Monday, April 18, 2011

Economies both Far and Near

The BBC is reporting that BBC News - World Bank president: 'One shock away from crisis':
Robert Zoellick cited rising food prices as the main threat to poor nations who risk 'losing a generation'.
And that risk was emphasized later in the same article:
IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn raised particular concerns about high levels of unemployment among young people.

'It's probably too much to say that it's a jobless recovery, but it's certainly a recovery with not enough jobs,' he said.

'Especially because of youth unemployment... there is now a risk that this will be turned into a life sentence, and that there is a possibility of a lost generation,' he said.
The risk of unrest goes up with higher unemployment among younger workers. We've already seen this play out in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya. Those workers are exactly the age of conscripts, so the threat is not just one of "a lost generation", but of a generation lost to political unrest and war.

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