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An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study by complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

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There has not been any organized, explicitly class-based violence in the United States for generations, so what, exactly, does “class warfare” really mean? Is it just an empty political catch-phrase? [...] I recently argued that real class warfare is when those who have already achieved a good deal of prosperity pull the ladder up behind them by attacking the very things that once allowed working people to move up and join the ranks of the middle class.

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The premature deaths of smokers has economic benefits, according to a controversial report commissioned by the leading US cigarette manufacturer, Philip Morris.

The report found that the Czech Republic saved about USD 147 million in 1997 through the deaths of smokers who would not live to use healthcare or housing for the elderly.

Compiled as a cost-benefit analysis to the Czech government, the study weighted the savings against the income tax lost and cost of caring for smokers before they died.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1442555.stm

"We will realize that the consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model, based on people working less and owning less," Paul Gilding, Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, says. "How many people," Gilding asks, "lie on their death bed and say, I wish I had worked harder or built more shareholder value, and how many say, I wish I had gone to more ballgames, read more books to my kids, taken more walks? To do that, you need a growth model based on giving people more time to enjoy life, but with less stuff."

One remarkable piece of economic news barely rated a mention this week: China surpassed the United States as the world's leading manufacturer. It is hard to grasp the magnitude and speed of China's economic transformation. However, things may not be as rosy as they seem. It is estimated that ten new cities are being built every year -- a sign of future growth or just another bubble waiting to burst? Adrian Brown reports for SBS Dateline.

The chronic crisis in the cocoa industry has contributed to Côte d’Ivoire's slide into civil war in two ways. First, and most significant, the persistent poverty and stagnation causes war. Second, the ethnic tensions, which arose in the cocoa industry itself, gave unscrupulous politicians the chance to make a bad situation even worse, for their personal gain.

At the moment, the world cocoa price in London is high, roughly CFA 1,600 per kilo. The farmers are lucky if they get half of it for their sacks of beans. The Ivorian agents of Cargill, ADM, and Barry Callebaut offer much less than the world price. The corrupt government takes a big bite in "official" taxes. Finally, the farmers pay bribes at police roadblocks.

Côte d’Ivoire over the past decades has done just about everything mainstream Western economists suggested -- and it remains trapped in poverty. The country concentrated on growing and exporting products it was "good" at, cocoa and also coffee, instead of trying to industrialize. But the chronically low world prices for these products kept the country poor.

With better prices -- a little more like what protected and subsidized farmers in the US and Western Europe earn -- millions in the cocoa-growing regions of Côte d’Ivoire could have started to consume more themselves, which in turn would have promoted local industries, reduced unemployment, and gradually raised the country's standard of living.

Every time those in the more prosperous parts of the world buy chocolate, we are exploiting the people who produce it. As long as we continue to tolerate this injustice, there will be no peace in Côte d’Ivoire. The crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is representative of deeply rooted structural problems in many other African nations.

In the US, right-wing legislators continue their attack on labor unions. These politicians ignore one simple fact: unions were a major force in building and sustaining the great American middle class, and as they declined, so has the middle class. CAP’s Karla Waters and David Madland showed in a report first published in January 2011 that as union membership has steadily declined since 1967, so too has the middle class’s share of national income, as the super-rich have taken a larger share of national income than any time since the 1920s.

The European Central Bank is strongly hinting that it will raise interest rates at its next meeting, in response to rising headline inflation -- even though this rise is the result of rising food and oil prices, which are not the results of ECB policy. Suppose that we focus on wage rates, which are often seen as the stickiest, most inertia-driven prices. The eurozone, like the US, has seen wage growth slump in the face of high unemployment.

So what the ECB is saying, in effect, is that Europe should drive down nominal wages -- which can only be done by raising the unemployment rate -- in order to offset the effect of oil and food on headline inflation. (Real wages will fall in any case.) Is this really a policy that the ECB would defend in so many words? I doubt it. But however sober and dignified talk of price stability may sound, that is what the proposed policy amounts to.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

Alcohol causes nearly 4% of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis, or violence, the World Health Organization warned. Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said. Yet alcohol control policies are weak and remain a low priority for most governments despite drinking's heavy toll on society from road accidents, violence, disease, child neglect, and job absenteeism, it said. Approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes, the WHO said in its "Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health."