From Jan. 15 through Jan. 19, 2024, more than 60 world leaders will join hundreds of business executives and campaigners at the Swiss ski resort of Davos Monday for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where they will discuss some of the biggest global challenges. Critics say the summit is a meeting of the super-rich and that it fails to tackle growing global inequality. The issues on the Davos agenda appear daunting: in the immediate term, worsening conflicts in many parts of the world along with Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea; and wider threats including potentially catastrophic climate change, a weak global economy and fears over the adverse impacts of artificial intelligence. In its Global Risks Report 2024, published Wednesday, summit organizers highlighted misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short-term risk. “The potential impact on elections worldwide over the next two years is significant, and that could lead to elected governments’ legitimacy being put in question. And this, in turn, could, of course, threaten democratic processes that lead to further social polarization, riots, strikes, or even intra-state violence,” report co-author Carolina Klint of the risk consultancy Marsh McLennan, told a London press conference Wednesday. The report labeled extreme weather events and climate change as the top long-term risks over a 10-year time frame. "Yes, it’s a very gloomy outlook, but by no means is it a hard, fast, set prediction of the future,” Saadia Zahidi, the economic forum’s managing director said. “The future is very much in our hands. Yes, there are structural shifts under way but most of these things are very much in the hands of decision-makers across different stakeholders and that’s where the effort really needs to be,” she told reporters. The Davos summit takes place against the backdrop of two major wars, in Ukraine and Gaza. Among those due at the Alpine ski resort are Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will attend, along with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron. Alongside the political leaders will be hundreds of the world’s most powerful chief executives, including the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s chief executive officer, Satya Nadella. Critics say the wealth of the world’s super-rich has increased, while billions around the world have become poorer over the past decade – and Davos will do little to reverse that trend. “Across the world people are feeling extraordinary hardship. And at the same time there’s a few sprinting off at the very top into the distance. And some of them will be in Davos,” said Nabil Ahmed of aid agency Oxfam International. “It is, yes, a space for dialogue, for important discussions, even for holding political and business leaders to account. It’s why organizations like Oxfam take part. But it’s also not an international, democratic space in which transparent, accountable decisions are being made,” The summit organizers say it’s vital to bring together political and business leaders to find solutions to the world’s myriad challenges.
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Tens of thousands of supporters of Bangladesh’s main opposition party have gathered in Dhaka to protest against the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and demand new elections. The protesters rallied on Saturday at the Golapbagh sports ground, where the crowd chanted “Sheikh Hasina is a vote thief” amid heightened tensions in the Bangladeshi capital. The rally comes days after security forces stormed the headquarters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Tuesday. At least one person died and dozens of others were injured in the raid.
Anti-government protests have erupted across the country in recent months triggered by power cuts and fuel price hikes. The prime minister has rejected calls to stand down. A BNP official said that some 200,000 people had joined Saturday’s rally by mid-morning. Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruq Ahmed rejected the claim and said the venue could not hold more than 30,000 people. “Our main demand is Sheikh Hasina resign and parliament is dissolved and let a neutral caretaker government step in to hold a free and fair election,” BNP spokesman Zahiruddin Swapan said. The protests have been peaceful, but SWAT teams, counterterrorism units and canine squads were on standby, Ahmed said. Police have also set up checkpoints on roads to the city and increased security there. BNP officials accused the government of triggering an unofficial transport strike to try to prevent people from joining the rally. The rally comes a day after two BNP leaders were arrested on allegations of inciting violence. More than 2,000 activists and supporters of the opposition party have been detained since November 30 to prevent them from attending the protest. Western governments, the United Nations and human rights organisations have raised concerns over the political climate and human rights violations in Bangladesh. Independent observers have reported that the past two general elections were rigged by Hasina’s government, forcing losses by the BNP. On Tuesday, 15 Western embassies issued a joint statement, calling for Bangladesh to allow free expression, peaceful assembly and fair elections. The UN made a similar declaration a day later. Amnesty International’s Yamini Mishra said this week’s violence showed that authorities “have very little regard for the sanctity of human life and sends a chilling message that those who dare to exercise their human rights will face dire consequences”. Siemens Gamesa’s first recyclable blades are spinning on a wind turbine at the Kaskasi offshore wind farm in Germany. For many years it was possible to recycle these blades. The only solution was to use these blades in landfills. For Siemens it’s the first commercial installation of recyclable wind turbine technology. The S panish-German wind engineering giant calls its recyclable blade technology RecyclableBlade. Wind turbine blades are made of a number of materials embedded in resin. Siemens Gamesa explains: Separating the resin, fiberglass, and wood, among others, is achieved through using a mild acid solution. The materials can then go into the circular economy, creating new products like suitcases or flat-screen casings without the need to call on more raw resources. The Recyclable Blade technology was developed in Aalborg, Denmark, and the blades were manufactured in Hull in the UK (pictured above). The nacelles were produced and installed in Cuxhaven, Germany. Siemens Gamesa has a plan to make all of its wind turbine blades fully recyclable by 2030 and all of its wind turbines fully recyclable by 2040. Marc Becker, CEO of the Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit, said: We’ve brought the Siemens Gamesa RecyclableBlade technology to market in only 10 months: from launch in September 2021 to installation at RWE’s Kaskasi project in July 2022. This is impressive and underlines the pace at which we all need to move to provide enough generating capacity to combat the global climate emergency. The 342 megawatt (MW) Kaskasi offshore wind farm is owned by German energy company RWE. It’s 35 km (21.7 miles) north of the island of Helgoland in the German North Sea. Siemens Gamesa doesn’t specify how many of the offshore wind farm’s 38 SG 8.0-167 DD wind turbines will feature the RecyclableBlade; it just says that “a number of turbines” will be recyclable. Those turbines that do feature them will have “handcrafted Siemens Gamesa B81 RecyclableBlades, each with a length of 81 meters [266 feet].”
A group of institutional investors in the Netherlands, led by Peter Savelberg of Peter Savelberg en Partners, have joined forces to present the Netherlands plus parts of Belgium and Germany as a single city network named Tristate City.
By treating the Netherlands as an urbanised delta with 17 million inhabitants, the project’s supporters say that are creating a very strong player in this ‘battle of the titans.’ ‘Our city marketing is too fragmented and inefficient,’ the project website says. ‘In practice, the Dutch cities compete with each other abroad.’ Amsterdam Metropool, Brainport Eindhoven, Twentestad, Ede Food Valley, Regio Groningen Assen and Dairy Delta are just some of the names Dutch regions use when marketing themselves abroad. The Netherlands must present itself as one of the ‘most powerful and sustainable city networks in the world,’ the project’s backers say.
The United States has all but declared the COVID-19 pandemic over and done with. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advised 230 million Americans, 70 percent of the population, to no longer wear masks in most cases, including indoors. Cities, counties, and states across the US have lifted their mask mandates. Restaurants, shopping malls, movie theatres, and grocery stores have dropped mask and physical distancing requirements. Even school districts have gone mask-optional since the end of February. This is despite more than 55,000 Americans contracting the disease and nearly 2,000 dying from it and the complications it causes every day through early March.
