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Bond issuance for African countries will continue in 2015 at a slower pace with the expectation of U.S. Fed raising interest rates in late 2015. In 2013 African countries raised $11 billion, and in 2014 $8 billion, compared to $1 billion in 2000, as these countries from Nigeria to Ghana raised money to finance infrastructure development. Ivory Coast plans to raise $1 billion in coming months, Tanzania plas to issue a dollar denominated bond. Senegal, Angola, Kenya and Ethiopia are issuing bonds to western investors and competing with other developing countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala and Romania for investors. Analysts say countries such as Ivory Coast, with a growth rate of 8% and prudently managed finances are considered "good issuers" in today's market.

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Stories of children in New York City overcoming adversity to go to college with the help of the New York Times College Scholarship Fund. Children with poor or sick parents in the city, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, and other countries.

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The yen strengthened to 88 yen to the dollar, the strongest in 13 years, and Hirohisa Fujii, the new Finance Minister said that the government would not step in to weaken the yen even if it went up further. Thomas Harr a foreign exchange strategist at Standard Chartered in Singapore says the elections were a big boost for the yen. It created a new environment in Japanese politics for the first time since World War II as the LDP party was swept out of power. The hope is that by moving away from dependence on exports and reviving the domestic economy Japan can turn the page to a new chapter in its economic growth, away from the stagnation of the last two decades. But its a tricky balancing act between exporters and the domestic consumer.

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IMF is taking on a new role as the staff of the G-20 nations. As the G-20 has no staff, no headquarters, no offices, the IMF is being asked to tke on this role.

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Under the current plan 5% of the IMF quotas will shift from overrepresented rich countries to developing countries, less than the 7% these countries wanted.

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The Bureau of National Labor Statistics in China says China's GDP growth for 4th quarter 2008 was 6.8%. Private economists expect growth to slow to something like 5% in 2009 as the full brunt of the housing downturn and the drop in exports manufacturing is felt this year. Housing and exports were the two engines that helped China to reach 12-13% growth rates for 2007 and 2008. 2008 was also the year of the Olympics, and it now appears that by excessive growth and production capacity in many industries and increasing exports China may have created severe imbalances in the world economy. One way this happened is through the huge and ever increasing trade deficits with the US. By reinvesting the money in US Treasurys, China made a huge wave of liquidity and cheap credit possible in the US creating a bubble economy. The other is through the inflated demand in commodities like oil from the Middle East and countries like Russia, and demand for iron ore and other metal commodities from places like Brazil and Australia. This put upward pressure on the prices of commodities, creating a bubble in the price of oil. With the bursting of these bubbles the economies of Russia, Brazil and Australia and other countries are in a deep nosedive. The effects have operated in myriad ways, including a circular effect of the bursting of the credit bubble in the US leading to a collapse of demand in the US market for Chinese goods. In turn the collapse in demand for German and Japanese goods in China with declining demand, as the effects moved through the channels of the international trading system. The decline in Chinese demand also affects the US ability to make a export driven recovery....

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The pact of competitiveness is designed to bring a closer integration of the eurozone. It includes proposals for increasing the retirement age to 67, ending indexation of wages to inflation, and involvement of other eurozone countries in controlling out of control deficits in some countries. Germany sees this as necessary to convince the German public that financial responsibility is being exercized by countries in budget crises that get help from Germany. This may buy time but it does not come to terms with the reality of Greece being insolvent already, which may be true also for Ireland and Portugal. Some experts see the need for debt restructuring, and the need to start early, especially if Germany is unwilling to make large transfers to these countries.

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The Labor Department's rate of labor underutilization is 14.8% of thepotential workforce, much higher than the 8.1% unemployment rate. Which means that a lot of workers are not able to make the fullest use of their skills. If unemployment stays high for a very long period some workers lose their skills and become less employable. THat could leave the floor for unemployment at amuch higher level. Something like this is happening now and stay with us as the unemployment rate grows and the underutilization of labor rate with it. Physiscists call it "hysteresis"., a kind of laggard impact of some sustained force. An example is if you squeeze a nerf ball for so long that it doesn't bounce back when you release it. Higher underutilization of labor which could hit 20% by 2010 at the rate at which job losses are ocurring of half a million a month, would mean pressure on wages and fears of deflation, lower tax revenues and fears of persistent deficits, less cash to invest and companies having less capital to invest leading to lower earnings. And falling behind the curve is what Krugman fears could be happening now, even with the large stimulus and budget of the new President, because of a series of problems ocurring at the same time and reinforcing each other. And the efforts of the government still not large or effective to meet the scale of the challenge. See the link to this. ...

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Criticism of the EU's handling of the Greece crisis by IMF officials in a report. The report says the actions taken for debt restructuring in 2012 should have come much earlier to reduce the debt burden and the size of austerity measures in Greece. Similiar criticism has been voiced by president Hollande of France and in editorials by the WSJ. President Samaras of Greece says the sharp cuts in spending reduced potential for growth in the economy.

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The IMF's Anoop Singh, director of the Asia-Pacific department, says the inflation in Asia and other countries is a result of wider structural economic shifts, not just a one-off result of the weather related food production declines. For this reason the response should be broader reforms to control inflation. Monetary policies alone cannot therefore do the job, more strengthening of currencies will be needed. Singh says some of the underlying demand in Asia is a result of a widening middle class, which implies the price pressures may not be temporary. The high growth rate in Asia has some good and bad aspects. The bad aspect is the quality of some of the growth and the sustainability of that kind of growth, says Singh.

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Efforts by the EU to change the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5% in exchange for help from the EU.