The truth is that it is the sinusoidal movement of economies between stage 1 and stage 2 which contributes to growth, while the participants in stage 3 very rarely contribute to any ‘real economic growth’ as their entire theatre is virtual.
The truth is that it is the sinusoidal movement of economies between stage 1 and stage 2 which contributes to growth, while the participants in stage 3 very rarely contribute to any ‘real economic growth’ as their entire theatre is virtual.
In December 2007, Listed credit derivatives (secondary leverage) stood at USD 548 trillion (to put that in context, The GDP of the entire world is USD 50 trillion).
Classic economic theory simply will not allow governments and regulatory bodies to deal with bubbles effectively, as they will grow to tremendous sizes immensely fast, meaning that the amount of support needed when they burst vastly exceeds the value of most economies.
Because we have so vigorously rolled out tuberculosis treatment programs, in some countries with great success, we have fuelled a rising pandemic of multiply drug-resistant (MDR) TB and extremely drug-resistant (XDR) TB.
Roughly 100 countries in the world have already eliminated malaria (most of them since the Second World War). Of the 100 countries in the world that still have endemic malaria, 39 are in the process of eliminating.
We are scientifically naked in front of this threat. We do not have the diagnostics to quickly detect an MDR or XDR case. Once detected, we do not have the drugs to effectively treat the patient at reasonable cost, and we do not have a TB vaccine.
HIV/AIDS is the greatest pandemic in human history. It is chronic pandemic, in the sense that its rise and fall is measured in decades. The known part of this pandemic is now three decades old, and it has several decades still to run.
Governments rarely do anything out of true altruism.
In times of crisis, whether through conflict or nature, it is not an option for us to assist people but an obligation.
The twenty million people who currently need assistance in Pakistan are not terrorists, nor of strategic importance for our governments. They are much more important than that, they are people like you and me- men, women, families, children- who only want the best for their lives.
We are no longer sovereign-islands protected by fortified walls and arbitrary map-lines- we are an interconnected global family who depend on each other in incredibly profound ways.
A country that stops its citizens having access to Facebook, say, or Google or Skype, faces real disadvantages – from inward investment to domestic discontent.