Globalizacija u BiH

[Svemirski_Jebach]

Posto radim nesto ovdje na faksu u vezi globalizacije i finansijskih kriza htio bih da otvorim raspravu na ovu temu.

Naime, sta moze uraditi drzava kao BiH u danasnjem globalnom sistemu za svoju ekonomiju, odnosno koje su to koristi koje bi BiH od iste mogla imati? I sta nas sprecava u tome?

Recimo, BiH nema dovoljno kapitala u vlastitim izvorima. Stednja nije toliko velika da bi mogla pokriti to. A pored toga i pogresna je alokacija kapitala - dakle banke ga iz ko zna kojih razloga ne plasiraju u ekonomiju.

Nama svakako ocajno trebaju strane investicije a one ne dolaze ili dolaze vrlo slabo i u malim kolicinama. Vjerovatni razlog je nesigurnost za investicije.

Osim toga, currency board za sada pruza makroekonomsku stabilnost ali on je privremeno rjesenje. Sta ce se desiti kada se bude morao ukinuti te se ustanovi free exchange rate nase valute. sve zemlje su nakon ukidanja istog dozivjele finansijku krizu, da li ce BiH ekonomija jednostavno krahirati nakon toga, a inflacija poceti da buja?

BiH je malo zaduzena i to je dobro, ali bez uzimanja kredita vani ne mozemo pokrenuti infrastukturne kapitalne projekte kao sto je autoput. Bez infrastrukture jaci rast je samo san.

Toliko je problema - samo ovako nabrzinu - a nigdje nikoga ko bi imao znanja da ponudi neko rjesenje. Jesmo li zbilja toliko nepismeni?

[forUMASH]

.....preduslov ekonomskog razvoja je stabilna politicka situacija....

.....hipoteticki, recimo da sam ja investitor koji posjeduje milijardu dolara spremnu za ulaganje......mogu biti i trenutno nastanjen u BH....
....zasto bih ja rizikovao ulazuci moj novac bez ikakvih drzavnih garancija u BH, kad to isto mogu uraditi u pedesetak drugih drzava svijeta i imati puno mirniji san....

....problem je sto se kod nas investicijske garancije daju na nivou politickih opcija, za sta politicke opcije ubiru pinku,a ne na nivou drzave.....prema tome, moja investicija je sigurna sve dok je politicka opcija, sa kojom sam se uvezao, na vlasti....

.....niko normalan i stabilan nece investirati u nase trziste......sve sto mozemo ocekivati je novac sumnjivog porijekla koji ne moze proci u normalnim zemljama.....naravno, takav novac ima svoju cijeni i posljedice.....

....sve u svemu, kurceva situacija....

[nineac]

svemirski banke bi investirale, ali hajde reci koliko kod nas ima dobro isplaniranih projekata. Kod nas svi projekti su vezani za sjecu sume i sl.
Politicki ambijent je prva stvar, sigurnost druga stvar. Hajde ti budi siguran ako uzmes kredit od banke, krene ti posao da ti sutra nece doci neki reketar i ponudit ti "zastitu". Pravosudni sistem nam je toliko nezavisan da tuzioci stalno hodaju po kafama, a kada im kazes nesto odma se hvataju nezavisnog sudstva, i sjede po kancelarijama i cekaju da im policija izvjestaj donese.
Nas najveci problem je inertnost i poremecene vrijednosti.
Niko nece da ulaze u zemlju gdje vlasnik birtije vozi BMW 6, a covjek koji hrani 20-30 radnika vozi Skodu. Mi smo po WSJ na 88 mjestu po slobodi ekonomije (ako je za utjehu S. Korea je na 115 a srbija nije ni rangirana).
Infrastruktura je previse zaostala. Mi govorimo o koridoru Vc kao da ce to sve probleme rjesiti. Sta je sa vezom izmedju Tuzle i Sarajeva, Bihaca i Banja luke? Zemlje koje hoce da napreduju nemogu samo imati jedan auto put. Posto oni predvidjaju da ce Vc biti zavrsen 2017, kad ce se Bihac uvezati s tim koridorom? ili Bijeljina?
Opet se svodi na ono, kakvu vlast biramo tako ce nam biti.
Dok neko nedodje i kaze otvoreno i iskreno gdje smo, a gdje cemo biti za 20 godina ako uradimo to i to, nema nista od privlacenja stranih investicija jer niko nam nevjeruje da smo ozbiljni, na kraju krajeva ti si Svemirski otisao kao i ja radi boljeg obrazovanja da bi bio konkurentniji na svjetskom trzistu rada. Nema tu emocija, otisao, pobjego iz BiH, nije patriota, ne nego si skonto da ako si konkurentniji sa svojim obrazovanjem, ljudi te drugacije gledaju. Tako je isto sa drzavom. Ako pokazemo da ozbiljno mislimo, doci ce i strane investicije.

[Svemirski_Jebach]

mislim da su sudstvo i postivanje privatnog vlasnistva bitni preduslovi bilo kakvog ekonomskog rasta ali na zalost nisu jedini...

Da li bih moze izgraditi vlastito trzista kapitala, odnosno da li moze izvrsiti akumulaciju kapitala koji bi bio ulozen u ekonomiju ili se mora osloniti iskljucivo na strane izvore?

Ja mislim da ne moze, ali ima ljudi koji tvrde da moze uz pravilnu ekonomsku politiku drzave koja kod nas ne postoji jer nas vode debili koji pojma nemaju ni o cemu. Naravno, ekonomija nije nesto jasno i precizno - tako da dva najpoznatija ekonomista mogu dati dva razlicita rjesenja od kojih ce jedno dovesti do uspjeha a drugo do propasti a obojica su npr priznati strucnjaci.

Jednostavno, meni se cini da kod nas nema ideje - nego se svi oslanjaju na ono sto je nekad bilo, jednostavno kao da svi zive u proslosti.

