NEW DELHI: Prime Minister <keyword id="6354477" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi">Narendra Modi</keyword> has suggested that <keyword id="6354424" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="World-Bank">World Bank</keyword> should help India in making a visible impact on reducing mass poverty in the under-developed regions of the country to show a perceptible change.<br />
<br /> Modi had raised the issue during his meeting with World Bank <keyword id="2540" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="President">president</keyword> Jim Yong Kim last month in Delhi and the multilateral agency is expected to come back to the government after firming up a strategy that addresses the concerns raised by the government, said sources.<br />
<br />
While there was no demand for funds, Kim had later told the World Bank staff that the prime minister wants three things — skills, scale and speed. “A critical priority of this trip was to meet the new PM, Narendra Modi, listen to his vision for development, and seek to enhance our partnership with India. We had a great meeting — one of the most inspiring I’ve had as president of the World Bank,” he had remarked.<br />
<br /> For the World Bank, India is the largest borrower and the <keyword id="2472353" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="head-of-the-multilateral-agency">head of the multilateral agency</keyword> was key to get the new government’s inputs. During the meeting, Modi had sought suggestions on skill development, a key focus area and said he wanted inputs on “enhancing production for the masses, not just mass production”. The statement, officials said, is a pointer to boosting jobs by focusing on manufacturing, especially in the employment-intensive sectors of the economy.

PM Modi Seeks Help Of World Bank To Cut Poverty

Top 100 richest people in the world: Some interesting facts

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Thomson Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">File photo of migrants walking to the Austrian border in Nickelsdorf from Hegyeshalom</p></div><p></p></div></div>The impact of mass migration has hit headlines around the world in recent months, but according to the World Bank, the benefits of large-scale immigration could drive forward the global economy in the coming decades.</p><p>In a <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-monitoring-report">major new report</a> - released to coincide with the start of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's annual meetings, this year taking place in Lima, Peru - the bank argues that the current mass migration happening throughout the world can be a major driver for the global economy in years to come.</p><p>The report, titled Development Goals in an Era of Demographic Change argues that the current pattern of mass migration can "reshape economic development for decades and, while posing challenges, offers a path to ending extreme poverty and shared prosperity"</p><p>In a statement, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said "With the right set of policies, this era of demographic change can be an engine of economic growth... If countries with aging populations can create a path for refugees and migrants to participate in the economy, everyone benefits.</p><p>"Most of the evidence suggests that migrants will work hard and contribute more in taxes than they consume in social services."</p><p>Last week, in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/looking-for-a-global-growth-strategy-support-refugees/2015/10/01/e446e2b4-66d1-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html">a blog originally published by the Washington Post</a>, Kim discussed his roots as a migrant: "In 1964, I came to the United States from South Korea, then an extremely poor developing country that most experts, including those at the World Bank, had written off as having little hope for economic growth"</p><p>He added that there are huge economic benefits, as well as humanitarian ones: "Countries that welcome refugees, and help other countries to productively host them, will be doing the right thing - both for our fellow human beings who are suffering and for the global economy."</p><p>Hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled from the Middle East into Europe in recent months, and scenes of migrants crammed onto trains and walking along motorways trying to find safety are burned into the public consciousness.</p><p>There has been much debate about impact these refugees could have on the global economy, as well as national economies. This week, British home secretary Theresa May made a <a href="http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article52556.html">speech at the Conservative party</a> conference that questioned positive economic impact of immigration, saying that mass migration has "close to zero" economic upside.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/most-interesting-men-world-watches-rolex-breitling-jorg-gray-2015-8">These are the watches worn by the smartest and most powerful men in the world</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="N3NGJ0djpb_DdQzkXVopAvbq5AmmiuOx" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The World Bank is betting on mass migration driving the global economy

