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Pessimism stalks the world

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As 2013 commences, the world situation is at a status quo with no immediate hope for positive change battle is being waged in individual states.

BY NOEL g DE SOUZA

The coming of a New Year (including sectarian New Years like Diwali) is perceived as saying goodbye to the old situation of which many were tired, and welcoming a new dawn of hope and a better life.

The economic situation in Europe, to a lesser degree in the United States and to a large extent in Japan, cannot be expected to engender such an optimistic outlook. The Australian economic situation is much better if we consider the high value of the Australian dollar to be a good indicator vis-à-vis the major world currencies.

But it is precisely the high value of the Australian dollar which is pounding Australia’s manufacturing and agricultural industries. Many of its companies have closed production and in the process, have blatantly shown that they have no regard for their employees’ welfare.

In several Republican-led American states (like Wisconsin, Indiana, Maine and Missouri) workers and trade unions are being targeted. To reduce their difficult budgets, government employees are amongst the first to be under threat of being made redundant. Laws are currently being debated to ensure that unionism is no longer compulsory and thus ensure that unions will get starved of funds.

2. Those who want change but it is not happening fast enough for them: These are people who see the current system as being one of entrenched benefits, whilst the bulk of the population is left out of the negotiating process. They thus see that a majority of people are being made scapegoats in the economic stakes.

the Australian economic situation is much better if we consider the high value of the Australian dollar to be a good indicator visà-vis the major world currencies.

Executives have received large bonuses for reducing the workforce and thus making their companies ‘competitive’, whilst long-serving and faithful employees have been discarded. These should not be the measures which a relatively prosperous country like Australia should take.

The situation in Europe is much gloomier. The austerity measures there are so designed that they look like an attack on workers and the middle class. Prominent Australian companies have also put in their own versions of austerity measures. In these circumstances, is there any wonder that pessimism now stalks the world?

However, our supermarkets stock a wide range of products from Europe, particularly southern European countries. There are some expected products like olive oil, but then there are sauces, chutneys, cakes and puddings. For some time now the Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith, in an endeavour to save jobs, has been promoting Australian-made items like Canola oil and various other products.

Australian products inexplicably cost more than imported goods. Despite transportation costs, Italian tinned tomatoes, for example, cost much less than the equivalent local item. This also applies to goods using flour and sugar, like cakes and the popular tiramisu.

There appear to be three types of pessimistic people:

1. Those who do not want any change: These are the currently privileged ones, whether in business or in trade unions. Great battles being fought in the USA, and Australia and India are between these two adversaries. In the USA and in Australia, this

The most visible manifestation of this group includes the militant street demonstrators such as in Greece and Spain, and those who gather at economic and other forums where world leaders meet. A vivid example was seen recently at the Noble Prize ceremony in Oslo where the VIPs appeared to be feted and dining at banquets, whilst the demonstrators were left out in the biting cold.

3. And there are those who see a middle path which is arrived at by haggling and compromise, with an end result which satisfies no one.

There has been much opposition to the entry of large scale foreign (mostly American) departmental stores in India. Political parties took the advantage of arousing the underprivileged in their opposition. However, the coming of large departmental stores does not bother everyone. There are optimists amongst India’s most famous producers. One such is Godrej, which is a household name in India and the country’s second largest consumer manufacturer. Adi Godrej has developed the unique method distributing his goods through small retailers. Departmental stores are said to buy only six percent of his total output. He expects this situation to continue for another decade from now.

On the international level, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has unearthed a not-so- well-known Russian billionaire Alexander Lutsenko who concentrates on soya bean production. Russia’s soya bean production will reach two million tons this year.

However, Lusenko has had the foresight of not depending on his Russian production alone. He is wise, by experience, to the vagaries of weather and other negative conditions. That is why he has soya also grown in Brazil and Argentina. Wherever he operates, he has built rail and port facilities. Simply put, Lutsenko has created an infrastructure system which takes care of risk eventualities.

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