[revolutia]

pa eto svjetska banka i IMF ce investirati opet u boosnu:

dat ce kredit za obnovu zeljeznice, i onda ce se desiti ista pljacka kao u hrvatskoj i srbiji:

dace nam kredit da se zeljeznice "moderniziraju",,znaci od tog kredita ce se od zeljeznica napraviti prestrukturisanje u novi holding, gdje ce firmu razdvojiti na "zdravi" i "nezdravi" dio..ovaj drugi ce naravno ici u stecaj, a zdravi dio ce da kupe stranci..u srbiji je bio slucaj da su nakon prestrukturisanja osposobili samo cargo transport, a ostalo pustili da trune.

dalje, od kredita ce otplatiti "tehnoloski visak" i na taj nacin suvisne radnike (citaj suvisne troskove) novom stranom investitoru skinuti s vrata...naravno s novcem od kredita...

i sad kad sve pogledas, oni daju kredit pomocu kojeg ce otplatit otpremnine suvisnim radnicima, i modenrizirati pojedine dijelove firme, sa kreditom, koji cemo mi morati vratiti...dakle daju ti pare da im pripremis teren za zdravu investiciju..

pljacka na svjetski nacin..globalizacija je jedna opasna masinerija koja jede sitne ribe, i za bosnu je neizbijezna...

mozda sam napiso malo konfuzno ovaj post, dan mi je bio naporan i dug, tako da..nastavicemo uskoro

[nineac]

Mozemo mi naprijed. Trziste kapitala nemoze doci preko noci. Ali ako npr. krene izgradnja koridora Vc ove godine iz tri pravca, tj. iz prava juga, iz pravca sjevera, te od Visokog prema Zenici te ako se krene graditi zaobilaznica Sarajevska, ljudi ce to primjetiti, upumpat ce se sredstva u drzavu, tj. platezna moc ce ojacati jer to ej ogroman projekat.
S druge strane, ako Haris Silajdzic i tihic budu i dalje srali, i govorili kako su se sdogovorili da se dogovore, mi nikada necemo dalje.
Prije ovih izbora sam bio misljenja da netreba to tako grubo gledati, ko za koga glasa, i kako mu je.
Sada sam misljenja ko god je glasao za ovo demagoge i idiote nije nista bolje ni zasluzio, jer sam je to trazio, samo mi zao ljudi koji nisu glasali za nacionaliste i one koji su mahali ratnom retorikom.

[forUMASH]

Zašto je BiH u Bruxellesu, ali i u regiji, skoro pa u svemu na ubjedljivom posljednjem mjestu, najbolje svjedoče dvije vijesti iz švicarskog Davosa, sa ovogodišnjeg tradicionalnog okupljanja najmoćnijih svjetskih lidera, političara, ekonomista i biznismena.

Srbiju ove godine predstavlja ministar finansija Đinđićeve vlade i najozbiljniji kandidat za novog premijera Božidar Đelić. U svom blogu na web-stranici radija B 92, koji dnevno ažurira, Đelić rezimira učinak prvog dana svog boravka u Davosu: "Dogovorio sam sa predsednikom Metro Grupe, najvećeg trgovinskog lanca u istočnoj Evropi, gospodinom Hubnerom da investiraju tokom sledeće tri godine 110 miliona evra u Srbiju i otvore 3.000 novih radnih mesta… Sa vlasnikom Zdravlja iz Leskovca Torom Bjorglofsonom, predsednikom Aktavisa, dogovorio sam da otvori ove godine novi pogon u Leskovcu za proizvodnju ambalaža za lekove, gde će se zaposliti nekoliko desetina radnika kao i da se razmotre dodatne investicije u Zdravlje Leskovac. Aktavis je investirao dve milijarde evra u Bugarsku, a do sada samo sto miliona evra u Srbiju te postoji jako interesovanje i za druge branše naše ekonomije… Sa generalnim direktorom Titan Cementa Dimitrijem Papleksopulosom, koji je vlasnik cementare u Kosjeriću, razmotrilo se otvaranje novog pogona u domenu granulata sa dodatnim investicijama od 50 miliona evra… Gospođa Moldazhanova, generalni direktor Basic Element Grope, jedne od najvećih i najuspješnijih u Rusiji je izrazila želju da investiraju u domene prerade metala ali i osiguranja… Napokon, veoma sam srećan što je jedan od najpoznatijih ekonomista sveta, nobelovac Joseph Stiglic, pristao da postane savetnik buduće vlade Srbije za pitanja institucionalnih reformi i ravnomernog razvoja, gde je on bez premca… "

I dok je Đelić sve to napravio već prvog dana svog boravka, sarajevski mediji javljaju da BiH i ove godine predstavlja čelnik Islamske zajednice reis Mustafa Cerić. Činjenica da on već godinama prisustvuje samitu u Davosu svjedoči da se na BiH gleda kao na propalu evropsku državu, egzotičnu po muslimanskom plemenu i njihovom poglavici koji na engleskom jeziku govori ono što je Washingtonu i Lonodonu drago čuti.

bh dani, sedmi dan, broj 503

[pitt]

Dobro je pa nisu shaju piljara poslali :D

nego, The Economist je u pretproslom broju imao odlicne clanke o globalizaciji (ko gubi ko dobija) i njihov stav spram siromasnih i nerazvijenijih zemalja se moze primjeniti i na BiH. Da samo vidite na primjeru Ruande kako se zemlja nakon rata i stradanja moze dici na noge...

[nineac]

The Economist? Na tu rijec 99.99% "biznismena" i "politicara " bi ti na tecnom bosnaskom reklo "what a fuck is that"?

[pitt]

clanak o Rwandi i njihovom uspjehu (koji bi mi mogli a i trebali sljediti):

Rwanda

Keep looking ahead
Jan 11th 2007 | KIGALI
From The Economist print edition

Despite its dreadful history, the country in some ways is going in the right direction


THE genocide memorial in Kigali feels modest and understated, a bit like a leisure centre. Roses grow out of the gravel. The dead are contained in pits in the terraced gardens, each pit sealed with concrete slabs. The bones are packed tight together, about 265,000 bodies in all. A few minutes' drive in the other direction, down a smooth and winding tarmac road, is the Kigali golf club. This is post-genocidal Rwanda: the fairways are verdant, a new suburb sits on the hill above. The houses would not look out of place in a prosperous bit of Europe but are occupied by Rwandan civil servants, their mortgages deducted from their monthly salaries.

