The banks are due to use about €765bn of the ultra-cheap loans to repay earlier ECB loans that are about to mature. But they are expected to use much of the remaining €543bn to buy bonds issued by their own governments — earning them an instant profit on the “carry trade” between the negative rate from the ECB and the higher yield on government bonds.
An increasing share of total university and college enrolments have come from international sources in recent years. During the 2017/2018 academic year, 14.7% and 13.2% of all university and college enrolments were international, respectively. Given the ongoing uncertainties around the COVID-19 pandemic and the new public health restrictions imposed on international travel, physical distancing guidelines affecting classroom structures, and the real possibility that many programs may have to be delivered online, the share of enrolments in various academic programs that are international is of high relevance at the moment.
Together, they paint a picture of an institutional set up for public-private partnerships that enshrines ‘privileges and advantages’ for the private sector and ‘duties and obligations’ for the public sector, with worrying implications for the sidelining of the public interest in a wide range of subjects: from neglecting pandemic preparedness, to fuelling deforestation and climate change.
In a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) virtual meeting, the ageing heir to the British monarchy, Prince Charles spoke with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva. Charles’s speech was part of a launch event for The Great Reset, a project involving the WEF and the Prince of Wales’s Sustainable Markets Initiative, aimed at rebuilding the economic and social system…
The OECD Economic Outlook is the OECD's twice-yearly analysis of the major economic trends and prospects for the next two years. This issue includes a general assessment of the macroeconomic situation, a series of notes on the macroeconomic and structural policy issues related to the COVID-19 outbreak and a chapter summarising developments and providing projections for each individual country.
During the initial shock from COVID-19, it was understandable that governments and central banks would respond with massive injections of liquidity. But now policymakers need to take a step back and consider which forms of stimulus are really needed, and which risk doing more harm than good.
This paper shows how Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) serve to expand privatization in areas of social reproduction and care work. SIBs extend neoliberalism and austerity in the social care sector through the financialization of care work. They open these domains as a new frontier for investment markets, creating inequity for already marginalized groups. The paper concludes with an overview of the SIB landscape in Canada and explores its possibilities for growth.
Social impact bonds funnel private capital into philanthropic projects. Investors receive a return based on whether the project saves public money by addressing the social issue it targets.