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(11.05.2022)
Speaking alongside Austria’s chancellor and foreign minister in Vienna, Guterres also said talks were ongoing to evacuate more civilians from conflict zones in Ukraine.
„I have to say that I am deeply concerned, namely with the risks of hunger becoming widespread in different parts of the world because of the dramatic food security situation we are facing because of the war in Ukraine,“ he said.
India prohibited wheat exports that the world was counting on to alleviate supply constraints sparked by the war in Ukraine, saying that the nation’s food security is under threat.
Exports will still be allowed to countries that require wheat for food security needs and based on the requests of their governments,
„As of the end of the business day on April 26, Gazprom Export did not receive payment for the gas supplied in April from these two companies, Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) in rubles, as required by Russian presidential order No. 172 dated 31.03.2022. Gas supplied since April 1 must be paid for in rubles by means of new bank details, which counterparties were timely informed about,“ the company said.
The paper said the magnesium shortage was not a simple issue that could be resolved by increasing production from China.
„Global supply chains face challenges of climate change targets, high inflation and logistics obstacles,“ it noted in an editorial on Monday.
(October 19, 2021)
Some Chinese fertilizer cargoes ready to be shipped are being held up by local authorities for additional checks or to obtain new export certificates, according to people familiar with the matter. The supplies will either end up being sold on the domestic market or face delays in being exported, said the people, who asked not to be named as they are not authorized to speak on the matter.
(Sept 28, 2021)
“We’re in a trade war,” Ezinga said. “You’ve got a supply-restricted market today. Ten to 12 years ago, you had a demand-led market with some supply constraints. Logistics is a mess, but I feel pretty comfortable that we’re going to have the supply in the U.S. It’s just — at what price?”
(08 Oct 2021)
Unless the Chinese government allocates new export quotas for 2021, only 5.87 million mt, or 1.47 million mt/month, of quotas were available for gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel exports between September and December, Platts reported earlier. China exported 31.13 million mt, or 3.89 million mt/month, of oil products between January-August, data from the country’s General Administration of Customs showed.
(26.10.2021)
With the quotas running out, the oil companies have decided to lower their gasoil and gasoline exports to minimum levels to ensure domestic supplies, while saving quotas for exporting jet fuel, Platts reported earlier. Jet fuel currently faces poor demand in China.
Beijing is set to cut China’s key oil product exports in an effort to reduce carbon emissions along the value chain.
(28.09.2021)
European gas prices rose by 10%, with price pressure exacerbated by a dwindling supply from Russia.
Supply dropped on Tuesday as the flow of Russian gas via the Yamal-Europe pipeline fell by more than half, the Interfax news agency reported, citing data from the grid operator Gascade.
The situation in the UK, where market prices have quadrupled in the past year, is particularly acute.
(20.09.2021)
“The gap in terms of injecting gas into European [underground gas storage] UGS facilities cannot be closed. Europe is going to enter the autumn/winter period with a gas shortage in its UGS facilities. The question is, how big is the shortage going to be?” the Russian executive said.
“They might even break new records very soon,” Miller said. He went on to note that despite European prices, Asian markets continued to pay a premium. As a result, gas is flowing into Asia.
A number of chip enterprises in China have halted production temporarily, including suppliers of semiconductors for foreign companies, amid a severe nationwide power shortage due to soaring coal prices and policies to reduce energy consumption.
CWTC, a semiconductor packaging material supplier for NXP and Infineon Technologies, released a notice on Sunday saying that its factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu had suspended semiconductor production from September 26 to 30, in accordance with the local policy on power reduction.
(25.09.2021)
Nearly 80% of the affected companies are in Ma’an, where a production halt order was issued for Sept. 21-30, according to the official.
The central government is pressing local authorities to reduce energy consumption as part of a national green transition strategy to lower emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases. Beijing aims by 2025 to reduce national energy consumption per unit of GDP by 13.5% from 2020 while cutting carbon emissions 18%. Local governments have been given specific reduction goals.
