NYT on Grameen Bank

Available here:

"The elephant in the room is the question: If microfinance doesn’t accomplish anything positive, then why are 128 million poor families busy taking loans? Should we assume that poor people simply don’t know what’s in their best interest? Or do we need to look more deeply into the way poor people survive?

That’s what a number of creative researchers are doing today. One example is the collaboration between Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven that culminated in the excellent book “Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day.” The book takes a penetrating look into 300 poor families in Bangladesh, South Africa, and India, with interviews conducted every two weeks to track expenses, earnings and cash flow at a granular level. What the researchers found was striking, and it gets to the question of what it really means for most people to be poor: to live with perpetual uncertainty.

“What the research taught us is that the problem of living on $1 or $2 a day is that you don’t actually earn $1 or $2 every day,” explained Jonathan Morduch. “That’s just an average. Some days you receive $5 and then nothing for two weeks. Life is unreliable. So the challenge for the poor is that you need to put together the right sums to deal with the right challenges in life. And what we saw microfinance was doing for people was offering them a reliable source of money. With microfinance, you get a sum of money that’s promised on the day it’s promised in the amount that’s promised. It’s often the only reliable service that poor people have — and that’s incredibly powerful.”"

NYT: China's new five-year plan

NYT is reporting on China's new five-year plan, which seeks to shift the engine of economic growth from exports to domestic consumption, largely through letting incomes rise:

"The government pledged to keep prices “basically stable” through 2015, limiting inflation to 4 percent this year, and to raise household income by an annual average of 7 percent, roughly in line with economic growth. That would break from the past 20 years, in which the growth of ordinary workers’ income has regularly lagged behind the growth in gross domestic product, and consumer spending as a share of the economy has dropped to a record low. The report called expanding domestic demand “a long-term strategic principle” and pledged to increase subsidies to low-income households, extend broadband Internet to rural areas and smaller cities, and expand retail sectors like chain stores and online commerce."

In economic development terms, this is called "strategy switching," and the move China seems to be making is something commentators including David Kennedy have been talking about for some time. Get ready for one of the largest markets in the world to become even larger.

Popular support for Iran's nuclear program

From the NYT:

"Why such strong support for nuclear energy in a country whose natural endowments don’t exactly leave it devoid of energy sources? The history of Iran’s nuclear program is long and tortuous, and there have definitely been periods (possibly including now) when the government was trying to develop nukes. But at the popular level, a separate motivation has taken shape: pride in the technical prowess embodied in the program.

This pride may have grown more intense and nationalistic under Western pressure to constrain the program. Though most Iranians say sanctions already imposed on the country have hurt it, 86 percent of them - and 78 percent of Mousavi supporters - say that Iran should not "give up its nuclear activities regardless of the circumstances.""

Cyprus: further movement toward a political solution

This article originally appeared in the Harvard International Law Journal.

After numerous false starts, negotiations between the two parties to the decades-old stalemate in Cyprus seem to be moving forward again, this time with the assistance of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who recently made his first official visit to Cyprus. The island nation has been divided into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north since 1974, when a Greek-led coup sought to annex the island to Greece, prompting a Turkish invasion that claimed the top 37% of the island. The north, which calls itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), has only been recognized by Turkey, and has lagged behind the impressive economic development of the south, which enjoys broad international recognition and now represents the island in the European Union. UN peacekeepers patrol the unofficial border between the two sides, and the island is heavily militarized.

Previous talks have been derailed by a number of contentious issues; the most serious recent attempt at unification, in 2004, produced an agreement which was subsequently ratified in a referendum by the north but rejected, under the hard-line presidency of Tassos Papadopoulos, by the south. Papadopoulos has since been replaced by the more moderate Demetris Christofias, but the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, now faces a challenge in upcoming elections from a more hard-line candidate. This has ramped up the pressure for a solution, as has the fact that the ongoing stalemate has dimmed Turkey’s prospects in its own bid for EU accession.

Legal issues relating to the conflict stem originally from the question of whether the 1974 Turkish invasion was justified as a matter of international law. Greek Cypriots argue that the invasion was a clear violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits aggressive war; their argument is supported by the fact that no multilateral body authorized the action. Turkish Cypriots counter that Turkey’s response was justified, as a form of self-defense, by the prospect of the island’s annexation to Greece, and, as a form of humanitarian intervention, by longstanding intercommunal violence directed toward the Turkish-speaking minority. Going forward, both political and legal solutions will be needed to address issues including the division of contested territory, the presence of Turkish forces, reparations for lost property, and power sharing under a proposed federation.

For more information, please click here.

John Yoo explains the torture memos

Balkinization offers this commentary on John Yoo's recent discussion of the torture memos:

"That is, the torture memos were written not to define "torture" with respect to new situations where the statute was unclear; rather they were written to allow the CIA to get around the legal ban on torture, even to the point of arguing that the torture statute would be unconstitutional if applied to persons acting under the direction of the President as commander-in-chief. The torture memos were not a hypothetical lawyer's exercise to guide future conduct. They were written in order to ensure that members of the CIA would never be prosecuted for torture."

DOJ presents recommendations for Guantánamo detainees

From the New York Times:

"The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday. However, the administration has decided that nearly 40 other detainees should be prosecuted for terrorism or related war crimes. And the remaining prisoners, about 110 men, should be repatriated or transferred to other countries for possible release, the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the numbers."

Without knowing all the facts, I think this is the wrong decision. If the 50 detainees the administration proposes to imprison without trial pose a legitimate threat to the United States, the government should be able to (and required to) present some evidence to that effect, at least in the context of a military commission (which has its own problems, but is better than indefinite detention). Contentious arguments about humanitarian law aside, one of Obama's promises in taking office was to end the "law-free zone" that GTMO had become under the Bush administration. In that context, this feels like a step in the wrong direction.

Karzai seeks reconciliation with moderate Taliban

From the New York Times:

"Mr. Omer’s remarks suggested the government had a softer line than the Americans on talking to Taliban leaders. "We are ready to negotiate with anyone," he said. "Whoever comes over is welcome."

A spokesman for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, ruled out any possibility of negotiations with Mr. Karzai's government. "We are united and we will remain united against them," Mr. Ahmadi said in a telephone interview. "There is no differentiation between Taliban moderates and extremists. We are fighting under one name, Taliban, under one leadership.""