As the US approaches one million dead from COVID and 80 million sickened from this pathogen and its variants, it is clear that whiteness, capitalism, and narcissism have prolonged the pandemic, and horribly so. Two years ago, I predicted that the US as a “failing state” would do the bare minimum to protect ordinary people, and would sell the idea that despite the evidence, Americans can lead “normal lives” in the middle of a pandemic. “America’s lack of leadership at home and abroad during this pandemic has been stunning. But its populace’s denial of these facts is simply gobsmacking,” I wrote in April 2020. Two years later, this continued lack of leadership is America’s dystopian normal. Forget about federal-level mandates to mask up and to jab up on vaccines. Forget about continued support for families living with poverty and unemployment in the middle of yo-yo openings and closings with each surge of COVID-19. And forget about easing the pain of healthcare debt, student loan debt, and rental debt millions have accumulated during the past two-plus years. The business of the US is always in support of corporations and profit first. That is why President Joe Biden – and President Donald Trump before him – never declared the pandemic a national security threat or federalised the public health crisis COVID-19 undoubtedly became. They both have been too beholden to corporations to take this step. The result has been 25 months of “me first” responses to the pandemic. There have been endless protests against local and state-level mask mandates and endless videos of white Americans violating such mandates. Nearly 80 million Americans have yet to get a single vaccine jab – including my own mother – because they “don’t know what’s in this stuff”. Despite the obvious need for community collaboration to protect everyone from COVID-19 death and its long-haul complications, the fundamental belief in individualism is stronger than ever. If American individualism in this pandemic isn’t prime evidence of the US as a narcissistic nation, then nothing is. What’s worse is this narcissism is killing people, especially white Americans, and needlessly so. All because they believed the media reports of highly disproportionate COVID-19 sickness and death among Black and Brown Americans in early 2020. As the author Johnathan Metzl wrote in his Dying of Whiteness, “When politics demands that people resist available health care,” among other spiteful decisions, “these politics are literally asking people to die for their whiteness.” When combined with narcissism, white Americans, in particular, have acted in privileged ways towards the pandemic, ways that have killed tens of thousands and have sickened millions in the process. Pfizer and Moderna and other Big Pharma companies in the US and in Europe have refused to freely share their vaccine recipes with the rest of the world. But sure, let Americans complain about new variants when the US, the European Union, and the United Nations’s WHO have not done nearly enough to inoculate the world against the virus and its future possible variants. Biden asked everyone watching his recent State of the Union address to celebrate how the US, out of its own goodness, had “sent 475 million vaccine doses to 112 countries, more than any other nation” during the previous year. Keep in mind, the world’s human population is at 7.9 billion. We would need between 16 and 24 billion jabs to inoculate the entire world against COVID-19 and its variants as of today – current figures show about 10 billion jabs worldwide, mostly in the world’s richest nations. Another statement of hubris and needless navel-gazing. The US is barely two months removed from the height of the Omicron surge, when a million people contracted the variant in just one day. Yet President Biden, through his State of the Union speech, declared a return to the pre-pandemic normal. “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again,” Biden said. “Our schools are open. Let’s keep it that way. Our kids need to be in school,” he said. Despite his comment, “we will never just accept living with COVID-19,” Biden and the rest of the US have completely contradicted this sentiment. It completely reflects the US as a whole, where there was never a full, nationwide shutdown of activities with federal mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in 2020. It is a near-total capitulation to the wealthy and corporate, who have kept their fingers crossed that a vaccines-or-bust strategy would effectively end COVID-19 in the US. It is a ho-hum response to what the US has always been: A country of greedy capitalists who want a return to the racist, ableist, and narcissistic conditions that made the COVID-19 pandemic possible in the first place. They won’t even give us time to mourn our losses. The past 29 months of COVID worldwide are a reflection of profit over people, and rich and white people over everyone else. The past 25 months of COVID-19 in the US indicate exactly the same, except minus the shock and massive protests of people expecting better from their government. Instead, the racism of whiteness and narcissism and capitalism will subject more in the US and worldwide to needless death and disability, and continue to turn the US into a failing nation-state. It makes the early predictions of only “240,000 dead” by the start of 2022 an absurd lie, a macabre and laughable shame. The World Economic Forum just had their Davos Agenda 2021 meeting in January. Now The Great Reset has been something talked about in detail since the pandemic started. But are we seeing The Great Reset happening right before our eyes? I think we are starting to see the slow implementation of The World Economic Forum's Great Reset right now. It's like a chess match, nothing happens right away, many moves are made before the endgame.
