News update

(Editor’s note: Rumours of another global economic meltdown has been doing the rounds of online forums for at least couple of years now, but of late there seems to be a spike in the commentary warning about such a possibility. Commentators offer different reasons for why this might happen, but what’s pertinent is that most of it is coming from insiders in government, business and finance. Here are links to a selection of such articles.)

World economy ‘more fragile than before great crash of 2007′
From Financialpost.com
The world economy is just as vulnerable now to a financial crisis as it was in 2007 – with the added danger that debt ratios are now far higher and emerging markets have been drawn into the fire as well, the Bank for International Settlements has warned. Jaime Caruana, head of the Switzerland-based financial watchdog, said the international system was, in many ways, more fragile than it was in the build-up to the Lehman crisis. Debt ratios in the developed economies have risen by 20 percentage points to 275% of GDP since then.

Economic meltdown scenario piles pressure on Russia and the west
By Larry Elliot, Economics Editor, The Guardian
Oil prices above $200 a barrel. Energy shortages in western Europe. The return of recession to the still-fragile global economy. A slump in Russia. That’s the fear haunting policymakers as they contemplate how to respond to the shooting down of MH17 over eastern Ukraine last week. Policymakers dread slump in Russia – from further sanctions by the west – would trigger another global economic meltdown.

Preparing for Economic Collapse: A Bear Awaits
By Joseph Cafariello, Wealthdaily.com
With the U.S. stock market well into its sixth consecutive year of gains since bottoming in March of 2009, the chance of another collapse increases with each passing day. So do the number of doomsday predictions.

RBI’s Rajan Sees Risk of Financial Markets Crash
From Wall Street Journal blogs
Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan warned Wednesday that the global economy bears an increasing resemblance to its condition in the 1930s, with advanced economies trying to pull out of the Great Recession at each other’s expense. The difference: competitive monetary policy easing has now taken the place of competitive currency devaluations as the favored tool for playing a zero-sum game that is bound to end in disaster.

Eurozone woes deepen as Spain’s industry slumps
From The Guardian
Hopes for a recovery in the eurozone suffered another blow on Wednesday with figures showing industrial output fell for a second successive month. Production declined across the 18 eurozone members by an average 0.3%. Spain was the worst hit of the currency bloc’s major economies with a 0.8% drop in industrial production. It also suffered the sharpest drop in shop prices for five years,

OTHER LINKS

Three ways that oil matters for the crisis in Iraq
By Brad Plumer, Vox.com
For months now, Sunni militants from the Islamic State (better known as ISIS) have been seizing control of large swathes of Iraq. But it wasn’t until they encroached into semi-autonomous Kurdish territory and near the Kurdish capital of Erbil — an oil boomtown full of Western companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil — that the Obama administration decided to authorize airstrikes against ISIS.

World Oil Production at 3/31/2014–Where are We Headed?
By Gail Tverberg, Ourfiniteworld.com
The standard way to make forecasts of almost anything is to look at recent trends and assume that this trend will continue, at least for the next several years. With world oil production, the trend in oil production looks fairly benign, with the trend slightly upward. But if we look at the situation more closely, however, we see that we are dealing with an unstable situation.

Raahgiri: Promoting A Public Culture of Sustainability
By Madhuri Mittal, Countercurrents.org
Raahgiri day, as it is known, is not just a concept to promote car-free and pollution-free streets but also a step to create a new public culture. Raahgiri has successfully completely 4 weeks now in Delhi. It happens in the early part of every Sunday at Connaught Place, the heart of the capital Delhi. As stated, the decision to choose Connaught Place also rests on the idea to promote public transport and pollution-free life.