniversary, he blinked, at first uncomprehending.
When I reminded him, he nodded quickly. Yes, he said he did know the broad outlines of the 1989 massacre, but hadn’t thought about it recently. To be fair, he isn’t particularly cynical or materialistic; he studies energy-storage systems in hopes for a future in which widespread use of electric vehicles can help clear Beijing’s smoggy skies. Yet he seems profoundly uninterested in politics, or at least not hopeful that individuals can change the system.
The date June 4 doesn’t register for much of the Chinese public the way red-letter dates such as September 11 register in the U.S. That’s not to say that no one remembers, but China’s heightened security ensured that no protestors or would-be vigil observers entered Tiananmen Square today.
In recent weeks, many people whom the government feared might attempt to mark the anniversary were detained. Among them is Guo Jian, a 52-year-old, China-born, Australian artist and 1989 Tiananmen Square protester. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Guo was taken from his home on the outskirts of Beijing on Sunday night. Just a few days earlier, he had crumbled 160 kilograms of minced pork onto a diorama of Tiananmen Square. He explained to the Financial Times: “I wanted to do something privately to mark the anniversary.”
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