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Matthias Hangst/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">US Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong (back left) watch on during the Opening Ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at PyeongChang Olympic Stadium on February 9, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>North Korea pulled out of a secret meeting with the US Vice President Mike Pence during the Olympic Games.</strong></li><li><strong>The delegates from North Korea were upset by Pence's decision to meet defectors and for announcing new sanctions, his office confirmed.</strong></li><li><strong>The secret meeting was locked in before Pence departed on his tour of Asia, contradicting </strong><strong>the State Department's claims that there were no plans for the vice president to meet with North Korea.</strong></li><li><strong>While the meeting didn't eventuate, the situation highlights the two countries not only have the ability to communicate but are in fact doing so.</strong></li></ul><p><br />US Vice President Mike Pence agreed to hold a secret meeting with North Korean officials while at the Olympic Games, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-was-set-to-meet-with-north-korean-officials-during-the-olympics-before-last-minute-cancellation/2018/02/20/89392dfe-1684-11e8-942d-16a950029788_story.html?utm_term=.35960f8fba6f">The Washington Post</a> reported Tuesday.</p><p>The meeting was all set to go ahead on February 10, but the North Koreans pulled out less than two hours before. It was the same day North Korea's visiting delegates, which included Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kim-jong-un-invites-south-korean-president-for-a-summit-2018-2">met with South Korean President Moon Jae-In</a> and invited him to Pyongyang for a meeting between the leaders.</p><p><span>"North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the Vice President softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics," Nick Ayres, the vice president's chief of staff, told The Post.</span></p><p>The vice president's office said the delegation pulled out of the meeting because the vice president met with North Korean defectors and had announced new sanctions. Ahead of reaching South Korea, Pence said the US will soon unveil the <span>"<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pence-us-to-hit-north-korea-with-the-most-aggressive-sanctions-yet-2018-2">toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever.</a>"</span></p><p><span>Ahead of his tour of Asia, Pence had not confirmed either way whether he would meet with North Korean officials, only saying at one point, "We'll see what happens." The US State Department had also explicitly ruled out any planned meeting.</span></p><p>"There are no plans to meet with any North Korean officials during or after the Olympics; I want to be clear about that. There are no plans to do so," <span>State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-going-to-the-winter-olympics-us-mike-pence-2018-2">said on February 6</a>. </span>"The Secretary and the Vice President said we'll see what happens when we get to the Olympics."</p><p>This contradicts the latest reports from The Post. According to a White House official, the meeting between Pence and North Korean officials took two weeks to organize, and efforts began after the CIA received word North Korea wanted to meet with Pence.</p><p>Pence agreed to the meeting before leaving for his Asia trip on February 5. President Donald Trump, Chief of Staff John Kelly, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, <keyword id="6354810" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Defense">Defense</keyword> Secretary Jim Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were all involved in the discussions.</p><p>According to The Post, the purpose of the meeting was to convey the US stance on sanctions and denuclearization, rather than open the door to negotiations.</p><p><span>"The president made a decision that if they wanted to talk, we would deliver our uncompromising message. If they asked for a meeting, we would meet," Ayres <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-koreans-backed-out-of-meeting-with-pence-at-the-olympics/">said</a>. "</span><span>As we've said from day one about the trip: this administration will stand in the way of Kim's desire to whitewash their murderous regime with nice photo ops at the Olympics. Perhaps that's why they walked away from a meeting or perhaps they were never sincere about sitting down."</span></p><p>The meeting was set to take place at the Blue House, the South Korean equivalent of the White House, with Pence, a National Security Council representative, an intelligence representative and Pence's chief of staff meeting Kim Yo Jong and North Korea's official head of state Kim Yong Nam.</p><p>North Korea confirmed the meeting on the Saturday morning, but hours later pulled out.</p><h2>North Korea and the US do communicate</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>CBS/KCNA</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><br /><br />The potential meeting between the two countries reiterates that, while the two countries don't have diplomatic relations, North Korea and the US do indeed communicate.</p><p>Last year, Tillerson confirmed there are "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/30/rex-tillerson-us-north-korea-direct-communication">three channels open to Pyongyang</a><span>."</span></p><p><span>It's unclear what these channels are, after North Korea <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/asia/north-korea-us-contact/index.html">ended communication to the US</a> via its mission to the United Nations in New York in 2016.</span></p><p><span>Ashley Parker, a reporter from The Post, <a href="https://twitter.com/AshleyRParker/status/966100112899477505">confirmed</a> South Korea initially acted as the intermediary for communications between the two countries, but eventually they "directly communicated."</span></p><p><span>But just this week, Tillerson confirmed the US has the ability to communicate with Pyongyang. He told "60 Minutes" North Korea "will tell" him when they want to talk, because "we receive messages from them."</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-a-politicians-character-is-more-important-than-their-capability-2018-2">Why a politician's character is more important than their capability, according to a reputation expert</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

