Covid-19: Making sense of the world economic crisis, with the FT's Martin Wolf

The global health crisis brought on by COVID-19 has triggered what is likely to become the worst economic recession in a century. And it has also brought huge uncertainty, about how long the crisis will last, how it will affect our jobs, our societies, and our thinking. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, talked to Rory Clarke about the challenges and offers advice to policymakers, young economists and international organisations alike, as we all try to make sense of the coronavirus crisis. Food for thought as the OECD prepares to mark its 60th anniversary in 2021. Mr Wolf's views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or its member countries.

Host: Rory Clarke

 Producer: Robin Allison Davis

To learn more about the Economic Outlook, go to: www.oecd.org/economic-outlook

To learn more about the OECD's work on Covid-19, go to: www.oecd.org/coronavirus

economicseconomicoutlookfinancialtimespodcast

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UN food systems envoy warns of double threat to food security in Africa next year

NAIROBI — With the impacts of climate change becoming more pronounced in Africa, the continent has experienced cycles of extreme weather, including droughts, floods, and cyclones that are fueling widespread food insecurity. This year, food insecurity was further exacerbated by COVID-19, through disruptions in trade and increases in prices.

https://www.devex.com/news/un-food-systems-envoy-warns-of-double-threat-to-food-security-in-africa-next-year-98817

A Message from The Global Structure Network Group

The Global Structure Group and the Global Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity Economy are inextricably linked. 

I think it is safe to say none of us will forget 2020 in a hurry. It often feels like the word 'unprecedented' is overused, but not this year. From bursting on the world stage with our Rolls Royce of SUCCESS and because of our work our dear Sector and Global Sector Economy gain a seat at the Global Economy table and we are on the cusp of Officially leading the Global Recovery for well into generations to come, it really has been a year like no other. I want to take this opportunity to publicly let our partners from the future department, the Philosophy of Knowledge, our future employees, and our future franchisees and suppliers know that after being at the center for helping households and others across the Globe to navigate this challenging year we should be able to move forward with the real task at hand which is future-proofing Humanity’s potential. I am so proud of the way our people have rallied together and risen to the challenge of helping households to step up and for seeing the incentive.

We must now save and focus on the important things for us to properly invest in the future and for a big and robust Global Structure Network Group with ambition and scale and with the motivational power that would be needed as we carry this and other generations into the future being Epistemologically Formidable and Epistemologically Secure, with Healthy Resilience, Healthy Longevity and Efficacy. The Global Structure Group is a HYBRID Business that utilizes our resources and our work to deliver positive social and/or environmental benefits alongside financial returns. We are Stronger together: A strategy to revitalize building partnerships for Personal Health and Well-being Equity everywhere and for preventing Chronic Disease. Further for Well-being in Health Policy Everywhere and for Making Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity every household resolution. 

 

Throughout the year we have continued to seek to meet the demand from households everywhere who look to us for support and Christmas is no different as these are unprecedented times. We will continue this and much more into 2021, united with the Global Community we serve and determined to stand with you, as we navigate what is next. Aiming for balance, Long term benefits, while households everywhere continue to enjoy the good stuff and for us to continue the work that earned us such high praise; that we should be commended for our vision, advocacy, and effort to bring Households and the Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity Global Economy into the 21st century. We will continue our work to continue strengthening the independence of the Global Structure Network Group, making it more robust, more formidable but most of all Resilient and to continue being the most Efficacious for today and for generations to come. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and to once again thank you for your continued support and I look forward to us convening in the New Year as we seek to make our partnerships distinctive and secure and for securing the future for households today and for the generation to come in towns and cities across the world, by continuing to Set the Tone and Delivering the Key Influences.

Gary

Founder and CFO

The Founders’ Gallery

The Global Structure Group

UNLIMITED CLARITY. UNRIVALLED AUTHORITY

(By definition, we confer a type of prestige and authority that cannot be found anywhere else.)

https://theglobalstructurenetwork.com/message-from-the-founder

The Global Structure Group is a HYBRID Business that utilizes our resources and our work to deliver positive social and/or environmental benefits alongside financial returns.

The Global Structure Group and the Global Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity Economy are inextricably linked. This is our time; this is our moment. Households everywhere will now feel part of something bigger.

The Threat of Inequality of Opportunity

There are clashing views on the relationship between income inequality and growth. Some have pointed to at least some measure of inequality as a necessary outcome of the rewards to innovation and risk-taking. Others have argued that excessive income inequality depresses investment in both human and physical capital, two key sources of long-term growth.

