Global Business News

Today the idea of anything -- a household appliance, a piece of furniture, a house -- being built to last is almost laughable. When your vacuum cleaner stops sucking, you most likely haul it out to the curb and trek to Target or a big-box home-goods store to replace it. Even if you could readily find someone to repair it, the trouble and the cost would be prohibitive. If you need a bookcase, there's always IKEA: Sure, you'd prefer to buy a sturdily built hardwood version that doesn't buckle under the weight of actual books, but who has extra dough to spend on stuff like that? The IKEA bookcase is good enough, for now if not forever.

Read more: http://globalbestpractice.blogspot.com/2009/07/ikea-is-as-bad-as-wal-mart.html

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http://globalbestpractice.blogspot.com/2009/07/pervasive-nature-of-corruption.html

Tags: IKEA, Walmart, China, Cheap labor, low-cost producer, Outsourced manufacturing, World Bank, Columbia University, Russian forests and timber, Global Economic News, Global Development News, Salon,

In common usage, corruption is often used to refer to all types of immoral or harmful behaviour by public officials. But in the social sciences and policy discussions, corruption refers specifically to the illegal use of power by politicians or bureaucrats for their own benefit. The important point is that this definition does not presume that corruption is damaging, though it may be. 

Read more: http://globaleconomicnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/pervasive-nature-of-corruption.html

Tags: Corruption, Lobbying, Political Corruption, East Asia, bribery, developing countries, IMF, World Bank, Al Jazeera, Public Power, Political influence, NGO, NGO’s, Global Best Practice, 

The World Bank has cut its 2009 global growth forecast, saying the world economy will shrink by 2.9 percent and warning that a drop in investment in developing countries will increase poverty.

"The global recession has deepened," the Washington-based multilateral lender said in a report.

Read more: http://globaleconomicnews.blogspot.com/2009/06/world-bank-cuts-2009-global-growth.html

Tags: World Bank, GDP, Investment, Credit, China, India, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caribbean, North Africa, Global Economic News, Developing Economies, Global Trade, Global recession, Unemployment, Global Development News, Global Blog Network, Economics, 

Challenging America will be the focus of meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Monday and Tuesday for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other leaders of the six-nation Shanghai Co-operation Organisation.

The alliance comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajiki stan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia.

The attendees have assured American diplomats that dismantling the US financial and military hegemony is not their aim. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the US or for the dollar as a vehicle for trade among these countries. The meeting is an opportunity for China, Russia and India to “build an increasingly multipolar world order”, as Mr Medvedev put it in a St Petersburg speech this month.

Read more: http://globaldevelopmentnews.blogspot.com/2009/06/america-snubbed-as-china-india-and.html

Tags: Unipolar, Multipolar, decline of the American empire, Russia China India summit, Shanghai Co-operation organization, Global Development News, USD, IMF, World Bank, WTO, reserve currency, economic hegemony, Medvedev, Jintao, Manmohan Singh, renminbi, Brazil, Malaysia,