North Korea bailed at the last minute before a secret meeting with Pence at the Winter Olympics

<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"></span><p></p></span>Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger is the highest paid president in the Ivy League, according to data compiled by The Chronicle of Higher <keyword id="6355445" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Education">Education</keyword>.</p>
<p>Bollinger made $3,389,917 in 2012, the most recent year that financial documents are available for nonprofit institutions. The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/highest-paid-college-presidents-2014-12">highest paid college president in the country</a> - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson - made more than $7 million that year, according to The Chronicle.</p>
<p>Student newspaper The Columbia Daily Spectator has <a href="http://columbiaspectator.com/spectrum/2014/12/07/34-million-bollinger-now-third-highest-paid-private-university-president">a great breakdown of how Bollinger made his more than $3,000,000</a> in 2012, including his $1,012,707 base salary. This year, The Chronicle changed its methodology to include only direct payments to the college presidents - such as their base salary, bonus, nontaxable benefits, and other reportable compensation.</p>
<p>Because of the nature of nonprofit financial reports, these numbers are from a few years ago and show a very different portrait of Ivy League leadership than is currently in place. Half of the names listed below are no longer president of their respective colleges - we've marked each former president with an *.</p>
<p><strong>Here are the highest paid presidents in the Ivy League, via The Chronicle:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Lee C. Bollinger (Columbia University) - $3,389,917</li>
<li>Amy Gutmann (University of Pennsylvania) - $2,473,952</li>
<li>Richard C. Levin* (Yale University) - $1,375,365</li>
<li>Shirley M. Tilghman* (Princeton University) - $948,412</li>
<li>Drew Gilpin Faust (Harvard University) - $908,642</li>
<li>David J. Skorton (Cornell University) - $817,441</li>
<li>Jim Yong Kim* (Dartmouth College) - $755,999</li>
<li>Ruth J. Simmons* (Brown University) - $676,324</li>
</ol>

Here's How Much Each Ivy League University President Makes In A Year

A latest <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=world+bank">World Bank </a>report has revealed that India accounted for the largest number of poor people in any country in 2012, but its <keyword id="45057" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Poverty">poverty</keyword> rate was lowest among countries having large number of poor population.<br />
 <br />
The report has also stated that the number of poor people across the world is likely to go down by 10% of the global population this year.<br />
 <br />
It, however, indicates that the world is moving closer to its goal of ending <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=poverty+">poverty </a>by 2030. The poverty rate in low-income countries was on an average of 43% in 2012, while in middle-income-countries, it was 19%. Still the lower-middle-income countries are home to about half of the global poor as compared to a third for low-income countries.<br />
 <br />
What experts believe is that four nations – China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria – with the largest populations were once classified as low-income nations, but these have now moved into lower-middle-income category.<br />
 <br />
In its report, the bank used an updated international poverty line of $1.9 a day, which incorporates new information on differences in the cost of living across countries. The new line preserves the real purchasing power of the previous line (of $1.25 a day in 2005 prices) in the world's poorest countries.<br />
 <br /> The <keyword id="6354424" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="World-Bank">World Bank</keyword> president <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Jim+Yong+Kim+">Jim Yong Kim </a>said, “This is the best story in the world today - these projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty."<br />
 <br />
The major reductions in poverty were because of strong growth rates in developing countries, investment in people’s education, health and social safety nets that helped people from falling back into poverty, said Kim.<br />
 <br /> The regional forecast for 2015 shows that the poverty in East Asia and the Pacific would fall to 4.1% of its population, down from 7.2% in 2012; <keyword id="48890" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Latin-America">Latin America</keyword> and the Caribbean would fall to 5.6% from 6.2% in 2012, as reported by The Economic Times.<br />
 <br /> In <keyword id="52011" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="South-Asia">South Asia</keyword>, the poverty would scale down to 13.5% in 2015 as against 18.8% in 2012; sub-Saharan Africa poverty would decline to 35.2% in 2015 as compared to 42.6% in 2012.<br />
 <br /> Kaushik Basu, the former chief Economic Advisor to the <keyword id="44734" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Government">Indian Government</keyword> and the chief economist of the World Bank, said, "Development has been robust over the last two decades but the protracted global slowdown since the financial crisis of 2008, is beginning to cast its shadow on emerging economies."<br />
 <br />
Kim said the continued major reductions in poverty were due to strong growth rates in developing countries in recent years, investments in people's education, health and social safety nets that helped keep people from falling back into poverty.<br />
 <br />
He, however, cautioned that the goal to end extreme poverty remained a highly-ambitious target owing to slow global economic growth, many of the world's remaining poor people living in fragile and conflict-affected states and the considerable depth and breadth of remaining poverty.<br />
<em>Image: thinkstock </em><br />