The Great Reset that was proposed by the World Economic Forum is looking to forgive all the world's debt and has us live by the slogan, "You'll Own Nothing, And You Will Be Happy". Now first and foremost, we are starting to see a slow implementation of a universal basic income. It was actually what the World Economic Forum talked about and advocate for in the Davos agenda 2021 meeting that happened a few weeks back. Starting with the continual stimulus packages that we have received in the past few months to help stimulate the economy, seems like a slow inoculation into government dependency. Since we can't work where are we going to get our money from? Secondly, The Great Reset talks about how having ALL of our debts forgiven. Well who's going to buy them? The Federal Reserve? Sure, but with the sale of debt, comes the control of the debt. And whoever controls debt, controls YOU! The great reset is all about debt forgiveness but then we won't be able to own anything ever again......and we will be happy about it. I'm not completely convinced that the World Economic Forum is looking to do this for the good of the people. They literally said, "You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy" about it. Would you like to NOT own your home, car, business? I sure would like to own all of the things I've worked very hard for and I can speak on behalf of most people who own those things. Lastly, the Davos agenda 2021 got into cryptocurrency. Currently crypto is decentralized and lacks certain regulation from major regulatory bodies. That is a beautiful thing, but the World Economic Forum has already spoke about crypto in their Davos agenda 2021 meeting that happened a few weeks back. With the Great Reset, the fiat currency will crash because of the reckless printing from The Federal Reserve. So expect to see heavy regulation and government intervention with crypto. There is a very worrying trend that has been accelerated under the veil of fear and confusion, and that trend has been drastically intensified…
The corona crisis has already taken a very high toll and caused deep damage in our societies and our economies, the extent of which is yet to become apparent. We have seen its impact on productivity, on unemployment, on social cohesion and on political division. However, there is another very worrying trend that has been accelerated under the veil of fear and confusion that the pandemic has spread. The war on cash, that was already underway for almost a decade, has been drastically intensified over the last few months. The “problem” Over the last years, and as the war on cash escalated, we’ve gotten used to hear certain arguments or “reasons” on why we should all abandon paper money and move en masse to an exclusively digital economy. These talking points have been repeated over and over, in most western economies and by countless institutional figures. “Cash is used by terrorists, money launderers and criminals” is arguably the most oft-repeated one, as it’s been widely employed in most debates about the digital transition. Just a couple of years ago, it was also used by Mario Draghi, to support the decision to scrap the 500 euro note. We didn’t get any specific information or data about how many terrorists were actually using this high-denomination note, but we do know a lot of law-abiding citizens were using it to save, as did small business owners for their operational liquidity needs. Now, however, the corona crisis has introduced a whole new direction of anti-cash rhetoric and fresh arguments in favor of a digital economy. Even in the early stages of the pandemic, when essentially nothing was concretely known about the virus itself or its transmission, the seeds of new fears were already planted by sensational media reports and fear-mongering political and institutional figures. The insidious idea that “you can catch Covid through cash” might have been prematurely spread, but it did stick in most people’s minds. This is, of course, understandable, given the extremely high levels of uncertainty and anxiety in the general public. Wanting to eliminate potential threats was a natural instinct and so was the urge to take back at least some control over our lives, after they’d been suddenly thrown into utter chaos in the wake of the global economic freeze. Another factor that concretely helped the shift away from physical cash was an entirely practical one. Given the lockdown measures and the new “social distancing” directives that were enforced all over the world, it became difficult to use cash, even if you really wanted to, or had no other means of transaction, as is the case for billions of people. With physical stores being forced to shut down and with more and more online shops offering contactless delivery (either as a choice or as a service requirement), the need for cash very quickly gave way to digital payments. For most of us, who have access to online banking, cards or other digital payment services, this introduced no real inconvenience and we probably didn’t even give it a second thought. However, for many of our fellow citizens it was a serious impediment, which in some cases blocked their access to basic goods and essential supplies. Contrary to the glowing promises of the digital economy, of financial inclusion and convenience, the fact remains that there are still millions of people who simply do not have access to this brave new world. According to figures by the World Bank, globally there are 2.5 billion people with no bank account, with a high concentration in the developing world. In the West too, however, there is a very large part of the population that is unbanked and/or has no access to digital solutions, while the elderly are also to a very large extent “locked out” of the digital economy. For all these millions of people, cash is the only way to save, to transact and to cover their basic needs. The “solution” With cash being presented not just as a danger to society and to national security, but also as a direct health hazard due to the coronavirus, the