It is amazing to think that Rwanda, of all places, is trying to set an example of good governance in the region. When the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control of the country in the summer of 1994, it looked finished: the stench of death was everywhere. Some 800,000 Rwandans, mostly from the once-dominant Tutsi minority, had been killed by members of the majority Hutu tribe in a matter of weeks: truly a decimation. These days the country is ambitious. “The view in the past was that it was our fate to be poor,” says a minister. “We don't believe that now. We believe our fate is to be rich.”



Rwanda's government is certainly focused on “performance” and “service delivery”. So while Kenya's talks about computers in universities, Rwanda's is busy installing wireless internet in rural primary schools. The government, still RPF-dominated, says it expects to meet most of the UN's Millennium Development Goals before 2015. Alone in the region, it eagerly promotes family planning. Foreign investors are wooed. Along with neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda will join the East African Community in 2007—a big step in its plan to become a bilingual trade hub linking French-speaking central Africa with English-speaking east Africa. The idea of a rail link with Tanzania is being aired.

Donor money—guilt money, some call it—has paid for nearly all of this. It used to come with policy prescriptions attached. Now large amounts of it go straight into government coffers. For that trust, Rwanda can thank the austere if harsh leadership of its president, Paul Kagame. He says that curbing corruption is a top priority. Ministers get one car, for which they have to pay in part themselves. Mr Kagame spends his evenings reading the Harvard Business Review and other management literature. He enthuses about competition. If landlocked Rwanda is to have a future, he says, it must add value, to its people by education, then to its tea, coffee, mining and tourism.

Its recent history of genocide makes other extraordinary demands. Conciliation will take generations. The country promotes a “one Rwanda” policy that is meant to be ethnically blind. Some complain it is not at all; in many places, killers live among survivors and in others returned Tutsis dominate. The threat of Hutu extremists who live across the border in Congo has diminished. Many Hutus have come home to Rwanda. Perhaps 12,000 of them, still armed, remain in Congo, Mr Kagame reckons; but they are unlikely to destabilise Rwanda as long as Congo's government does not help them.

A recent diplomatic storm with France has been a distraction. A French investigative judge wants some of Mr Kagame's senior aides to stand trial for allegedly shooting down a French-piloted aircraft in 1994, carrying the then president of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana. Mr Kagame riposted by cutting diplomatic ties with France; this week Rwanda demanded that France arrest the wife of Habyarimana on charges she was involved in the genocide.

France's role in arming and training the Hutus who organised the killing is murky. The row has pushed Mr Kagame, who does not speak French, still closer to the Anglophone sphere; he now wants Rwanda to join the Commonwealth.

His country still faces problems, especially in politics. Mr Kagame may succumb to the cult of personality that has derailed so many other African leaders. His sometimes sinister secret police may already be more powerful than Rwanda's elected representatives. Crime may be low, but some say that political arrests and assassinations are still common; Mr Kagame rules Rwanda through fear as much as anything. The RPF has marginalised or smeared dissenting voices in the name of “one Rwanda” and the ruling party's supporters are accruing wealth and power. The Netherlands, a big donor, has reduced its bilateral aid budget to the country in protest against political repression.

The other worry is whether Rwanda's neighbours—Burundi, Congo, Tanzania and Uganda—will build the transport infrastructure to get Rwanda's improved goods to market abroad. If they do, then perhaps Rwanda can really move ahead.

[pitt]

Globalisation 1

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ECONOMICS FOCUS

Economics focus

The great unbundling

Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition


Does economics need a new theory of offshoring?



GLOBALISATION is a big word but an old idea, most economists will say, with a jaded air. The phenomenon has kept the profession's number-crunchers busy, counting the spoils and how they are divided. But it has left the blackboard theorists with relatively little to do. They are confident their traditional models of trade can handle it, even in its latest manifestations. For example, Greg Mankiw, of Harvard University, has concluded that “services offshoring fits comfortably within the intellectual framework of comparative advantage built on the insights of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.”

Ricardo illustrated his insights with the example of Portuguese wine trading for English cloth. But some trade theorists think this metaphor will no longer do. Indeed, two of them—Gene Grossman and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, of Princeton University—published a paper* last year subtitled “It's not wine for cloth anymore” (see “On the hiking trail”, August 31st 2006).

Ricardo, it seems, did only half the job. He described the first of two “great unbundlings”—as Richard Baldwin, of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, has put it in a recent guide†. Trade in wine, cloth and other goods allows production to be distanced from consumption. Countries do not need to grow grapes to enjoy the fruit of the vine; thanks to trade, they can transform cloth into wine instead.

But in Ricardo's world, a country must still take care of all of the separate tasks required to finish the goods it makes. In a country of pinmakers, to take Adam Smith's seminal example, someone must still cut, draw and straighten the wire; fashion and affix the head; then whiten and sheath the finished product, if any pins are to be made at all.

In the second great unbundling, production is spliced and diced into separate fragments that can be spread around the globe. Pin-whitening is done in one country; wire-cutting in another. Some theorists call this the “vertical disintegration of production across borders”. Thankfully, Messrs Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg have a more felicitous phrase: “trade in tasks”.

As globalisation has advanced, it has become easier to move some of these tasks offshore. For the workers who once carried them out, this has three possible consequences, two bad, one good. Start with the good news. Offshoring makes firms more productive. The tasks that are best kept close to home remain onshore; other tasks can be taken care of in cheaper places abroad. Everyone benefits from this gain in productivity, including the workers who have fewer tasks to perform. For example, Japanese electronics companies continue to flourish in American markets precisely because they have moved their assembly lines to China.