In recent research we argue that the crucial missing link in the inequality-growth relationship is inequality of opportunity.

https://blogs.imf.org/2019/11/07/the-threat-of-inequality-of-opportunity/

From Covid Crisis to Renaissance

Released On: 16 Dec 2020Available for over a year

Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, observes that the pandemic has forced states to confront how we value health, wealth and opportunity. During the first few months of the crisis, most states chose to value human life more than the economic well-being of the nation-state. But if that seems to be changing how do we assess value in this sense?

Dr Carney elucidates surprising differences in the financial value put on a human life in different nations – and goes on to argue that this reductionist approach fails to take into account deeper thinking about the worth of human existence.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000q8yc

World's Best Cities To Live In 2020

Global Finance's best cities ranking is based on a score that reflects a comprehensive list of eight unique factors. These are: economic strength; research and development; cultural interaction; livability; environment; accessibility; GDP per capita (nominal in USD); and COVID-19 deaths per million for the country. Each of these factors brings with it a critical way of understanding the quality of life in the cities and each of the metrics was normalized in order to properly quantify them into a single overall score. It is important to note that we weighted the Covid-19 deaths metric by a factor of three in order to underline how a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic affected which cities would be best to live in.

https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/non-economic-data/best-cities-to-live

UN report: As hunger rises, does Zero Hunger remain achievable?

The number of hungry people worldwide continues to rise, according to the latest report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. The joint report by UN agencies gauges whether the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger remains achievable. To learn more we’re joined by FAO’s Chief Economist Maximo Torero via Zoom.

http://www.fao.org/news/audio-video/detail-audio/en/?dyna_fef[uid]=12631&uid=12631

From Credit Crisis to Resilience

Dr Carney says that we must remain vigilant and resist the “three lies of finance.” If we don’t, he warns, we will live with a system which is ill-prepared for the next crisis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3sp

The Green Recovery from the Pandemic

Kristalina Georgieva and Mark Carney explore the role of finance in tackling the global climate emergency

https://www.imf.org/en/live?_slide=carney

Greener cities, resilient food systems

Can COVID-19 be the catalyst needed to transform urban food systems?

It is clear why meeting the nutritional needs of these growing urban populations is more and more difficult – and this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it even harder. Cities have had to meet new challenges including ensuring access to safe, nutritious and affordable food even with restricted movements and closed markets. 

http://www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1308247/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social+media&utm_campaign=fao

Reasons We’ve Loved New York

New York isn’t dead. But, on the other side of this thing, it’s going to be different. The Partnership for New York City estimates that one-third of the city’s small businesses — the places where we ate, drank, shopped, danced, sweat, fell in love — might not make it through the pandemic. To commemorate this tremendous loss in this sad, strange year, we are devoting our annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue to celebrating 500 places, big and small, that closed in 2020. “Here,” writes Carl Swanson in his heart-wrenching introductory essay, “is a wake for the places that defined our lives here — that gave us community and let us try on new identities. The bars where we came together for after-work drinks, the boxing gym where everybody thinks they’re in an action movie, the gallery that trusted you to build a cloud, the coffee shop where you were left alone to read, the restaurant with the full bar where you’d find yourself trying to eat after an all-night bender, the place that was so of its moment that it became a relic and then (deservedly) an icon.” What new city will we find on the other side? 

And keep checking Curbed throughout the week, where New Yorkers including Desus Nice, Padma Lakshmi, Emma Straub, Rumaan Alam, and Jiayang Fan will share their own tributes to their now-shuttered local favorites. 

https://www.curbed.com/article/nyc-businesses-closed-2020-pandemic.html

How We Get What We Value

Mark Carney’s Reith 2020 Lectures chart how we have come to esteem financial value over human value and how we have gone from market economies to market societies. He argues that this has contributed to a trio of crises: of credit, Covid and climate. And the former Bank of England Governor will outline how we can turn this around.

Dr Carney argues that society has come to embody Oscar Wilde’s aphorism: “Knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000py8t

Compassion, personalisation and comfort.

 French 'Alzheimer's village': where nursing home meets the outside world

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/french-alzheimers-village-nursing-home-dementia-care

RETHINKING THE WORLD OF WORK

With millions of jobs lost, robots on the rise, and white-collar workers toiling largely at home, COVID-19 appears to have ushered in a new normal in the global workplace.