(28.09.2021)
A number of Chinese provinces are enforcing power cuts in line with the country’s energy consumption and carbon reduction goals, catching many firms off guard, and it remains unknown whether the policy will become a long-term one.
(01.09.2021)
China’s waning economic momentum dealt a fresh blow, with the official Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) on Thursday showing the country’s factory activity unexpectedly shrank in September due to wider curbs on electricity use.
(28.09.2021)
Also on Friday there were reports that power rationing and forced halts to factory production in China were widening – there were power curbs in 10 out of 23 provinces amid electricity supply issues and a push to enforce environmental regulations.
(02.09.2021)
According to an agreement signed between the government and these hospitals, they were supposed to receive a 630-million-shekel budget between January and June 2021. Of this money, 300 million shekels were for their routine operations and 330 million shekels were for coronavirus related work. The agreement was also supposed to provide another 55 million shekels a month between June and December. However, the government has only provided these hospitals with a total of 300 million shekels.
The first test in progressives’ push to reexamine U.S. military aid to Israel could be a $735 million precision-guided munitions sale. The Biden administration notified Congress it approved the sale before the Gaza conflict started, but it became a flashpoint over the past week after news reports publicly revealed the sale.
A group of progressives led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution in the House to block the sale, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Senate version.
Right-wing Central American politicians are applauding Plan Biden, a US strategy promising corporate investment in return for neoliberal reforms. They pledge to remain in the US “sphere of influence” and isolate China and Russia, while calling for regime change against Nicaragua’s leftist government.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Guatemala’s capital on Saturday, setting fire to the nation’s congressional building in a show of anger over a budget bill passed this week that cut funding for health care and education.
The demonstrations in Guatemala City, which also included peaceful marches in the central plaza, rocked a nation still recovering from back-to-back hurricanes that displaced thousands of people, destroyed homes and obliterated critical infrastructure.
Hundreds of citizens joined the demonstration to reject budget cuts and layoffs of workers prompted by the policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are being implemented by the right-wing administration to access a US$6.5 billion loan.
Wabba said the NLC would also mobilize its members, civil society allies and other social partners to try to resist the policies that they claimed have driven many into poverty.
To review the situation: earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported that Biden’s “campaign rolled out a $3.5 trillion economic program over the past month” — one that “promises to invest in clean energy and caregiving, buy more made-in-America goods, and start narrowing the country’s racial wealth gaps.” This, said the news service, was proof that Biden no longer adhered to an ideology of austerity and deficit hawkery — which would be good news.
But then on the eve of Biden’s convention speech, the Democratic nominee’s top aide suggested to Washington reporters that, in fact, that’s not true.
The former „troika“ of Greece’s creditors, the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund had „forced (Greece) to do reforms“ even though „there was never really any domestic buy-in“
A six-monthly review of economic performance carried out by the European Commission was sufficient, Mitsotakis said.
Eliminating the ACA would end medical insurance for more than 20 million Americans. It would also end widely popular provisions of the law, such as extending parents‘ coverage to children up to the age of 26 and prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.
Trump and congressional Republicans have long said they want to „repeal and replace“ Obamacare but have yet to offer legislation addressing what would take its place.
– Only credit lines (#loans)
– No mutualised debt (#Eurobonds)
– No currency issued to countries (#monetary #sovereignty)
– Free money for financiers, not the real economy
– Skyrocket the #debt/#GDP ratio => more #austerity soon.
The Eurogroup is trying to find a compromise between Italy, France and Spain, on the one hand, who want ‚coronabonds‘, and northern deficit hawks like the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland who advocate the use of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), rejecting any mutualizing of debt.
(29.03.2020)
Conte said anybody who thinks they can force Italy to accept disciplinary terms as a condition for loans – a sort of „Troika“ regime – have gravely misjudged the mood of his nation. Italy will not take the money. “We will do it alone,” he said.