The second potential consequence of offshoring might be called the “Lou Dobbs effect”, after America's most prominent television mercantilist. When some tasks are taken overseas, that leaves less work for patriotic Americans to do, right? Well, maybe. If a whole industry leaves America's shores, demand for labour will ebb, and wages will fall. But in less extreme cases, relieving workers of some of their tasks (wire-cutting for example), allows the domestic industry to expand—and a bigger industry might find room for the displaced wire-cutters, at the same wage, albeit on different tasks.

Offshoring, it is clear, enables companies to make more stuff. But this can be a mixed blessing. If the home industry makes too much, it will depress the price of its exports on world markets, damaging the country's terms of trade, and hurting workers. This result is sometimes called the “terms of trade effect”.

Messrs Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg describe this as a “new paradigm”, a phrase guaranteed to raise the hackles of more cautious scholars. Their model may not be quite that, but nor does it sit altogether comfortably within trade economists' established way of thinking. That tradition painted in bold strokes, and identified clear winners and losers from globalisation. Economists felt sure they could predict what would be traded and who would get hurt. As Mr Baldwin points out, they made pronouncements about entire “sectors” of the economy (heralding the dawn of some industries; the twilight of others) and whole classes of workers (the college-educated versus the rest) whose fortunes were tied to them.



A bundle of results
The new breed of models paint globalisation with a much finer brush. (It is high-resolution globalisation, Mr Baldwin says.) International competition plays out not just at the level of the industry, or even the firm, but right down at the level of individual tasks—assembly, packaging, data entry—that cut across whole sectors of the economy. Moreover, in a break with most traditional models, the new theories do not take the tradability of things as a given. For Messrs Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg, the ease of trading a particular task is a matter of degree not kind; and it is a variable, not a constant. Hence tasks that seem safe from foreign competition today may not be so tomorrow. Finally, the tradability of a task might bear no relation to the amount of skill it requires. As a result, the victims of globalisation are harder to identify and the salves harder to apply.

So is globalisation to blame for the rich world's recent anxieties or not? Unfortunately, the new theories of offshoring can deliver opposite verdicts depending on precisely how they are set up. As James Markusen, of the University of Colorado, mischievously puts it, “I am confident that I can concoct a model to generate any result desired by a reader with a deep pocketbook.” If only every worker were as versatile.

[pitt]

globalisation 2




LEADERS

Globalisation and the rise of inequality

Rich man, poor man

Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition


A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalisation

James Fryer




Get article background

GLUERS and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr Nardelli's exit was as extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been. Next to his $210m severance pay, the redundant woodworkers' packages were mean to the point of provocation.

That's the way it goes all over the rich world. Since 2001 the pay of the typical worker in the United States has been stuck, with real wages growing less than half as fast as productivity. By contrast, the executive types gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland next week have enjoyed a Beckhamesque bonanza. If you look back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has increased from roughly 40 times the average—the level for four decades—to 110 times the average now.

Mr Roach wrote an article on globalisation and protectionism. Eurostat has figures on industry, trade and services within the European Union. See also America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics and the World Economic Forum.

These are the glory days of global capitalism. The mix of technology and economic integration transforming the world has created unparalleled prosperity. In the past five years the world has seen faster growth than at any time since the early 1970s. In China each person now produces four times as much as in the early 1990s. Having joined the global labour force, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries have won the chance to escape squalor and poverty. Hundreds of millions more stand to join them.

That promises to improve the lot of humanity as a whole incalculably. But in the rich world labour's share of GDP has fallen to historic lows, while profits are soaring. A clamour is abroad that Mr Nardelli and his friends among the top hundredth—or even the top thousandth—of the population are seizing the lion's share of globalisation's gains. Meanwhile everyone else—not just blue-collar factory workers but also the wider office-working middle class—shuffles along, grimly waiting for the next round of cost-cuts. They are not happy.



Fear and clothing
Signs of a backlash abound. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has counted 27 pieces of anti-China legislation in Congress since early 2005. The German Marshall Fund found last year that, although most people still say they favour trade, more than half of Americans want to protect companies from foreign competition even if that slows growth. In a hint of labour's possible resurgence, the House of Representatives has just voted to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Even Japan is alarmed about inequality, stagnant wages and jobs going to China. Europe has tied itself in knots trying to “manage” trade in Chinese textiles. The Doha round of trade talks is dying.

What is to be done about this poisonous mix? If globalisation depends upon voters who, as workers, no longer think they gain from it, how long before democracies start to put up barriers to trade? If all the riches go to the summit of society and that summit seems beyond everybody else's reach, are the wealth-creators under threat?



Should you blame China or your computer?
The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalisation. Technology—an even less resistible force—is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality and the sluggish growth of middling wages. The distinctions between technology and globalisation count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend.

For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalisation is responsible for capital's rewards outpacing those of labour is crucial, complicated and unresolved. One school, which blames globalisation, argues that the rocketing profits and sluggish middling wages of the past few years are the long-lasting results of trade, as all those new developing-country workers enter the labour market. This school says that technology helps workers by increasing their productivity and eventually their wages. The opposing school retorts that technology does not increase wages immediately, and some sorts of information technology seem to boost the returns to capital instead (think of how much more a dollar's worth of computing power can do these days). And it questions whether Western incomes will remain flat: recent wage rises in America and pay claims in Europe and Japan may start to reverse the balance back away from capital.

In practice, it is hard to parcel out the blame between technology and globalisation, because the two are so intertwined. Ask IBM, which is hastily shipping bits of its services arm to India; or the call-centre worker who sees off the threat of his job going abroad by settling for only a klix pay rise. And from a policymaker's point of view, it matters little what is causing the pain: the remedies are broadly the same.

The first rule is to avoid harming the very miracle that generates so much wealth. Take for instance the arguments about high executive pay. Some say this is simply a matter of governance—and forcing company boards to work better. If only it were that simple. High pay is, by and large, the price needed to attract and motivate gifted managers, as our special report argues in this issue. The abuses of companies such as Home Depot obscure how most high pay has been caused not by powerful bosses fixing their own wages, but by the changing job of the chief executive, the growth of large companies and the competitive market for talent. Executive-pay restrictions would not put that horse back in its box, but they would harm companies.