But many of these developments stem from failed policy responses to megatrends already in motion long before the pandemic struck. For at least two decades, shifting demographics and technological upheaval have been upending labor markets, exacerbating inequality, making jobs increasingly precarious, and deepening economic insecurity.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/12/rethinking-the-world-of-work-dewan.htm

THE GLOBAL INDICATOR

GET AHEAD AND STAY AHEAD

We are working smart to continue strengthening our Global Brand and the Brand that is our Global Economy.   

We seek to keep the Global Community well informed on the world they live in, but we also want to be used as a platform by the Community to address the issues they find important.

https://theglobalstructurenetwork.com/the-global-indicator

The Global Structure Group is a HYBRID Business that utilizes our resources and our work to deliver positive social and/or environmental benefits alongside financial returns.

This is the right time for us to develop and expand out the success that we have seen now for over two decades and the time has never been so important and necessary. We are working smart to continue strengthening our Global Brand and the Brand that is our Global Economy.   

A changing orthodoxy

 

When we started this process over two decades ago, I had no inclination that our success would have burst the riverbanks of our initial thoughts to encompass something as far-reaching as what we are seeing today.  We began with one intention of which we achieved but as one CEO said to me, true SUCCESS has no limits as to its potential and our SUCCESS is that type of SUCCESS, few and far between and all encompassing.  I’m in my DEN writing this post and I am not going to water down the task that is before us, but I sit fully confident of our achievements and what we are going to achieve as a Global Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Economy today and for the generations to come.  I knew that this type of SUCCESS will bring us together, intellectual minds being joined together and will breathe life into new relations that can help us to deliver for Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being SUCCESS and to unpack our Rolls Royce of SUCCESS in a way that can benefit all.  Another of my new friend which came about on hearing of our SUCCESS said to me that with our achievement our Global Community and the Global Economy now have the Brand in the true sense of the word, giving people a clear perspective of what they ought to be trying to achieve and further it offers the clearest direction for not only the Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Economy but the Global Economy. My thanks to all who joined us on this journey and who are staying the course and continuing with us as partners, impact partners, contributors, writers, researchers, employees, investors, and sponsors and much more. We are working hard to continue strengthening the independence of the Global Structure Network Group, making it more robust, more formidable but most of all Resilient and to continue being the most Efficacious for today and for generations to come.

With our Brand, we have done organically what so many other Brands strived to do but failed. We deliver an indelible framework that is far-reaching, all encompassing, flexible and one that households everywhere will be able to use to fill in their own content for Human Potential and Well-being Prosperity. Positive news like ours that only come around once in a lifetime should not invite complacency. Instead, we need to act together and decisively on delivering for our efforts toward a resilient and sustained Well-being recovery. Bearing in mind that our Brand and SUCCESS is a job-rich gift for Economies all across the Globe.  We also need to remember that our achievement is wonderful, but they are not a magic wand. They do not wave all the problems just in a second. It will take time to be applied around the world.  This is why we have to keep up the fight until we convene and be able to deliver the whole life Ecosystem to the world by signposting our Global Strategy and components of Value for the billions who have been waiting for months.  We must act quickly so that access to opportunities for Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity can be available to everyone everywhere because we know that because of what we have achieved people everywhere are daring to dream bigger and smarter. Further, thankfully through our preparatory work, the bad weeds and the unwanted guests are being weeded out. Households stability and Human Potential must never again be taken for granted. He went on to say that we must be vigilant because as simple they might want it to be seen, this is the future direction not only for our Global Community and our Sector but for all sectors. We must resolve to keep a tight creative control of our SUCCESS. Everyone is drawing strength from our achievements and what it is they think we are doing.

The Global Structure Group is committed to being a global company. The Global Structure Network and its Value Proposition is the best course of action to optimize Personal Health and Well-being and to secure our objectives which is individuals’ long-term success and for households in every corner of the world to realise their biggest and most important asset. We have never seen interest like these before, in the numbers, perseverance, and the ethnic, age and racial diversity of those participating and anticipating the Global rollout of our Value Proposition and Global Marketplace. In a world reeling from the pandemic and for communities reeling from a high rate of downward mobility, The Global Structure Group is an Organization just in time. Health as an investment for economic return so that you can renovate for the world you confront. The complicated process must remind our readers that consent, and wilful action are shaped by economics, policy, and the culture of rule.  We are committed to partnerships and with our SUCCESS we have a unique opportunity that can take partnerships with the private sector to the next level to enhance delivery—recognizing that there is a natural intersection between the role of the Private Sector - of companies’ broader societal purpose—by clarifying its role and considering the long-term view. It is in the Global Structure Network Group interests to build the capacity of such relationships to deal with the threats that concern households; that work isn’t quick or linear, but it is an investment for greater household resilience and stronger relationships and resilient cities. We are inviting your participation to help us do much more.