The message is that if there is no EU solidarity when it matters, then it no longer makes sense for Italy to accept EU surveillance and constraints, or for Italy to forgo use of its own sovereign policy instruments in self-defence.
(30.03.2020)
(27.03.2020)
Italy was irked after an EU summit rejected the idea of ‚coronabonds‘ to fund measures to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus
Article by Heiko Maas, Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Olaf Scholz, Federal Minister of Finance, on the corona crisis in Europe. Published April 6th, 2020, in different language versions in Les Echos (France), La Stampa (Italy), El País (Spain), Público (Portugal) and Ta Nea (Greece).
The Defense Department is long overdue for a 21st century overhaul. That would mean budget cuts far beyond what any 2020 candidates are proposing.
Besides being harmed by a government that keeps their salaries low, Brazilian teachers are being affected by budget cuts that deteriorate educational infrastructure and materials.
Fernandez also spoke about the current administration under President Alberto Fernandez and the four years ahead of them. “We will keep our promises to the Argentinian people without a doubt,” she mentioned.
Macron’s assault on living standards and liberty cannot be ignored any longer.
(08.02.2018)
A government bid to cut back pensions has pitched France into its longest strike in decades. But as one railworker organizer tells Jacobin, the dispute is about more than retirement insurance — it’s about stopping Emmanuel Macron’s whole agenda.
Vidéo complète : https://www.facebook.com/cerveauxnondisponibles/videos/2585958411689021
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, added on Twitter: „These are not (New Year) wishes but a declaration of war to the millions of French who refuse his reform.“
Already another day of mass protests is set for January 9, when teachers, dockers, hospital workers and other public sector employees are expected to join transport workers by striking for the day.
Energy workers have also called for a three-day blockade of the country’s oil refineries and fuel depots starting January 7, raising the spectre of petrol shortages.
Since the beginning of the national strike, on Nov. 21 artists have played an active role in the demonstrations, not only musicians but from all artistic genres. Demonstrators are rallying against economic plans – such as a rise in the pension age and a cut to the minimum wage for young people, as well what they say is a lack of government action to stop corruption and the murder of hundreds of human rights activists.
Transport systems were paralyzed for a fourth day on Sunday as unions at state railway SNCF and Paris public transport system RATP extended their strike against the changes.
Under pressure, the government held talks with union representatives over the weekend, ahead of Sunday evening’s emergency meeting.
Throughout the European Union, the increase in military spending, coupled with austerity measures, is leading towards the end of the “welfare state” as we have known it. Now, under US pressure, NATO is committed to increasing its military spending, and Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that this is the right thing to do in order to “keep [our] population safe.” Military interventions come together with concomitant acts of economic sabotage and financial manipulation…
Michel Chossudovsky: Without media disinformation and propaganda, the US-NATO military agenda would collapse like a house of cards. However, the impending dangers of a new war using the most modern weaponry and the danger of the use of nuclear weapons are not being treated as front page news. Outright war is depicted as a peace-making initiative.
War criminals are portrayed as peacemakers. War becomes peace. The lie becomes the truth, The truth is twisted into its opposite. When the lie becomes the truth, there is no turning backwards.
Even France’s parliament, the National Assembly will be disrupted. In a decision announced last week, the assembly will not sit Thursday, though will remain open for committee work.
The strike is expected to start at 10pm local time on Wednesday, 4 December, when SNCF rail workers and Paris’s RATP metro staff officially down tools.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed „steadfast support“ to Colombia’s far-right government as it faces public protests and marches against economic austerity plans, corruption and police violence, President Ivan Duque in a phone call on Wednesday, according to a State Department spokeswoman.
So we are subject to many of the same abuses that have fueled mass protest movements in other countries, including high rents, stagnant wages, cradle-to-grave debt, ever-rising economic inequality, privatized health care, a shredded social safety net, abysmal public transportation, systemic political corruption and endless war.
At the front of the procession, due to end at the U.S. embassy, youths held a blood-stained flag that belonged to the students engaged in the 1973 revolt. Protesters resent Washington for its support of the 1967-1974 military dictatorship.