World Bank says India’s poverty rate lowest among nations with poor populations

<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>The fury would not have been much greater if anti-capitalist activists had taken over the vast atrium of the World Bank's headquarters in Washington, DC. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Yet the protesters who did so last month were the Bank's own employees. The goodwill that first greeted the modernisation plans of Jim Yong Kim, the Bank's president since 2012, has turned to rancour.</span></p>
<p>Mr Kim (pictured) stressed the need for reform from the moment he took charge. He saw, correctly, that the Bank had to do things differently to remain relevant in a world with no shortage of the two things that used to guarantee it lots of business from the governments of poorer countries: cheap capital and economic expertise.</p>
<p>In July the Bank started to implement a new structure which shifts power and money away from country and regional executives to some 14 centralised thematic "global practices" (water, health etc). On October 30th it announced 500 lay-offs over the next three years.</p>
<p>Whether or not these changes are the right ones, they have not been well executed. Staff in the countries where the Bank operates, who used to be charged with looking for new lending opportunities, complain that their budgets have disappeared while the new global practice leaders seem more focused on impressing Mr Kim than on assisting borrowers. Lending remains strong, but the pipeline of future deals is said to be weak.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Bank has been slow to identify much of the $400m in annual spending cuts that Mr Kim says are needed, adding to feelings of insecurity at a time when many staff already wonder what role, if any, they will play in the Bank's new, more centralised structure. All the job losses announced so far come from the central administration. Rather than meekly await their fate, many employees have been polishing their CVs.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Among the Bank's 16,000 strong staff, Mr Kim, a health-care expert and former president of Dartmouth College, is increasingly seen as an outsider who does not understand the institution he runs. He has appointed outsiders to many senior jobs and brought in consultants from McKinsey and Booz Allen Hamilton.</p>
<p>Bertrand Badré, the Bank's chief financial officer, whom Mr Kim hired from Société Générale, a French bank, became a target of attack during a meeting held last month to placate the restive staff, after it was revealed that he had been awarded a special bonus of $94,750 on top of his tax-free salary of $379,000. Mr Badré is now giving up this bonus.</p>
<p>Organisational change on this scale is rarely painless. Past efforts to reform the Bank were also tempestuous. Mr Kim seems to take it for granted that things will settle down once the reforms are in place. He airily dismissed the complaints in an interview earlier this year, saying, "There's grumbling about parking and there's grumbling about breakfast." His supporters claim, implausibly, that the unrest has largely been whipped up by one disgruntled mid-level officer, Fabrice Houdart.</p>
<p>Yet even loyalists are increasingly frustrated by Mr Kim's seeming inability to focus on his reforms. His current hyperactivity around the Ebola crisis, which has won him favourable comparisons in the media to Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organisation, is privately described as yet another distraction by one of his closest lieutenants: "Last year, he was Mr Climate Change, now he is Mr Ebola."</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Since the protests in October, Mr Kim has adopted a more conciliatory tone towards his staff, promising better internal communication and a quick end to the uncertainty over jobs. "Details of budgets hadn't filtered down to some country offices, and they didn't understand their new roles," he concedes.</p>
<p>Yet he is unwavering in his belief that his reforms will enable the Bank to remain the world's leading development-finance institution. He is proud of negotiating an increase in the ceilings on how much the Bank can lend to fast-growing middle-income countries such as China and India, whose frustrations with the previous arrangements helped spur the recent creation of a "BRICS" development bank by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.</p>
<p>Mr Kim denies that the 14 new practices will make the Bank even more bureaucratic, as his critics contend. Rather, he says, they will enable the Bank to tap its network of expertise around the world more quickly and efficiently, making it more valuable to customers than competitors which offer just capital or consulting.</p>
<p>When Narendra Modi, India's new, reform-minded prime minister, met the World Bank chief recently, he was so impressed by the new practices, Mr Kim notes, that "he tweeted about it".</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<p>A great moment! <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi">@narendramodi</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/WorldBank">@worldbank</a> President talking about the importance of water/sanitation w/<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Elmo?src=hash">#Elmo</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Raya?src=hash">#Raya</a> <a href="http://t.co/eRiOuhsJMw">pic.twitter.com/eRiOuhsJMw</a></p>
- Global Citizen (@GlblCtzn) <a href="https://twitter.com/GlblCtzn/status/516309385824698371">September 28, 2014</a></blockquote>
<p>Mr Kim may think he has time on his side. After all, he is unlikely to lose his job, if only because America, which forced his appointment over objections from developing countries, has little appetite for another such row. Yet unless Mr Kim now moves decisively to fix the budget problems and win round the staff, his presidency risks becoming a costly failure.</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist.</p>
<p></p>