If the winners are difficult to curb without doing damage to your economy, the losers are tough to help. Doling out aid for the victims of trade makes sense in theory; but in practice it is increasingly hard to do (see article). When the jobs going abroad are not whole assembly lines, but bits of departments, how exactly do you pick out the person who has lost his job to globalisation from the millions of people changing jobs for other reasons? And, hardhearted though it may sound, most of the gains from trade and technology alike come from the way they redeploy investment and labour to activities that create more wealth. That, like all change, can be painful; but it is what makes a country richer. A policy locking people into jobs that could be better done elsewhere is self-defeating.

The same goes for protectionism—especially now that the victims of globalisation are so scattered throughout the rich world, not camped in embattled industries. Trade has always created losers and it has always been in their narrow interest to seek protection (even if it hurts everyone else). But if many workers across many different industries were to demand protection at once, the selfish appeal of such a shield would fade.

Because hardship from globalisation is so difficult to distinguish from hardship in general, it would be open season to put up trade barriers in industry after industry. Widespread protection would surely meet with retaliation from abroad. Even if people gained as workers they would lose as consumers, investors and future pensioners. Moreover, the protection of jobs and pay would be short-term, because it would gradually lead to companies losing competitiveness as rivals in India and China innovated (see article). Paradoxically, therefore, the greater the number of people threatened by globalisation, the less each of them is likely to gain from getting their governments to stand in its way.



The limits of redistribution
If protectionism will not help the losers, what about using the tax system? Some argue that redistributing more cash from the Nardellis to the Galaxians would not just make society less unequal; it would also buy middle-class support for globalisation. In fact the two arguments should be kept separate.

This newspaper has long argued that a mobile society is better than an equal one: disparities are tolerable if combined with meritocracy and general economic advance. For decades America has shown how dynamic economies are better than equality-driven ones at generating overall prosperity. That still leaves plenty of room to debate how progressive to make taxation (some of George Bush's tax cuts were needlessly regressive), or how lavish to make public services (American welfare is hardly generous). But a society would want compelling evidence that the social contract had been torn up before flexing the tax system to offset what may turn out to be only temporary fluctuations in relative incomes. And it makes little sense for free-traders to use taxes to buy off people from voting for protectionism, when doing so would in any case be against their interests.



Active, not reactive
Instead, the way to ease globalisation is the same as the way to ease other sorts of economic change, including the impact of technology. The aim is to help people to move jobs as comparative advantage shifts rapidly from one activity to the next. That means less friction in labour markets and a regulatory system that helps investment. It means an education system that equips people with general skills that make them mobile. It means detaching health care and pensions from employment, so that every time you move your job, you are not risking an awful lot else besides. And for those who lose their jobs—from whatever cause—it means beefing up assistance: generous training and active policies to help them find work.

None of that comes cheap—and much of it takes years to work. But an economy that gains from globalisation can more easily find the money to pay for it all. The businesspeople and politicians gathering on their Swiss Alp next week should certainly spend more time worrying about the citizens of Galax; but they also need to be far more courageous about defending a process that can do so much good even if its impact can sometimes appear so cruel.

[pitt]

necu vise tita mi :D

ECONOMICS FOCUS

Economics focus

Third thoughts on foreign capital

Nov 16th 2006
From The Economist print edition


If it doesn't kill you, financial globalisation will make you stronger






THE next great globalisation, according to Frederic Mishkin's new book* of that name, will be financial in character: the flow of foreign money into stocks, bonds and banking in emerging economies. A recently appointed governor of the Federal Reserve, Mr Mishkin makes a clear and compact case for cosmopolitan capital; and his footnotes (all 55 pages of them) weigh and tally a wealth of economic research. But the title of his book is a bit odd: wasn't cross-border finance the last, rather disappointing, globalisation?

That, certainly, was the verdict of a 2003 review† of the evidence by a quartet of economists (Eswar Prasad, Ken Rogoff, Shang-Jin Wei and Ayhan Kose) who looked at almost as many studies as Mr Mishkin. They found no robust proof that financial globalisation helped countries to grow more quickly. The song was not original, but the singers were impossible to ignore: all four were prominent economists at the IMF; Mr Rogoff, indeed, was the fund's chief economic adviser. It was as if the Fed's economists had failed to find any virtue in low inflation.

Now the same authors are offering another reappraisal of financial globalisation††, which Mr Prasad presented earlier this month at the IMF's annual research conference. The next globalisation is probably going to happen, he said (money has a habit of seeping across borders, whether you like it or not), and it may be great. But not for the reasons you might think.


It's not about the money
An economist's first thought on financial globalisation is straightforward: capital should be free to flow “downhill” from high-income countries where it is abundant to poorer countries where it is scarce. By importing savings from abroad, poor countries can invest more than they are able to set aside from their own meagre output. But Mr Prasad and his colleagues reckon that this direct benefit of foreign capital—the extra money it provides—is “arguably” worth less than a number of indirect ones; namely a deeper financial system, better-run companies and a more disciplined macroeconomic policy.

Thanks to the first of these indirect benefits, “financial deepening”, open countries enjoy bigger, more liquid stockmarkets and a lower cost of equity. They also benefit from more sophisticated banking. Foreign lenders are often stronger and better run than their local rivals. They introduce new products and know-how and they give dissatisfied depositors somewhere else to take their custom, forcing local banks to raise their game. Moreover, foreign banks accustomed to sound regulation, prudent oversight and honest accounting in their home countries may lobby for the same things abroad.

The four authors also think that cosmopolitan capitalists can police companies and officials better than locals can. Foreign investors may have a better nose for boardroom shenanigans and a strong incentive to protect minority shareholders. A recent study of 365 firms listed on the Thai Stock Exchange by Sudarat Ananchotikul of the University of California, Berkeley, found that foreign institutional investors holding a minority stake help to ensure that the company is run for the benefit of all its owners. (That said, when foreign companies buy controlling stakes in Thai firms, they are as keen as anyone else to exploit minority shareholders, she finds.)