Wellness for The Global Structure Network means being in control or reasonably in control of all the things that determine your social and economic realities. Not only is The Global Structure Network a critical player in the global effort for the Optimization and Democratizing of Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity, but we are also now deeply integrated into the Global planned efforts. Your future will be brighter than your past — Making it work! Delivering an Equity Roadmap for Personal Health and Well-being Triumph. Our business has a clear purpose: Our mission is for you to become owners of Your Health and owners of Yourselves so that empathy can be evenly distributed and love of yourself multiply. It is our essential purpose and will always be at the heart of our business. Your Marketplace with our own Brands, other National Branded Products, Services and your Whole Life Ecosystem will be accessible in every corner of the world. Along with the Eagerly anticipated Components of Value. As the Founder, we are committed to delivering for you because we believe that everyone should have an opportunity to reach their full potential and to truly live their best life as culture and definition and to be reasonably in control of their destiny.

Gary

Founder and CFO

The Founders Gallery

The Global Structure Group

UNLIMITED CLARITY. UNRIVALLED AUTHORITY

(By definition, we confer a type of prestige and authority that cannot be found anywhere else.)

https://theglobalstructurenetwork.com/message-from-the-founder

The Global Structure Group is a HYBRID Business that utilizes our resources and our work to deliver positive social and/or environmental benefits alongside financial returns.

The Global Structure Group and the Global Freedom and Personal Health and Well-being Prosperity Economy are inextricably linked. 

Can the private sector save the world? Q&A with the 'godfather of sustainability'

Sustainability guru John Elkington discusses his new book "Green Swans," and the role of the private sector and impact investment in creating a better future for all.

https://www.devex.com/news/can-the-private-sector-save-the-world-q-a-with-the-godfather-of-sustainability-98231

How the Commodity Boom Helped Tackle Poverty and Inequality in Latin America

Latin America may be the most unequal region in the world, but it is the only region to significantly lower inequality over the past two decades, and the boom in commodity prices helped make it happen. 

With the boom over, poverty rates are edging up in some Latin American countries, and job creation has slowed. The region needs to find new ways to raise its currently low revenue collection and allow for further spending on key social areas, such as education and healthcare. This will help sustain growth and fight inequality and poverty.

https://blogs.imf.org/2018/06/21/how-the-commodity-boom-helped-tackle-poverty-and-inequality-in-latin-america/

Window for Change

There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. This saying could not be more apt today. The pandemic—which has disrupted the world in profound ways—has prompted countries to roll out significant policy changes that might otherwise have taken years. It has also sped the arrival of technologies and new ways of working and learning, moving us almost overnight into a new era.

https://blogs.imf.org/2020/12/01/window-for-change/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

When it comes to the good cholesterol, fitness trumps weight

New findings suggest that maintaining a “healthy” weight isn’t as important for healthy cholesterol function as being active by regularly performing strength training.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131009125738.htm

The Journal of Men's Health & Gender - The state of men’s health in Western Europe

Results: Differences were found between the health of men and women across all age groups. Wide country-to-country variations in the influence of the different health issues were evident, with clear geographical differences for some disease states. Men had a higher rate of death than women for a wide range of risks such as ischaemic heart disease, cancer of the colon, accidents and deaths due to external causes.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1571891304000020

The Declining Fortunes of the Young

Will I do as well as my parents?

A positive answer to this question once seemed a foregone conclusion; now, for recent generations, less so. Despite being more educated than their parents, millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—may have less job stability during their working life. Concerns that it might be more difficult to break into the middle class, or to have enough retirement savings, are also rising to the fore in policy debates in many advanced economies.

https://blogs.imf.org/2020/02/27/the-declining-fortunes-of-the-young/

How the Rich Get Richer

Wealth begets wealth. This simple concept of privilege has added to growing discontent with inequality that has escalated under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://blogs.imf.org/2020/11/30/how-the-rich-get-richer/