Turkey issues arrest warrant for cleric Gulen: state media
Turkey has issued an arrest warrant for U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who President Tayyip Erdogan accuses...
Friday, 19 December 2014
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Ban kicks off tour of Ebola-hit west Africa
UN chief Ban Ki-moon Friday arrived in Liberia on the first stop of a visit to Ebola-ravaged west African countries...
Lebanon Energy Minister presses for oil exploration bids
BEIRUT: Energy and Water Minister Arthur Nazarian underlined Friday the urgency of approving decrees to launch offshore oil and gas exploration bids, cautioning that further delays would allow Israel to siphon off Lebanon’s resources.
“It is of utmost importance that the Council of Ministers passes the decrees, in order to launch prospecting bids,” Nazarian said.
“We cannot delay the matter anymore, because we would then be giving Israel more time to tap into the reserves belonging to Lebanon,” he said.
Nazarian spoke at the end of a meeting on the stalled issue that grouped Prime Minister Tammam Salam, the parliamentary committee of water and energy and the Petroleum Administration Committee.
“We hope the government would (settle the issue) and give it as a present to the Lebanese people for the new year,” Nazarian said.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri accused Israel of stealing Lebanon’s offshore gas wealth and called on UNIFIL to help Lebanon preserve its rights to its exclusive economic zone for exploiting maritime reserves.
Lebanon and Israel are at loggerheads over 870 kilometers in the southern territorial waters.
Lebanon insists this disputed zone is part of the Lebanese territorial waters and is not willing to concede a single kilometer to Israel.
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Lebanon to receive Air Algerie crash victims Sunday
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3 Business Best-Sellers Show Inequality Is Now The Hot Topic
Best-selling business books typically tell you how to get rich — either by becoming a better worker or investor, or perhaps by learning the secrets of successful entrepreneurs.
And in 2014, readers could find plenty of books promoting pluck and hard work, such as MONEY Master the Game and The Innovators.
But three books broke the pattern, generating headlines and big sales by focusing on unfair aspects of wealth creation.
A decade ago, unfairness "was an underground topic; no one cared about it," says Branko Milanovic, a leading scholar on income inequality at City University of New York.
But since the 2008 financial crisis, "that has definitely been changing," he says. Writers now want to explore income inequality and economic unfairness. "It is such a big wave; it's not going away," he says.
These books rode that wave:
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
This magnum opus, chosen by the Financial Times as the best business book of the year, documents growing concentrations of wealth over time.
Filling nearly 700 pages, Piketty uses both quantitative economic history and literature to track and illustrate the accumulation of capital over time.
Armed with centuries' worth of data drawn from 20 countries, Piketty says returns on capital will always exceed rates of overall growth. The result is that wealthy investors get disproportionately richer than the average workers whose efforts create goods, foods and services.
Only government policies, such as heavy taxation of wealth, can help redistribute income in ways that allow for a fairer sharing of the economy's overall growth and rewards, he argues.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Baptist's book narrows the focus from global wealth creation to America's rapid economic rise in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
A stinging indictment of slavery, The Half Has Never Been Told argues that U.S. capitalism flourished in the 19th century largely because Southern enslavers and Northern bankers were able to turn stolen labor into massive profits.
Many Americans believe capitalism flourished on U.S. soil because of positive factors, such as technological innovation, high literacy rates, natural resources, strong contract law and so forth. But Baptist says the fundamental advantage was that Southern slave labor camps, known as plantations, were highly productive and profitable.
Enslavers used improvements in transportation and the opening of new markets to produce and sell more cotton, and thereby get richer from the labor they stole. That in turn allowed Northern bankers, manufacturers and merchants to further profit from the cotton industry.
His book shows American economic "exceptionalism" in a very different light: Tales of Yankee ingenuity and all-American gumption may sound good, but it was the crack of whips and clank of chains that accompanied U.S. growth.
