Calculi's Politics Blog

Commodity prices and global growth: Back with a vengeance | The Economist

The worry is that rampant commodity prices may cause another wobble in the world economy. Higher commodity prices act like a consumption tax, transferring income from households and companies which use the resources to companies and countries that produce them. As the producers tend to save more of their income than the consumers, more expensive commodities bear down on global demand.

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Outside America, food has a bigger share than energy in consumers’ shopping baskets—and thus in inflation too (see chart). In developing countries, rising food prices can be a human as well as an economic disaster. In Asia in early 2008 a spike in the price of rice led to widespread unrest and desperate attempts by governments to secure more supplies. In December in India, for example, food prices rose at an annual rate of 14%, and there has been a run on onions, a dietary staple.

Read more: Commodity prices and global growth: Back with a vengeance | The Economist.

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Indian economy to run past US by 2050

Extract from IBT article :Indian economy to run past US by 2050; China will do so in 2018 – International Business Times.

“In many ways the renewed dominance by 2050 of China and India, with their much larger populations, is a return to the historical norm prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries that caused a shift in global economic power from Asia to Western Europe and the US – this temporary shift in power is now going into reverse,” said John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, said.

Now the World Economic Forum 2011 is going on in Davos, this news look more relevant. In terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), these economies are going to overtake many western economies way too early. This can happen, only if the economic growth in these developing countries stay as it is and I’m very optimistic about it.

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World Recession Map

At Moody’s website, popularly called Economy.com, the global recession is stated in a detailed interactive map. More than a year has passed from the economic shock of 2008, and most part of the world seems to be recovering. As usual, Asia-Pacific block should not fear about the recovery and it is expanding, perhaps the expansion is not as quick as during those glory days. But clearly it can be seen how the international map of economy has changed ever since.

Global recession status

Honestly I’m not very much impressed by the quality of the plot. It gives you information just qualitatively, not with acutal data. I guess the main aim of this map was to give overall picture of the health of world economy. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem that bad.

source: Global Recession Map

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