#cop15

"if the world can finance trillion dollar bank bailouts why can't it do the same to prevent African and Bangladeshi children dying from climate change-induced floods and droughts?"

Good point! Crikey correspondent Matthew Knot on the negotiating battles going on at the Un's Copenhagen summit. Read his full article here.

Quote of the day

"you can't fire cruise missiles at the global final crisis."

NY Times' Op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof explaining how the US can use Obama to rebrand itself and restore it's international reputation. "That’s not because we crave admiration, but because cooperation is essential to address 21st-century challenges; you can’t fire cruise missiles at the global financial crisis."

Well said sir.

Article here: Rebranding the US with Obama.

Budget time!

Tomorrow the SA finance minister (lets call him "Trev") is giving his budget speech outlining the midterm budget and econimic forecasts for the next three years. Many people will be listening to see what impact the allocations and changes will have on their bond repayments and investments. Nothing wrong with that. However, for the last few years, there has been another budget speech - the People Budget Campaign. The PBC is a coalition of the SACC, COSATU and SANGOCO (SA NGO coalition). These three groups, representing a huge swath of the SA working population, get together throughout the year and work on the PBC. I encountered some of this work while at the SACC, and found it most worthwhile. Trev and his economic gurus look at the national budget from the point of view of the government and big business, while the PBC looks at it from the point of view of the people on the street. Good idea! They were the folks who created and have been spearheading the Basic Income Grant movement here in SA, and continually call for a fiscal policy that takes job creation and welfare seriously. Our current macro economic policy, along the lines of the Washington consensus, grows the economy but does nothing for the unemployment crisis that SA faces.
(See all the new finance language I learnt at the SACC ;). See their 2007 input here)

Anyways, the People’s Budget Campaign said their thing today, in anticipation of Trev’s talk tomorrow, and they made some headlines. Hooray for the PBC. Now to hear what Trev says. He has made some mention of ‘greening the budget’ and must have a word to say on the Eskom power issue. We shall see. Who will be happier - international investors and big business, or local South Africans?