“Yesterday it was exactly one month since the food emergency law was sanctioned and we see no results from that,” Silvia Saravia, national coordinator of Barrios de Pie (Neighborhoods Stand Up), told Efe at the march.
As Minister of Finance and Economy Richard Martinez said an “urgent” labor reform will take place. Flexibility and deregulation will benefit employers at the cost of employees’ rights or, as the IMF has sugar-coated it, “reducing labor market rigidities and improving competitiveness.”
The National Assembly President will host a meeting of all lawmakers next Monday in Guayaquil, the right-wing-controlled city where President Moreno moved the seat of government.
In Quito, the capital city, streets remained empty only a few hours before dawn, while the Indigenous activists slept at college campuses where „solidarity camps“ were set up to host them.
For seven days in a row, Ecuadoreans are protesting against policies seeking fiscal austerity, labor liberalization, dismissal of workers and income reduction. Unlike what the private media are holding, the fight is not just against fuel price hikes. It never was.
A few hours earlier, military personel placed inside the presidential palace evacuated all press members that were waiting for 16h00 local time press conference from President Lenin Moreno, whose whereabouts at the moment are unknown as well as those of the vice president.
According to the National Indigenous of Ecuador (CONAIE) around 20,000 people from various Indigenous communities are part of the march which demands President Lenin Moreno to reverse the neoliberal economic austerity package announced last Wednesday.
“The indigenous movement is mobilizing indefinitely in the whole country,” Jaime Vargas, president of the CONAIE umbrella indigenous group, told Reuters.
Despite the transportation sector declaring an end to the strike, several other major social society organizations of Ecuador, such as the Confederation of National Indigenous of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Popular Front, and the United Workers Front (FUT), collectively announced they will continue to protest throughout the country against the IMF-induced adjustments that also include tax and labor reforms, and other proposals to flexibilize the nation’s economy.
Moreno declared a 60-day state of emergency on Thursday, saying disorder would not be tolerated. By Friday morning, 350 people were arrested, mainly in Quito and Guayaquil, the Interior Ministry said. Taxi union leader Jorge Calderon was among those detained on Friday.
– Jeremy Corbyn delivered hard-Left attack on Boris Johnson in speech at TUC
– He said that the PM wanted a Brexit settlement to benefit his ‚wealthy friends‘
– Union baron Len McCluskey sent class war message ‚workers are coming for you‘
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Buenos Aires Wednesday to demonstrate against the government of President Mauricio Macri’s neoliberal reforms, demanding the Congress to pass a bill declaring a state of Food Emergency in order to address poverty and hunger growing across the country.
There will be a £6.2 billion increase in NHS funding next year, including £2 billion of new capital funding to upgrade 20 hospitals.
In education Mr Javid announced an increase in spending of £7.1 billion by 2022-23, with a minimum of £5,000 extra for secondary schools per pupil next year, and at least £3,750 per primary pupil.
Peronist candidate Fernandez has promised access to free medicines for retirees and better wages for workers while hammering Macri for the uptick in poverty and unemployment as the country grapples with recession and 55 percent inflation.
Supporters of the former foreign secretary told The Telegraph he would press ahead with key policies by borrowing to pay for them if that was required.
‚We are talking about a fiscal loosening of less than 1 per cent of total public spending,‘ one aide said.
‚It would do a lot to get things moving for the middle classes, to get them spending more money.‘
The International Monetary Fund board said on Friday it would ship $5.4 billion in cash to Argentina after approving a fourth review of a standby credit deal with the crisis-stricken South American nation.
The union leader also said that President Mauricio Macri was losing a lot of support among workers of the transport sector following his fiscal austerity program.
„A lot of people believed in this government but nothing changed.“
Union leader Erik Labourdette said the firefighters’ monthly average 1,500 euro ($1,680) package was going down by about 300 euros in planned cuts. One firefighter, Jean-Francois Kool, complained they were losing on-call bonuses and extras like sports clothes.