Flash Boys
Lewis makes a case that the stock market was rigged to allow firms using hyper-speedy advantages to jump in front of "mom-and-pop" investors.
In Flash Boys, he explores the ways Wall Street trading has changed from the days when an investor could "bid" on a stock to buy it, and a shareholder could "ask" for a price to sell. These traditional transactions would help companies raise money to expand their operations and hire workers.
But then the game changed, becoming an unfair race among high-frequency traders using algorithms and new technologies to get milliseconds ahead of each other. Lewis argues this ferocious push to gain speedy advantages helped enrich a few on Wall Street, but did nothing for Main Street companies seeking long-term investors.
Each book sets out to reframe debates about how rich people get ahead. Each argues that a fundamental lack of fairness generated wealth inequality.
Alexander Field, a Santa Clara University economics professor who studies inequality, says that in the wake of the Great Recession, legions of academics and authors have started exploring questions about unfairness of process and inequality of outcomes.
"Tremendous wealth has been created for individuals, but has it contributed to a social gain?" Field says is the question being pondered.
He says the United States enjoyed "a golden age" of rising income equality in the decades following World War II — an era when good factory jobs and corporate expansions allowed average Americans to advance quickly. But in more recent years, factors such as increasing automation and globalization have given rise to more inequality, he says.
"That change creates fertile ground for Piketty and others who want to explore inequality," Field says.
Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist and scholar on inequality, agrees that readers can expect to see far more books on inequality in coming years.
Traditionally, "Americans were less interested in these issues than other people" in Europe and elsewhere, he says. But Deaton says that since 2008, he has seen "a huge surge of interest" in understanding why so many people are falling behind.
"A lot of people, including me, are worried that inequality will lead to bad things."
Charges filed over alleged fuel scam
BEIRUT: Financial Prosecutor Judge Ali Ibrahim filed charges of embezzlement of public funds and bribery against a police officer and the owner of a fuel company for overcharging the government for diesel.
The National News Agency said Friday that Al-Sahraa Petroleum Company’s owner and an officer from the Internal Security Forces were accused of overbilling the ISF directorate and Rafik Hariri University Hospital for supplying diesel.
Health Minister Wael Abu Faour had filed a complaint with the financial prosecutor earlier this week, asking him to investigate the wider files related to the fuel company, which is owned by Hussein Halloum.
In addition to Rafik Hariri University Hospital, six other public health facilities were allegedly short-changed as well, including in Nabatieh, Rashaya al-Wadi, Sidon, Bint Jbeil, Meis al-Jabal, Baalbek and Western Shahar.
Abu Faour ordered the hospitals to stop paying the company until the judiciary made a decision on the accusations.
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Lebanon agriculture minister urges legalization, export of cannabis
BEIRUT: Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb Friday called for the legalization of cannabis farming to allow the state to benefit from the revenue of its export.
“We are conducting studies on [how to] organize this type of agriculture so that it becomes monitored by the state, and thus the state can buy the harvest and export it to the countries that need it,” Chehayeb said in a morning interview with a local radio station.
“This agricultural product is in demand worldwide for pharmaceutical production.”
Chehayeb said the state should end its war on cannabis farmers and find workable alternatives.
“Instead of prosecuting the farmers, let’s find other solutions for them,” he said. “The planting of cannabis must be organized to benefit the state and the industrial sector, and it is one way of helping the farmers.”
For many poor villages in east Lebanon, the cultivation and sale of marijuana has for decades been the primary source of revenue.
Upon pressure by international donors and foreign states, Lebanon launched a crackdown on the farmers after the end of the Civil War.
The government then attempted to implement alternative agriculture projects to encourage the farmers to grow fruits and vegetables instead.
However, the projects had little impact on the local farmers, who attempt to go back to planting cannabis whenever they have a chance.
MP Walid Jumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party to which Chehayeb belongs, has also called for the legalization of cannabis cultivation.
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