Mr Prasad also highlights a third side-benefit. Capital flows should improve a country's macroeconomic stewardship by rewarding prudence and punishing profligacy. In practice, open countries do seem to achieve lower inflation—though there is scant evidence that they run smaller budget deficits.

If these indirect benefits do matter, it may explain why Mr Prasad and company failed three years ago to prove a link between the migration of capital and growth. Like other researchers, they sought to distil the impact of financial openness by straining out the influence of other factors that might lift growth—such as financial depth, institutional strength and macroeconomic stability. But if foreign capital promotes these three virtues, then the study may have inadvertently strained out much of the benefit of financial globalisation.

There is, however, “a fly in the ointment”, Mr Prasad says. Even if it has these indirect pay-offs, foreign capital can also make mischief in countries that are not ready for it. Overseas investors show little mercy to countries where public spending gets out of hand, the currency gets out of line, the banks are poorly supervised or companies rip off outside owners. Mr Prasad thus lays out several “thresholds” that emerging economies should cross before they open up. What are they? A country's financial system should be quite sophisticated, he says; its companies fairly well run; and its macroeconomic policies reasonably disciplined.

Does this list sound familiar? As Mr Prasad points out, there is an awkward paradox in his findings. His checklist of “thresholds” echoes his catalogue of “indirect benefits”. In short, the things financial globalisation strengthens are also the things a country needs to have in place in order to benefit from it.

Mr Mishkin argues that globalisation itself stimulates the reforms needed to make it work. That is often true of trade in goods, but it is sadly not always true of trade in assets. “Poorer countries must let go of the idea that financial infrastructure and wealth can be built up when the countries remain closed off to the rest of the world,” he writes. But Mr Prasad's more ambivalent take suggests poorer countries, lacking financial infrastructure, might want to hang on to that idea a bit longer.

[nineac]

cito vec, interesantan clanak, ali oni koji bi trebali da citaju The Economist kod nas to nerade.

[pitt]

vjerujem da ih ima sto ne znaju sta se desava , a trebali bi.....

ovo je za one koji nemaju access a interesuje ih o cemu se trenutno prica kad se spomene globalizacija. nadam se da svemirko nece zamjeriti :D

[Svemirski_Jebach]

ne uopste ne zamjerim cak obratno, treba postirati stalno.

Stiglitz je prof kod nas na faksu a evo savjetnik Srbijanske vlade, a Djelic je bio partner u Baker&Mackenzie u New Yorku, covjek ima background jak ko zemlja, puno kontakata...zamisli njega i nekog naseg levata (Terzic, Spiric ili ona Borjana Kristo) u toj ulozi. Ko dva svijeta.

Jebi ga, kad nemamo ljude koji prate sta se desava u svijetu...

[pitt]

Jos samo da dodam....da skoro sve republike bivse nam domovine redovno reklamiraju po biznis magazinima po svijetu ("invest in macedonia","grow your wealth in croatia", etc).....samo nikad da naletim na nesto tipa "ulozite sa dobrim bosnjama" Dok investori (u usa bar) povecavaju exposure za investicije u "emerging markets" i prevrcu sve zivo da nadju nova trzista i investicije........mi sjedimo u mraku i cekamo da nas neko pod lupom nadje. Sramota....

[Dezze]

Za sve koji nisu bas upoznati sa globalizacijom i njenim aspektima, preporucujem knjigu "Globalizacija" (Manfred B. Steger). Mozete je kupiti u dzepnom izdanju. Izdavac je TKP Sahinpasic. Nije losa jer obradjuje sve aspekte globalizacije.

[Dezze]

Posto radim nesto ovdje na faksu u vezi globalizacije i finansijskih kriza htio bih da otvorim raspravu na ovu temu.

Naime, sta moze uraditi drzava kao BiH u danasnjem globalnom sistemu za svoju ekonomiju, odnosno koje su to koristi koje bi BiH od iste mogla imati? I sta nas sprecava u tome?

Pa ja mislim da nas nista ne sprijecava u tome da budemo dio globalizacijskih tokova. Ustvari, niko nas ni ne pita da li to zelimo - globalizacija nas sama uzima pod svoje okrilje. Koristi od toga mogu imati svi, ali vlade najmanje. A ako vlade imaju malo koristi (jer gube kontrolu), onda na taj nacin i gradjani gube kontrolu nad svojom zemljom. Tako da je globalizacija mac sa dvije ostrice.

Recimo, BiH nema dovoljno kapitala u vlastitim izvorima. Stednja nije toliko velika da bi mogla pokriti to. A pored toga i pogresna je alokacija kapitala - dakle banke ga iz ko zna kojih razloga ne plasiraju u ekonomiju.

Banke gledaju kako ce na najbolji moguci nacin taj novac plasirati. Njih zanima samo ROI (Return on Investment), zar ne? A kod nas ulagati u privredu je kao da sjednes i cijepas pare.....dobro, malo karikiram, ali je sustina jasna.

Nama svakako ocajno trebaju strane investicije a one ne dolaze ili dolaze vrlo slabo i u malim kolicinama. Vjerovatni razlog je nesigurnost za investicije.

Nama su prijeko potrebne greenfield investicije, za razliku od ovih FDI (Foreign Direct Investments-direktne strane investcije). Lako je kupiti vec postojecu kompaniju. Ali najveca dobit za sve (vlasnike, radnike, gradjane i vladu) je ustvari nova fabrika koja ce stvarati novu vrijednost. Alo to sa sobom nosi ogroman rizik, a nasi politicari ne rade nista da taj rizik (ili barem percepciju rizika) za ulagace smanje.

Osim toga, currency board za sada pruza makroekonomsku stabilnost ali on je privremeno rjesenje. Sta ce se desiti kada se bude morao ukinuti te se ustanovi free exchange rate nase valute. sve zemlje su nakon ukidanja istog dozivjele finansijku krizu, da li ce BiH ekonomija jednostavno krahirati nakon toga, a inflacija poceti da buja?