The World Bank Is In Trouble

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>The World Bank released <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/09/17/ebola-economic-impact-serious-catastrophic-swift-response-countries-international-community-world-bank" target="_blank">a statement</a> Wednesday warning that the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was "already serious" and could be "catastrophic" if the <keyword id="6356001" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="international">international</keyword> community does not take serious action soon.</p>
<p>This Ebola outbreak is unprecendented in scope, and worsening with alarming speed. There have been <a href="http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/133546/1/roadmapupdate16sept14_eng.pdf?ua=1" target="_blank">2,453 deaths counted so far</a>, and 4,963 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases - almost half of which have been diagnosed in the past 21 days.</p>
<p>"The primary cost of this tragic outbreak is in human lives and suffering," said World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim, but the economic repercussions cannot be ignored. "Today's report underscores the huge potential costs of the epidemic if we don't ramp up our efforts to stop it now."</p>
<p>The World Bank analysis includes the following estimates of the economic impacts if the outbreak is quickly contained ("Low Ebola") or if it continues to spin out of control ("High Ebola"):</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>"Its economic impact could grow eight-fold, dealing a potentially catastrophic blow to the already fragile states," the statement said, referring to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the three nations hardest-hit by Ebola. "If swift national and international responses succeed in containing the epidemic" and the fear swirling around it, however, there is still time to limit those economic effects.</p>
<p>The analysis is not just about future worst-case scenarios. The three countries are already reeling from the impacts of the outbreak.</p>
<p>Food prices and inflation are rising "in response to shortages, panic buying, and speculation," the World Bank notes. "Exchange rate volatility has increased... fueled by uncertainty and some capital flight."</p>
<p>The key factor behind these trends is not mortality or lost productivity, per se, but "aversion behavior," which the World Bank calls "a fear factor resulting from peoples' concerns about contagion." This is what motivates workers to stay home, businesses to shut their doors, and governments to close down airports and seaports. In the SARS epidemic of 2002-2004 and the H1N1 epidemic of 2009, the analysis notes, such "behavioral effects... [were] responsible for as much as 80 - 90 percent of the total economic impact."</p>
<p>While the costs of containment and mitigation may be high - as much as "several billions of dollars," the World Bank says - such strategies "would be cost-effective if they successfully avert the worse scenario."</p>
<p>The World Bank report calls for international mobilization on four fronts:</p>
<ul>
<li>Humanitarian support (e.g., health supplies, emergency treatment units)</li>
<li>Fiscal support ("The fiscal gap, just for 2014, is estimated at around $290 million," the World Bank notes.)</li>
<li>Screening facilities for international travelers (to facilitate both aid and commerce)</li>
<li>Strengthening African health systems</li>
</ul>
<p>The World Bank has pledged $230 million toward the effort, with $117 million mobilized so far. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization estimated that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/ebola-response_n_5828162.html" target="_blank">$1 billion was needed</a> to stop the outbreak.</p>