push towards digital alternatives has been massively reinforced over the last few months. Both international organizations and individual governments have actively participated and encouraged this push, some through public guidance statements and others through the blunt enforcement of direct rules and measures that leave no real room for their citizens to make their own choices. The CDC in its official guidance to retail workers recommenced that they “encourage customers to use touchless payment options”, while a report by the Word Bank highlighted the need to adopt cashless payments for the sake of “social protection”. The UAE Central Bank encouraged the use of online banking and digital payments “as a measure to protect the health and safety of UAE residents”, and the Bank of England has acknowledged that banknotes can hold “bacteria and viruses” and recommended that people wash their hands after handling money. In March, a report from Reuters revealed that the U.S. Federal Reserve was quarantining dollars that it repatriated from Asia and so did South Korea’s central bank, while banks in China were forced by the government to disinfect bills and keep them in a safe for up to 14 days, before putting them in circulation. A highlight, however, came in May, when the World Economic Forum published an article in its “Global Agenda” strongly supporting the mass adoption of digital payments, for the sake of public health. In it, the authors argue that “contactless digital payments at the point of sale, such as facial recognition, Quick Response (QR) codes or near-field communications (NFC), can make it less likely for the virus to spread to others through cash exchanges.” They also applauded the efforts of China in digitalizing payments and appeared to hold the country and its measures as a model to be emulated: “China’s path to enabling digital payments should provide some lessons to other countries eager to follow suit.” Since a number of Western governments may indeed be “eager to follow suit”, let us take a closer look at this bright example and examine what it really entails. Fiat money 2.0 The digitalization drive in all aspects of the Chinese state, society and economy is nothing new and it certainly predated the emergence of Covid-19. The country’s infamous “social rating system” has made headlines years ago and the government’s eagerness to use technology, the internet and all sorts of digital systems to track its citizens’ behaviors and affiliations has long attracted International criticism and widespread condemnation by human rights organizations, privacy advocates and free speech supporters. Now, however, the state has been given a reason to accelerate its efforts in the mass adoption of digital payments and the abandonment of cash. To a large extent, this digitalization of payments task was much easier in China, as digital payments there are already very widespread in the population. More than 80% of consumers already used mobile payments in 2019, according to management consultancy Bain, a sharp contrast with the US that had adoption rates of less than 10%. So, as the population has already accepted a new way of payment, the new initiative sought to dominate the means of payment too. Thus, a new “digital yuan” was introduced. This new fiat currency, that has been in development for over 5 years, was rolled out in April in four Chinese cities with a plan for national adoption soon, so that it eventually replaces the physical legal tender. This so-called Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) will be put into circulation through China’s big four state banks and citizens will be able to receive and use it by downloading an electronic wallet application authorized by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which will be linked to their bank account. On the surface, it appears to work just like the old currency. It is issued and backed by the PBOC, it’s valued the same as the physical banknotes and, thanks to partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay, that control 80% of the country’s payment market, it will be used to get paid by anyone and to pay for anything. In fact, some public servant salaries and state subsidies are already being paid out in this new digital yuan, arriving in their intended recipients’ digital wallets. According to China’s state media People’s Daily, the new currency is meant to simplify domestic transactions and trade, but it will also facilitate and ease cross border transactions. The implication there is clear: It is yet another attempt to challenge the global dominance of the USD, after the Belt and Road initiative failed to really move the needle as the Chinese state had hoped. The strategy of spending of huge amounts of Chinese money abroad did provide some leverage over developing countries, but it didn’t come anywhere near “dethroning” the Dollar and internationalizing the Renminbi. Perhaps, this initiative will fare better, especially as it now has the “first-mover” advantage. Entering this “digital fiat” arena first is hugely important and the timing of the currency’s launch was no coincidence. The development and the rollout plan were significantly accelerated following Facebook’s announcement of the Libra, as the Chinese state wouldn’t have the private tech giant beat them to the punch. In fact, the digital yuan resembles the Libra in many ways. Most importantly, neither of them is a cryptocurrency, which is decentralized by design and allows for peer to peer transactions without the need of an intermediary or third party. In this case, the issuer is the third party and all transactions go through a very centralized system that controls and has access to all the data. In another non-coincidence just a few years back, China’s government banned initial coin offerings and placed great burdens on cryptocurrencies and crypto-investors making it very hard to operate in the country, thereby dismantling the threat of potential competition from the private sector and clearing the way for its own digital coin.
