From: The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog

File Under: Crisis, Which Crisis?
Summer was rife with reports of the global food crisis—rising prices were causing riots in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and the world’s stocks of basic grains and staples were at their lowest levels in decades.

There’s been nary a peep of food shortages, however, since the credit crisis began to swamp the media’s newsrooms in September. And whatever promises were made by western governments to alleviate the problem have proved to be fleeting ones. In a recent report, Oxfam Great Britain points out that less than $1 billion of the $12 billion pledged by countries five months ago has been given.

The Green Solution
As the meltdown kicks into another gear, and the dreaded ‘R’ word gets bandied about with dour resignation, a new theme has emerged to much of the commentary. When I first started hearing numbers like $700 billion just to bail out the American financial industry, I figured there goes any hope in the near-term of making the necessary investments to green the world economy (a hope also deferred by the now plummeting price of oil).

Others are using the moment, however, to insist that the crisis actually presents a critical opportunity to usher in a period of transformation toward renewable energies. Personally, I can’t see the message getting any traction—as in see how well we followed through on that food crisis thingie!—but see Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, Nicholas Stern in The Guardian, and George Monbiot, also in The Guardian.

Return of the IMF
In the past few years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been rummaging about for nifty gimmicks to restore its diminished credibility. Too many countries with sore memories of debilitating structural adjustment programs had sworn off ever becoming clients again; some regions, such as South America, were even looking at establishing their own banks of last resort to rival the IMF.

Well, the schoolyard bully that everyone had learned to shun is popular all over again, as Pakistan, Iceland, Ukraine and Hungary go open-handed for help to the IMF and the reformed bully is ecstatic for the attention. (The IMF is less happy for the attention it’s receiving as a result of its managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of abusing his power while carrying on a brief fling with one of his female co-workers.)

(All images from The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog)