Start up opportunities as climate changes in Myanmar’s political landscape.
Myanmar-startups.com present the Rice Bowl Startup Awards held during the ASEAN Entrepreneurship Summit in Kuala Lumpur, November this year. It is the first ASEAN award that recognizes breakout startups that harness technology innovatively. What sets the awards apart from other accolades is that they are developmental in nature and focus on enhancing the nominees and giving them regional exposure.
A hearing on the fantasy sports case mounted by the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ended inconclusively.
Daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and DraftKings have always maintained that the services they offer don’t count as gambling because they’re contests of skill. Schneiderman defines daily fantasy sports as illegal gambling under New York state law, saying that “winning or losing depends on numerous elements of chance to a ‘material degree.’” If public officials in other states agree, it could be the end of the daily fantasy sports industry in the U.S.
FanDuel and DraftKings have cited a 2006 federal law to distinguish themselves from illegal gambling. But that law explicitly defers to state definitions of what counts as betting. In most cases, states determine the legal status of contests with cash prizes by examining whether the activity is based on skill (like playing in a bowling tournament) or chance (like pulling the arm on a slot machine). Many activities are a mix of both, of course, and states have different thresholds for how much chance is acceptable before something becomes gambling. For Schneiderman, season-long fantasy sports are tolerable in part because they involve long-term strategy over several months. Daily fantasy games can turn on a single play.
New York’s standard is in the middle of the pack, according to Daniel Wallach, a sports and gaming attorney with the firm Becker & Poliakoff. Wallach says about 10 states have said games involving any amount of chance count as gambling, while about 20 states say chance must be the “predominant factor” in the outcome.
While the legality of daily fantasy sports turns on the skill-vs.-chance question, the cases made by both advocates and critics have a fundamental contradiction. At the same time Schneiderman argues that participating in daily fantasy sports resembles playing the lottery, he complains that a small number of top players win almost all the time. He even compares the games to poker, which many academics see as heavily skill-based. Considering that Schneiderman’s letter doesn’t weigh in on allegations of cheating, it stands to reason that some players win all the time because they’re just better than everyone else.
FanDuel and DraftKings, on the other hand, describe daily fantasy as a skill-based activity when discussing legal matters. But they push back against the idea that the success of elite players makes it less likely for less-savvy users to win.
Schneiderman raises concerns that daily fantasy sports will lead to the same kinds of public-health and economic problems that illegal gambling has caused. Potential problem gamblers are likely to be lured by “the quick rate of play, the large jackpots, and the false perception that it is eminently winnable,” Schneiderman wrote. “Ultimately, it is these types of harms that our Constitution and gambling laws were intended to prevent in New York.”
The Petrobras scandal has widened to indict Andre Esteves, who claims he is better than Goldman Sachs bankers.
The chief executive of Brazil’s largest independent investment bank and a powerful ruling party senator were arrested early Wednesday as part of an investigation into a massive corruption scandal at state-controlled oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA.
Authorities in Brasília arrested Sen. Delcídio do Amaral, a member of the governing Workers’ Party and the Senate whip, whose help is seen as critical for President Dilma Rousseff to pass unpopular austerity measures to shore up Brazil’s shaky finances.
Prosecutors say the two men were conspiring to pay millions in bribes to a key witness in the Petrobras investigation, then spirit him out of Brazil on a private jet to prevent him from turning state’s evidence that could implicate them in the sprawling graft scheme.
The arrests were stunning even by the standards of Brazil’s biggest-ever corruption probe, which has toppled elites at the highest levels of the nation’s business and government. The developments are yet another blow to Ms. Rousseff, whose popularity has plummeted as Brazil’s economy has deteriorated and her party, known as the PT, has become mired in the scandal.
Through his attorney, Mr. Esteves denied wrongdoing. Mr. Amaral’s lawyer said his client is fighting the charges against him.
Messrs. Esteves and Amaral were taken into custody on suspicion they were trying to stop a former Petrobras executive, Nestor Cerveró, from cutting a plea bargain with prosecutors and providing testimony that would link the men with the corruption scandal, according to Brazil’s Supreme Court, which authorized the arrests.
Mr. Cerveró is accused of taking bribes in exchange for awarding supplier contracts as part of a massive graft ring that operated at Petrobras for more than a decade. Court documents portray the efforts by Messrs. Esteves and Amaral to free Mr. Cerveró from custody.
At a November meeting at an upscale Brasília hotel, Mr. Amaral met with Mr. Cerveró’s son, Bernardo Cerveró and two other men to discuss ways to free Mr. Cerveró from prison and have him flee the country, according to the documents.
According to the documents, Mr. Amaral proposed using a legal maneuver to secure Mr. Cerveró’s release from prison while he awaits trial.
Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki said that Mr. Amaral “is part of a criminal organization,” citing the senator’s alleged participation in “an escape plan” that could jeopardize the corruption probe known as Operation Car Wash.
The court documents didn’t expressly indicate a link between BTG and the investigation.
But Brazilian authorities have been investigating BTG’s $1.5 billion purchase of a 50% stake in the African operation of Petrobras in 2013 following allegations that the price paid the bank may have been too low.
BTG also is a major investor in troubled oil rig supplier Sete Brasil Participações SA, which also was ensnared in the Operation Car Wash investigation.
Mr. Esteves’s arrest is a dramatic setback for one the nation’s best-known financial executives. One of Brazil’s richest men, Mr. Esteves, 46, has a net worth estimated at $2.1 billion, according to Forbes.
Mr. Esteves quickly developed a reputation for innovative deal making and built BTG into Brazil´s largest independent investment bank, with 245 partners and 3,500 employees. The bank manages about $112 billion and has offices in 20 countries.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is echoing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in his push to make college tuition more affordable, saying Thursday that the U.S. should “start some governmental program.”
Trump said, “Well, the only way you can do it is you have to start some governmental program and you have governmental programs right now…We’re going to do something very big with loans because you have to get these people going. They really feel down and out.”
Warren has proposed such measures during her tenure in the Senate, calling for reforms to the way college education operates in the United States.
In June, Warren unveiled a plan that would create a new government program that would give states money so that they could keep tuition low. As Inside Higher Education notes: “Warren wants a new federal program that would provide funds to states that make some public higher education options so inexpensive that borrowing would not be required, and she wants more federal funding to come with more strings attached.”
In addition, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has proposed “free” tuition by reforming the education system, making it a central theme of his 2016 campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Warren has also stated that there are too many institutions of higher learning, traditionally a conservative position. For people around the globe who are confused by the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US, I is well to look at Trump, Warren and Sanders as populists.
How many wives earn more than their husbands in the US?
Back in 1987, only 17.8 percent of American wives outearned their husbands, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even though the situation is gradually improving, it quite rare to find a wife that takes home more money than her husband. In 2013, 29.3 percent of American wives were the main breadwinners in US families (where both wives and husbands have earnings).
This chart shows the % of US wives earning more than their husbands from 1987 to 2013.
Can we kickstart economic stagnation with investments in clean energy?
Dean Baker writes: As the world prepares for another round of climate negotiations in Paris starting Nov. 30, it is worth repeating a few simple points.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the world is already paying a substantial price for global warming. Sure, extreme weather events will never come with a stamp that says “caused by global warming.” But we know that global warming will change weather patterns in ways that are not entirely predictable. That means that we will see unusual weather events where global warming was likely a factor, but we can never know for certain.
One of the leading candidates in this respect is the extreme drought that afflicted Syria in the last decade, destroying much of its agriculture and leading to a mass migration to its cities. This migration was likely a factor in the unrest that led the country’s civil war starting in 2011. Syria’s conflict in turn has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the displacement of millions, and of course the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
It is likely that we will see, or are already seeing, other weather disruptions with comparable human consequences. Unfortunately, there has been much attention to low-lying and relatively sparsely populated islands as the main victims of global warming. In fact, there will almost certainly be hundreds of times more victims in relatively densely populated areas facing droughts or countries such as Bangladesh, which could be hit by devastating floods.
The time has long since passed for arguing about whether global warming is happening or whether the consequences will be serious. The question is what we are prepared to do about it. Here also, we have seen reality largely turned on its head.
Most countries are still suffering from the fallout of the Great Recession. They are struggling to contain budget deficits even as their economies remain well below full employment. This creates a situation where the leaders planning to meet in Paris are looking to address climate change on the cheap.
This logic is 100 percent backwards. The economic problem that the United States, most of Europe, Japan and even China now face is secular stagnation. This is a prolonged period of inadequate demand. The constraint on further output in all of these places is not the limit of the economy’s ability to produce goods and services, but rather of the demand for goods and services.
This is a problem for which measures to confront climate change present an obvious solution. We know that reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) to acceptable levels is a massive undertaking. It will take an enormous amount of capital and labor to make our homes and businesses more energy efficient, and to convert them to clean sources of energy as quickly as possible. The same applies to our transportation network: We have to promote mass transit and make all of our transportation vehicles cleaner.
This can be done, though it costs money. But the story that is missed is that secular stagnation means we have the money. The resources are the unemployed and underemployed workers who could be employed in this massive undertaking. In terms of money, contrary to the whining of the deficit hawks, there are no practical limits to how much the United States, Europe and Japan can borrow right now. We hit limits on our ability to borrow when the economy is near full employment, not when there are still large numbers of unemployed workers.
It’s not necessary to take my word on this issue; the financial markets are saying the same thing. Long-term interest rates in the United States remain at extraordinarily low levels. The major European countries face long-term interest rates of less than 1.0 percent. And that debt-ridden basket case Japan has to pay a tiny 0.3 percent interest rate on its long-term debt. These markets are telling us that we can borrow hundreds of billions more each year to address global warming or other major needs.
There is one other point that is worth noting in this context. We should want to reduce GHG emissions at the lowest possible cost. Since it doesn’t matter for the environment whether the GHG comes from the U.S. or India, it would make sense to reduce emissions in the places where we get the greatest reductions per dollar.
That would mean having the U.S. and other wealthy countries pay developing countries to reduce their GHG emissions. We should be paying for India and other developing countries to build out a modern electric grid that is based on clean energy. That would be enormously beneficial to these countries, since they desperately need more energy, but it would also be beneficial to the wealthy countries, since we could avoid an enormous amount of coal usage. And paying India to develop clean energy should even help create jobs in the U.S., although the route is a bit circuitous.
Anyhow, this would be an obvious case where we could do something that would be very good for people in the developing world and for the U.S. economy today, and hugely important for all of our children and grandchildren in the years to come. Unfortunately, when we have a Congress controlled by people who doubt evolution or question whether global warming is happening because they are not scientists, we may not make much progress along.
Benjamin J. Cohen writes: The Chinese government’s campaign to have its currency, the renminbi, included in the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset appears to be on the brink of success. Last week, IMF staff formally recommended adding the renminbi to the basket of currencies that determines the value of its so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
The addition of the renminbi to the basket, which currently includes the US dollar, the euro, the British pound, and the Japanese yen, would provide China with a boost to its prestige. More important, it would advance the government’s efforts to internationalize the renminbi. But it would also be a mistake. The decision to recommend the renminbi’s inclusion, far from having been made on sound economic grounds, can only be understood as political. As such, the long-term consequences are likely to be regrettable.
On a purely technical basis, the renminbi’s qualifications for inclusion in the SDR basket are questionable. Traditionally, the IMF has insisted on two criteria: a currency’s issuing country must be among the world’s leading exporters, and the currency must be “freely usable” – widely used and traded.
As the world’s largest exporter, China clearly meets the first condition. The second, however, is probably still beyond its reach. The renminbi is by no means in the same league as the SDR basket’s four incumbent currencies. In 2014, China’s currency ranked seventh in global central-bank reserves, eighth in international bond issuance, and 11th in global currency trading. Moreover, the renminbi remains non-convertible for most capital transactions, China’s financial markets are primitive, and trading margins for the exchange rate are still set daily by the monetary authorities.