Mislim da se mi od Valutnog odbora necemo odvojiti dok ne udjemo u EU. A tada, opet, i hvala nebesima, nasi politicari nece imati direktnog uticaja na monetarne tokove. Nije ni to, naravno, najbolje rjesenje. Finansijska samostalnost je svakako najbolja. Ali kad pomislim sta je alternativa - neka hvala!

BiH je malo zaduzena i to je dobro, ali bez uzimanja kredita vani ne mozemo pokrenuti infrastukturne kapitalne projekte kao sto je autoput. Bez infrastrukture jaci rast je samo san.

Slazem se. Samo treba paziti da omjer duga i vlastitog kapitala bude takav da ne ugrozi ekonomski razvoj u dugom roku (jer bi se, u suprotnom, moglo desiti da nakon izgradnje fabrika isl. dodjemo u situaciju da ne mozemo visak sredstava ulagati u daljni razvoj nego da ga usmjeravamo u vracanje dugova. Cini mi se da se Hrvatska krece tim pravcem.

Toliko je problema - samo ovako nabrzinu - a nigdje nikoga ko bi imao znanja da ponudi neko rjesenje. Jesmo li zbilja toliko nepismeni?

Mozda sam previse optimistican, ali mislim da imamo znanja. Dakle u pitanju je ona nasa stara boljka - imamo sposobnih ali nepodobnih.

[digger]

Da ne ponavljam vec napisano, valja nam priznati da masu ekonomskih elemenata nece imati efekta na nas; nestro slicno kao sto su mnoge bolesti postale imune u odnose na antibiotike.

Najprije, mi se za dugo necemo uspijeti dogovoriti. Zemlja sa tri zastave tesko da ima sta da trazi zajednicko. RS ce gurati svoje sto znaci da nema interesa da se 'dogovara' i savjetuje sa Federacijim.

Federacija opet cini sve da ne ucini nista. Sta je napravljeno ili osposobljeno u zadnjih 10 godina? Sta je sa putevima i zeljeznicom, jer jebes sve price o razvoju ako infrastruktura ne postoji. Sta je sa bogatstvom voda za nove elektrane? Koji su to nove fabrike?

Titova juga je u 15 godina napravila privredna cuda, dok danasnja BiH pravi samo cuda.

Napretka nema jer birokracija postoji samo za sebe, politicari samo za svoje i za sebe, a raja ostaje sirotinja. Nisam li negdje procitao da su od onih u radnom odnosu, 2/3 zaposlenih u drzavnoj administraciji?

Predstavnik BiH (citaj: Federacije) u Davosu je Reis Ceric?!? A u istom dahu mi bi trebali da raspravljamo stvari po ekonomskim zakonima?!? No kidding! Jos gore, neka Ceric putuje gdje hoce, ali se pitam ko je njega 'ozvanicio?' Neki vidoviti ko vjeruje da ce reis biti u stanju da uspostavi privrednu lobisticku vezu sa Zapadom? I mi takvima dajemo kljuc u ruke da vode drzavu u 'svijetliju' buducnost.

Takodjer govorimo o mladim i sposobnim kadrovima. Well... dio sposobnih mladih je vec vani ili trenutno radi na tome, a drugom dijelu mladih i sposobnih fale podobne familijarne veze ili slicne 'podobnosti' da bi napredovali. Istovremeno, citam da je veliki broj evropskih imigranata u Kanadi odlucio da se vrati ili se vec vratio u staru domovinu. Kod nas je obratno.

Kratka nota:
Trazio sam detalje oko olaksica za one koji zele da se vrate u BiH. Poslao par e-mail na neke od adresa sa upitom:

Pokusavam da pronadjem izvor informacija za one koji bi zeljeli da se vrate natrag u BiH.

Da li postoji kontakt na Internetu gdje se mogu dobiti detalji oko prava, logistike, carinskih propisa za uvoz kucanstva i svega onoga sto je od interesa za povratnike?

Da li postoji kakav stampani pamflet ili slicno?

Svi vi koji ste vani veoma dobro razumijete sta sam pitao i kako jedenostavan odgovor bi mogao da dobijem: jest, stampali smo, imate materijal na tom i tom webu, ili pamflete u ambasadama/konzulatima sa svim detaljima.

Ah 'diggera' budale?!?

Iz "Vasa Prava BiH" dobijem:

Obzirom da se iz Vašeg e-mail ne vidi da li ste imate namjeru vratiti u F BIH ili u RS, te da li ste izvršili povrat svoje imovine, kao ni u kakvom je stanju ( devastirana ili nije), to Vam u tom smislu trenutno nismo u mogućnosti ponuditi u konkretne odgovore. Ukoliko Vas pak interesuje ostvarivanje nekog prava konkrentno, možete nam se ponovo obratiti, bilo putem e-maila ili pak lično u jednu od naših kancelarija, i mi ćemo Vam dati odgovor.

Kome treba ovo sranje?

Dakle, postoji skoro citavo ministarstvo za povratnike koje nije u stanju da odstampa i postavi na Internet osnovne detalje oko gornjeg, telefonske kontakte, adrese institucija, i slicno.

Siguran sam da bi se isto dogodilo da sam poslao upit sa zeljom da ulozim milion dolara u BH privredu.

[pitt]

Ja vec napisah jednom o svom iskustvu sa nekim brokerskim kucama na SASE.......od 5 poslanih mejlova za instrukcije za potenciono ulaganje......odgovor (neku vrstu) sam dobio od samo jedne....i to nakon 3 sedmice. Profesionalnost i Customer service jos nepoznata imenica meni se cini.

[pitt]

Former Yugoslavia

Talking business
Aug 31st 2006 | SARAJEVO
From The Economist print edition

When commerce beckons, political and linguistic barriers come tumbling down


ANYONE interested in doing business in the region that used to be called Yugoslavia might be tempted not to bother—on the ground that its successor states were all very small, obsessed with minor linguistic and cultural differences, and generally not worth the effort.

A few years ago this might have been true, but now things have changed. Have a browse in a branch of Buybook, a Bosnian bookseller. In one section are shelves of “foreign” titles (by British or French writers, for example), and in another books by “local” authors. But “local” in this case does not mean only Bosnian. It means anyone writing in the language once called Serbo-Croatian—which is spoken, with only small variations, in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro.