As the need for its reparations function ceases, the BIS takes up a role of a banker to the central banks and other international financial organizations, and provides a forum for promoting international cooperation, dialogue, as well as policy analysis among central banks and within the international financial community. Furthermore, it also acts as a centre for economic and monetary research
Its head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. 2. Main Functions The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international organization which fosters monetary and financial cooperation and serves exclusively as a bank for central banks. Therefore, it does not accept deposits from, or provide financial services to, private individuals or corporate entities. The BIS fulfils its mandate by acting as: 2.1 A forum to promote discussion and policy analysis among central banks and within the international financial community Bimonthly meetings of the Governors and other senior officials of the BIS member central banks to discuss monetary and financial matters are instrumental in pursuing this goal. The standing committees located at the BIS support central banks, and authorities in charge of financial stability more generally, by providing background analysis and policy recommendations. These committees also help formulate international standards and best practices on the relevant matters. The committees comprise:
2.2 A prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions and an agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations The BIS offers a wide range of financial services to assist central banks and other official monetary institutions in the management of their foreign reserves. BIS financial services are provided out of two linked trading rooms: one at its Basel head office and the other at its office in Hong Kong SAR. In addition to standard services such as sight/notice accounts and fixed-term deposits, the Bank has developed a range of more sophisticated financial products which central banks can actively trade with the BIS to increase the return on their foreign assets. The Bank also transacts foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers. The BIS also offers a range of asset management services in sovereign securities or high-grade assets. These may be either a specific portfolio mandate negotiated between the BIS and a central bank or an open-end fund structure. Furthermore, the BIS extends short-term credits to central banks, usually on a collateralized basis, and coordinates emergency short-term lending to countries in financial crisis. 2.3 A centre for economic and monetary research The economic, monetary, financial and legal research of the BIS supports its meetings and the activities of the Basel-based committees. The BIS is also a hub for sharing statistical information amongst central banks, and for publishing statistics on global banking, securities, foreign exchange and derivatives markets. 3. Organization Structure The three most important decision-making bodies within the Bank are: the General Meeting of member central banks, the Board of Directors and the Management of the Bank. Decisions taken at each of these levels concern the running of the Bank and as such are mainly of an administrative and financial nature, related to its banking operations, the policies governing internal management of the BIS and the allocation of budgetary resources to the different business areas. The BIS currently has 55 member central banks, all of which are entitled to be represented and vote in the General Meetings. Voting power is proportionate to the number of BIS shares issued to each country. 4. Relationship with Members The members can hold shares in the BIS since 2000. In total there are 547,125 shares of issued capital. The change in the BIS regulation requiring shares to be held only by central banks (CB's). As a shareholder, representatives from the CB's are invited to attend regular meetings of Governors held every two months in Basel. These gatherings provide an opportunity for participants to discuss the world economy and financial market developments, and to exchange views on topical issues of central bank interest or concern. The main result of these meetings is an improved understanding by participants of the developments, challenges and policies affecting various countries and markets. In addition, the BIS organizes frequent meetings of experts on monetary and financial stability issues as well as on more technical issues such as legal matters, reserve management, IT systems, internal audit and technical cooperation. Though targeted mostly at central banks, BIS meetings sometimes involve senior officials and experts from other financial market authorities, the academic community and market participants. 5. The Bottom Line The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political, and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change. |
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