Indeed, as recently as August, the IMF was skeptical about adding the renminbi to the SDR basket, saying that “significant work” was still needed, and suggesting that a decision should be put off until 2016 in order to ensure a “smooth” transition.
So why did the IMF flip? The answer is obvious: China mounted a full-court press to change minds. In August, the currency’s exchange-rate regime was loosened slightly. Renminbi-denominated government bonds were issued in London, and plans were laid to create new trading platforms for the currency in several European financial centers. And Chinese policymakers made it abundantly clear how unhappy they would be with a negative decision..
Many would argue that this is a positive development. Certainly, it mollifies China’s leaders, offering them a stronger incentive to continue to work within the existing international monetary regime. Recent Chinese initiatives, especially the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, have given rise to fears that the country intends to build a new set of international institutions to compete with Western-dominated organizations like the IMF.
On the other hand, the move sets a worrying precedent, injecting politics into a policy area that had been governed by objective economic considerations.
Of course, it can be argued that China’s recent economic trajectory means that it is only a matter of time before the renminbi does become a match for the SDR’s incumbents.
Use of the renminbi for the purpose of invoicing and settling trade with China is bound to continue growing.
Nor is inclusion of the renminbi in the SDR basket likely to provide as big a boost to the currency’s internationalization as many believe. Some central banks may decide to follow suit, adding renminbi-denominated assets to their reserves to match the composition of the basket. But the increase will be marginal at best – some $40 billion in the next few years, according to the IMF’s calculations. With global reserves now totaling more than $10 trillion, that is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket.
The political reasons for including the renminbi in the SDR are all too clear. Unfortunately, the risks of doing so are no less obvious.
Carmen Reinhart writes: The global commodity super-cycle is hardly a new phenomenon. Though the details vary, primary commodity exporters tend to act out the same story, and economic outcomes tend to follow recognizable patterns. But the element of predictability in the path of the commodity-price cycle, like that in the course of a roller coaster, does not make its twists and turns any easier to stomach.
Since the late eighteenth century, there have been seven or eight booms in non-oil commodity prices, relative to the price of manufactured goods. (The exact number depends on how peaks and troughs are defined.) The booms typically lasted 7-8 years, though the one that began in 1933 spanned almost two decades. That exception was sustained first by World War II and then by the post-war reconstruction of Europe and Japan, as well as rapid economic growth in the United States. The most recent boom, which began in 2004 and ended in 2011, better fits the norm.
Commodity-price busts – with peak-to-trough declines of more than 30% – have a similar duration, lasting about seven years, on average. The current bust is now in its fourth year, with non-oil commodity prices (relative to the export prices of manufactures) having so far fallen about 25%. Commodity Booms and Troughs
Dubai has launched a global foundation, with an initial budget of AED1 billion ($272 million), which aims to combat poverty, unemployment and education challenges in the region.
The Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives will bring together the work or 28 organizations under one umbrella body. The program will co-ordinate over 1,400 human development programs in more than 116 countries around the world.
“The world today is facing great challenges on all levels; in terrorism, wars and mass immigration and the only solution lies in human development which can be achieved by educating people and helping them build their future,” Sheikh Mohammed said launching the new foundation.
The foundation will have four key objectives: spreading knowledge, combating poverty, empowering communities and encouraging innovation for the future. The Dubai Media Office on Sunday issued the list of objectives and goals which the foundation is aiming to achieve by 2025:
– Print and distribute 10 million books
– Provide educational support for 20 million children
– Invest AED1.5 billion in education and knowledge projects
– Provide 500 million books to students for reading
– 30 million people to be treated for blindness and eye diseases
– Two million households to be provided with support
– AED2 billion to be invested in the establishment of research centres and hospitals
– AED500 million to be invested in water research in the region
– 5,000 innovators to be supported and incubated across the region
– AED5.5 billion to be invested in innovation and creating incubators
– 500,000 new job opportunities to be created
– 50,000 young entrepreneurs to be trained and supported
– One million participants to take part in awards and forums to help empower communities
– AED150 million to be awarded to encourage creatives, intellectuals and journalists
– 25,000 books to be translated into Arabic
– AED600 million to be invested to promote a culture of tolerance