In business and economics, as well as linguistics and culture, the old Yugoslav space is re-emerging. Damir Uzunovic, the director of Buybook, complains that it is still hard to sell Bosnian books in Serbia; but otherwise the book trade between all the countries which speak nas jezik—our language, as it is sometimes called in a desperate effort to sound neutral—has been flourishing.

After all, together the populations of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia make up a market of some 16m people. Macedonians and Slovenes, also ex-Yugoslavs, speak different but closely related tongues; if you add them, the number swells to 20m. It grows to 22m if you throw in the Kosovo Albanians—most of whom understand the common Slavic language even if they abhor it. In any case, the simple fact that all members of the quarrelsome ex-Yugoslav family can understand one another (linguistically at least) makes it easy to market products of every kind.

Before the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s the country had plenty of strong brands. When it fell apart those brands lost most of their devotees. Now, partly thanks to the normalisation of relations between the former Yugoslav republics, those familiar labels are surging back. They include everything from Croatian chocolates to Slovene juices to Montenegrin wines.

Some of the change is psychological. A few years ago Croatian radio stations would not play Serbian pop. That taboo has now gone. Radio stations which specialise in “Yu-nostalgia” and festivals celebrating the music that all Yugoslavs once shared have become wildly popular. The best locally produced film about the wars—“Vukovar: The Final Cut”—is a joint Serbian-Croatian production. It tells the story of the devastating siege of the eastern Croatian town in 1991.

The re-emergence of a Yugoslav market in goods and culture has been helped by a fairly general economic recovery. People now have more money to spend, and they are using some of their extra cash to pay for cable-television packages that serve up broadcasts (and advertisements) from across the old country. In recent years Merkator, a Slovene supermarket chain, has made strong advances across the region. Croatia's main petrol company, INA, is also recovering some lost ground outside its home territory.

In diplomacy as well as commerce, the ex-Yugoslav states are getting along better and at last coming to recognise that they have common interests. But that may not suit everybody. Even though Serbia is a long way from joining the European Union, its interpreters had been licking their lips at the thought of thousands of pages of EU rules and regulations needing translation. Imagine their disappointment when the Croats, keen to smooth Serbia's European path, simply sent their Serbian colleagues all the translations they had already made. This left just a little tidying up (and a change of script from Latin to Cyrillic) to be done in order to convert the documents from the Croatian language to the slightly different Serbian.

[nineac]

E dok je nama Cerica nema napretka., Nas ce globalizacija zahvatiti ali kao potrosacko trziste a ne kao proizvodno i potrosacko. Trosit cemo pare koje salje dijaspora i eto. Do tada ce Ceric, Tihic i sl, kao u Tursko doba na sjelima odlucivati sta cemo.
Sto se tice povratka, pa ja jos uvijek mislim da se vratim kada zavrsim svu skolu, i sad koliko je takvih kao ja? Svi vole Bosnu vise od ove jebene amerike, ali ovdje vladaju vrijednosti za razliku od situacije dole. Kod nas se necijeni znanje i trud, nego familijarne i politicke veze. To sto neko nije znao odgovoriti na pitanje koje si ti digger postavio nije stvar da li znaju odgovoriti na to pitanje, nego da su oni totalno izgubili smisao za realnost. Kod nas ako odes vani, supak si, nisi patriota itd. U svijetu je vec stotinama godina normalno da odes na dodatnu edukaciju, samo kod nas je to problem, zato oni u ministarstvu nisu ni razmislili da li mozda neko obrazovan hoce da se vrati, neko ko razumije svjetske trendove, pa hajmo mu pomoci da nesto nadje, neka radi. Hrvatska podupire svoje studente koji zavrsavaju na zapadu. Oni su realni i znaju da njihovi fakulteti nemogu parirati zapadnim, ali ako privuku dovoljno obrazovanih, mladih ljudi sa diplomama iz Zapadne evrope i amerike mozda za nekih 15 godina hrvatsko obrazovanje dodje na visok nivo.
Kod nas na fakultetima 90% profesora se neostikom zaljepilo za stolice i umrijet ce u njima, samo da neko drugi, bolji nedodje.
To pismo od ministarstva, oni su odgovorili samo reda radi, niko se nije ni potrudio da malo prokonta da ti pomogne, nego tek zadovolji formu, ono da se nesto radi, jer kod nas je birokratija sama sebi postala svrhom!

[digger]

...Stiglitz je prof kod nas na faksu a evo savjetnik Srbijanske vlade, a Djelic je bio partner u Baker&Mackenzie u New Yorku, covjek ima background jak ko zemlja, puno kontakata...zamisli njega i nekog naseg levata (Terzic, Spiric ili ona Borjana Kristo) u toj ulozi. Ko dva svijeta.

Jebi ga, kad nemamo ljude koji prate sta se desava u svijetu...

Kada bi BiH imala samo dio lobija kakav ima Srbija, to bi bila pjesma. Ne samo da su isti potekli od dugotrajnih etnicki i religioznih veza (Grcka, Rusija, Bugarska), nego i na zapadu kroz visokokvalitetan nivo emigracije i zelje istih da odrzava dobre kontakte sa onima koji mogu dobro doci.

Rezultat ovoga je bio ocit za vrijeme rata gdje su srpski nacionalisti u drugim zemljama bili jako dobro organizovani i vidljivi. Bili su u novinama, na TV, pravili su web stranice, i sve sto je trebalo da se zapad bolje lobira.

I sigurno je da redovno nalaze nacina da sto bolje iskoriste Davos.

Volio bih da znam sta je Ceric tamo mogao da ucini za SVE nas.

Btw, da li neko zna da li Ceric govori strane jezike i koje?

[boucheron]

Sve dok mi budemo cekali da nam neko drugi da sadaku i dok budemo slali politicare sa ogranicenim dejstvima koji svojim izjavama napadaju moju i vasu inteligenciju, nece nikada biti bolje. .