Issues Brief

Next week sees the publication of the OECD’s half-yearly global economic forecasts; we will bring them to you here, with analysis. Separate reports from the OECD indicate that in the industrialised world the richest one per cent continue to grab an increasingly large slice of global income.

Another interesting OECD report found that emerging economies now account for 30% of world growth, compared with a declining 50% for the OECD group.

One of the most provocative articles of the week appeared in the Financial Times headed “The manic mission that is Blair’s dismal last act“. Philip Stephens says he struggles to think of a political leader who has been as diligent as the former British prime minister “in the sullying of his own reputation”.

Kerry Brown of the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre has blogged an interesting article on China, posing the question “just how loyal are party members in Xi Jinping’s China”.

The White House has taken the lead with a new report calling for transparency in online data collection. The report recommends requiring private companies to disclose the kind of information they gather from their customers online.