Archive
Reuters blog archive
from MacroScope:
Greek bond rebound masks stark economic reality
Ten-year Greek government bond yields tumbled to their lowest in nearly three years one day after Fitch upgraded the country's sovereign credit ratings.
Borrowing costs fell to 8.21 percent - the lowest since June 2010, just after Greece received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and European Union. The difference between 10- and 30-year yields was also at its least negative since that time.
The move comes after Fitch Ratings raised Greece to B-minus from CCC citing a rebalancing of the economy and progress in eliminating its fiscal and current account deficits that have reduced the risk of a euro zone exit.
The fall in borrowing costs suggests investors are pricing out that possibility, as well as the prospect of another debt restructuring, analysts say.
from India Insight:
Thirty-three percent of world’s poorest live in India
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)
India has 33 percent of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion people, even though the country's poverty rate is half as high as it was three decades ago, according to a new World Bank report.
from Photographers Blog:
More soup for more poor
Buenos Aires, Argentina
By Enrique Marcarian
I first photographed a soup kitchen in 1998, in a parish in one of Buenos Aires’ famous “villas miserias,” which literally means “misery towns” in reference to its large slums. At that time I only saw children taking their daily rations and often smiling at my camera.
I assumed that the sheer number of children depending on soup kitchens was just circumstantial, and the next governments would improve the situation for them and there would be more being fed at home instead of by charities.
from Reihan Salam:
A poor solution
The minimum wage debate is back, thanks to President Barack Obama. In his State of the Union address this week, he noted that a full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would earn $14,500 a year. This is an amount that would be very low for a single adult living alone, let alone the parent with two children whom the president invoked in his speech. And so he called for a sharp increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour, an amount that would be indexed to inflation, as a way to fight poverty and to give the economy a boost.
What the president didn’t mention is that the share of full-time workers who earn the federal minimum wage is very low. Mark Perry, an economist affiliated with the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, observes that as of 2011, only 1.7 percent of full-time hourly employees were earning the minimum wage or less. Minimum-wage earners were more common among those aged 16 to 19 – 22.8 percent of these workers were earning the minimum wage or less. Of course, many of these workers live with their parents and are generally not the sole source of support for themselves or their families.
from The Human Impact:
UNDP’s Helen Clark: balancing water, food, energy key to post-2015 goals
Global development goals due to replace current anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015 could be unified by a concept that calls for an integrated view of economic growth and development, said Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The concept -- the water-energy-food nexus -- aims to create a sustainable economy and a healthy environment by considering how each of the three elements interrelate and are affected by decision-making.
from India Insight:
Turning a Bangalore shanty town into a mall
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of Thomson Reuters)
The Bangalore city government and a private developer kicked more than 1,500 poor families out of subsidised housing in January, razed their neighbourhood and left them homeless. The reason? They want to build new, better housing – and a mall.
from The Great Debate:
We must focus on the working poor
In many respects the economy is healing, as both the unemployment rate and hiring statistics slowly improve. But there are growing numbers of Americans being left out.
These are not just the unemployed. Rather they are families that, despite having a working adult in the home, earn less than twice the federal poverty income threshold – a widely recognized measure of family self-sufficiency. They are working, but making too little to build economically secure lives. And their number has grown steadily over the past five years.
from The Great Debate:
Government can reduce inequality, but chooses not to
This essay is a response to the Reuters special report The Unequal State of America.
Income inequality is a difficult story to get your arms around, and I think Reuters has done a splendid job. I was particularly intrigued to read about the hollowing out of middle-class jobs within the federal government in D.C. I wasn’t aware that the government had so thoroughly followed the private sector’s lead in this regard.
from Photographers Blog:
Coffin, sweet coffin
By Damir Sagolj
Just around the corner from where Blade Runner met Bruce Lee, in the neighborhood where Hong Kong’s millions are made, 24 people live their lives in coffins. They call it home - but they're only 6 by 3 feet wooden boxes, nicknamed coffins and packed into a single room to make more money for the rich.
In a crazy chase for more dollars, landlords in the island city are building something unthinkable in the rest of the world – a beehive for people collected from the margins of society. Math is a rat; pitiless and brutal. Twenty-four times 1450 Hong Kong dollars a month is more than anyone would pay for this just over 500 square feet room.
from Photographers Blog:
Learning the lessons of the slums
By Danish Siddiqui
If you are flying into Mumbai, the first thing you'll see from mid-air are the visually beautiful rows of slums. I have always treated the slums and their inhabitants with respect.
Every metropolitan city (at least in India) has slums, as more and more people travel to the cities for better opportunities. Unfortunately, not everyone is fortunate enough to live in a planned neighborhood.