(11.06.2019)
Analysts have warned the IMF deal would likely come with myriad restrictions that could bridle Khan’s grand promises to build an Islamic welfare state, as the country is forced to tighten its purse strings.
Pakistan’s increasing economic woes also come as the country is facing possible sanctions from the Financial Action Task Force — a money-laundering monitor based in Paris — for failing to rein-in terror financing.
In Rio de Janeiro, members of the Military Police (MP) monitored the estimated 100,000 demonstrators who took over the city’s main avenues, rejecting President Jair Bolsonaro’s proposal to privative the national pension program. As citizens protested late into the night, the MP dispersed workers and students by launching tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at them. A Brasil de Fato journalist reporting from the scene says she was trapped inside a car and felt the effects of the tear gas, suffering from burning eyes and throat.
Teachers, students, and doctors have been demonstrating for weeks, rejecting the privatization of health and education sectors promoted by the Juan Orlando Hernandez administration. Ending police brutality against protesters has also been added to their list of demands as well as impartial investigations into those cases.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in cities across Brazil on Wednesday to rally against education spending freezes in the biggest demonstrations to date against the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who called marchers “useful idiots and imbeciles.”
All unions are coming together on May 1 for a nation-wide shutdown against President Mauricio Macri’s austerity policies in Argentina.
Argentinian labor unions called for a national strike against President Mauricio Macri’s fiscal austerity programme. Local media reported Tuesday that the protesters are planning a complete shutdown of flights, metro, banks, and schools.
Argentina’s government-controlled carrier Aerolineas Argentinas said on Sunday it canceled all flights scheduled for Tuesday due to a nationwide strike by labor unions opposed to the austerity program of President Mauricio Macri.
Workers, farmers, teachers, students, and pensioners are staging a nationwide „Peace and Justice“ strike to reject President Ivan Duque’s neoliberal policies, supporting Indigenous rights and defending the peace process in Colombia being left behind by the head of state.
The „short-term“ policies are expected to provide relief while the IMF policy „does its job.“
This latest demonstration comes as Moreno’s administration has openly aligned with the U.S. backed right-wing governments from Latin America. In the last couple of months, oil prices went up, unemployment rates are at a record high, and just recently the government signed a US$4.2 billion dollar deal with the IMF, announcing that a set of austerity measures will be implemented starting 2019.
The 75-year-old who will step down as leader after the local elections in May, said the party had to continue arguing for the benefits of staying in the European Union (EU) as the Brexit debate rages at Westminster.
Lawmakers and citizens said Macri’s address depicts an Argentina that does not exist.
Soubry might not be quite as far Right as Jacob Rees-Mogg or Liam Fox but she is Right-wing, a Tory who left the Conservative Party but not Conservativism by justifying cruel welfare cuts which drove desperate people to the charity of Foodbanks just to eat.
Potential Labour defectors will now think twice before throwing in their lot with ex-Conservatives.
2,536 stores closed in the capital of Argentina and the Province of Buenos Aires in the first month of this year.
This is a new episode of mobilizations against a neoliberal agenda coming from the government of President Lenin Moreno, who was elected to continue with the Citizen’s Revolution, previously lead by former President Rafael Correa.
In Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, massive demonstrations were held for the seventh consecutive Friday, to express the population’s rejection of the high prices of public services and the economic austerity measures implemented by the government of Mauricio Macri.
The administration’s slashing of subsidies, reducing entire ministries, selling off peso reserves, and taking out a US$ 56.3 billion loan from the highly unpopular International Monetary Fund (IMF) have all contributed to the president’s decreased chances at winning another term in eight months. Major union and social movement protests have taken place regularly in Argentina since late 2017 to demonstrate against the government’s austerity measures and the IMF loan.
Leftish EU supporters can invoke EU workers’ rights (despite the EU’s attacks on workers’ right to strike), or blather on about the Social Chapter (despite it immiserating large swathes of southern Europe), all they like. But there is no getting away from it: the EU is the cheerleader for austerity.
The mobilization brought together the country’s two workers unions, trade union leaders, leftist groups, and thousands of men and women of around 60 social and political groups, who marched against the increasing prices in public gas, electricity, water and transportation services.
The protesters on Thursday, who witnesses estimated numbered at least 20,000, carried effigies of Macri and signs that read “Enough of the Macri/IMF austerity program” as they marched past the city’s obelisk monument toward Congress.
Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez say they’ll vote against the rules package containing paygo on Thursday. A total of 18 Democrats would need to vote against the package for it to be defeated. A defeat would be an embarrassment for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to be elected House speaker on the same day.
Progressives who support programs like „Medicare-for-all“ and other policies likely to increase government expenditures worry that the rule would create a self-imposed obstacle with limited political upside — and come across as a sign that Democrats are committed to the austerity economics championed, at least rhetorically, by conservative groups.
Establishment Democrats do NOT care about what the people want. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Jayar Jackson, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.
Members of one of Argentina’s largest unions, the Confederation of Workers for the Popular Economy (CTEP), the Excluded Workers Movement (MTE), The Association of State Workers (ATE), along with several other education and transportation unions are setting up on Monday to feed some 2,000 people on the lawn in front of the national congress located in Buenos Aires.
In a move to defuse tensions, King Abdullah ordered the government on Thursday to draft a general amnesty law that pardons several thousand people jailed for convictions ranging from petty crime to embezzlement.
The bill has angered broad swathes of public opinion, including demonstrators who took to the streets in the last 10 days to protest against IMF-backed austerity measures, who say the proposed law will silence dissent in social media.
They paraded with signs attacking Trump and the International Monetary Fund, whose largesse is keeping Argentina afloat at the cost of hard-hitting austerity measures.
Greek journalists walked off work for 24 hours Tuesday ahead of a broader nationwide strike that is expected to cripple transport services as austerity-weary labor unions press for salary and pension raises and tax cuts. No news programs were being broadcast on TV and radio, while newspapers will not be printed on Wednesday, the day of the strike called by GSEE, the country’s biggest labor union.
“Women are among the most affected by austerity policies,” Argentina’s Center for Political Economy concluded in a recent report, which shows Argentine women have been more severely impacted by low-quality employment, budget cuts and poor execution of budgets, inflation, and poverty during the government of President Mauricio Macri.
Argentines clashed with security while demonstrating against the government’s plans – tax increases and spending cuts.
Argentine police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and waters cannon at protesters who marched on Wednesday in front of Congress against the government’s 2019 budget bill, which contains steep spending cuts aimed at erasing the country’s fiscal deficit.
(28.6.2010) Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession.
Joblessness in this country of 4.5 million is above 13 percent, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed — those out of work for a year or more — have more than doubled, to 5.3 percent.
Now, the Irish are being warned of more pain to come.
Rome, December 18 – Rome’s central Piazza del Popolo was filling up with protesters from the anti-austerity Pitchfork Movement as demonstrators prepared to launch a large-scale protest against the government Wednesday.
According to local newspaper El Comercio, the reduction in the size of the state will cost the country at least 900 jobs. This, in turn, will have a negative impact on unemployment and internal demand.
David Suarez, of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (or CDES), tweeted “the announced economic measures reveal that we are taking the path of the sacrifice demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Austerity continues by the drop. Austerity for us, debt forgiveness for economic groups #ItIsNotTheGovernmentofAll #EconomicMeasures.”
Thousands of people have rallied in the Argentinean capital Buenos Aires to protest against a visit by head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde.
Argentine workers‘ unions and social movements protest President Macri’s economic policies and reject his government’s agreement with IMF.
The strikes aren’t just about pay. They’re a rejection of tax cuts for the wealthy and a rallying cry for public goods and services.
Thousands of protesters took to streets in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, to protest government’s austerity measures, school closures, and slow recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on the International Workers‘ Day Tuesday and were confronted by brutal police repression.