World Bank: Economic Impact Of Ebola Outbreak Could Be 'Catastrophic'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Laszlo Balogh/Reuters" title_caption="Refugees storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55eda20fdd0895d3658b45a6-960/rtx1quz9.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Laszlo Balogh/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Refugees storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The European Union is facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II. The 28-nation bloc is expected to receive around 1 million asylum applications in 2015 and a similar amount in 2016, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).</p><p>They will all need jobs and places to live in their new countries and, initially, that might be expensive.</p><p>Fabio Balboni and his team at HSBC just summed up in four sentences exactly why this actually a great thing for Europe:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">From an economic perspective, Europe needs more workers. It is well known that most parts of Europe have rapidly ageing populations. This results in slower growth and thus tax receipts, whilst simultaneously increasing government spending through pensions and healthcare. The eurozone, in particular, is about to embark on this demographic challenge with a mountain of debt. The easiest way to support more pensioners is to have more taxpayers.</p><p>The HSBC note comes only hours after the World Bank <span>president Jim Yong Kim explained how <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/world-bank-report-on-the-economic-impact-of-immigration-2015-10">an influx of migrants will help drive the economy</a> in a major new report. </span></p><p>"With the right set of policies, this era of demographic change can be an engine of economic growth," said Kim.</p><p>"If countries with aging populations can create a path for refugees and migrants to participate in the economy, everyone benefits. Most of the evidence suggests that migrants will work hard and contribute more in taxes than they consume in social services."</p><p>Europe has faced a <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/map-of-europe-refugee-crisis-2015-9?r=US&amp;IR=T">huge influx of refugees this year </a>from Syria and other Middle Eastern and African nations. But HSBC's analysts say that the refugee crisis could actually save the financial health of the EU.</p><p>Germany's government already knows this.</p><p>Chancellor Angela Merkel is tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize after pledging to take in as many as 800,000 refugees this year. If you look at the country's underlying issues surrounding its workforce, you can see why Germany desperately needs migrants.</p><p>According to the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2015/pdf/ee3_en.pdf">European Commission's Ageing Report</a>, Germany's population of 81 million is projected to fall to 71 million by 2060. The dependency ratio in Germany - the ratio of pensioners to working-age people whose taxes support them - is set to rise to 59%.</p><p>That means there'll be fewer than two Germans in work and paying taxes for each one in retirement.</p><p>Germany is doing exactly what HSBC thinks every country within the EU should be doing:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Out of a working age population of 220 million, we estimate that one million more immigrants per year could boost eurozone potential growth by 0.2% per year, and cumulatively potential GDP by 2025 could be EUR300bn higher than it would have otherwise been. Whilst it takes time to integrate immigrants into the labour force, even in the short term, higher public spending needed to cope with the crisis could support growth. </p><p>Not all European governments are likely to get on board. Britain is particularly unlikely to follow suit, with UKIP growing in popularity over the last few years due to unease over mass immigration.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Michael Dalder</span></p><p class="caption">A migrant holds a portrait of German Chancellor Angela Merkel after arriving to the main railway station in Munich, Germany September 5, 2015.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has generally resisted taking in any more refugees. He agreed to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34171148">take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years</a> only under serious public and political pressure. This is tiny compared to Germany's pledge of 800,000 in ONE year.</p><p>Arguably this is because Britain isn't in the same desperate need for workers that Germany is.</p><p>While Germany's population is falling, the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword> will overtake it to become the most populous EU nation, rising from its current 64 million to 80 million. Britain's workforce will grow while Germany's will shrink.</p><p>Britain is very different from Germany just as Greece is very different from Britain.</p><p>The different EU member states have varied economic climates, and HSBC highlighted how the various governments have to be very careful and work together to make sure mass immigration is turned into something economically beneficial for everyone:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Many parts of Europe are still gripped by high unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, and pressure for government cutbacks.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">If Europe's leaders fail to adopt a coherent strategy, and one that communicates the benefits to the indigenous population, then fear could breed resentment. Even before this, we were seeing rising support for 'anti-Europe' parties and immigration as voters' top concern.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Governments have not yet been able to find a comprehensive solution, but this issue cannot be ignored. Migrants will arrive. An insufficiently bold response could mean that Europe fails to integrate and misses the economic opportunities that migrants can bring. In which case, the political backlash may be even more pronounced.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/more-attractive-man-science-image-2015-9">Scientifically proven things men can do to be more attractive</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="FrMW11bDpOHYdYbuWMGNvmFNMW6eWufV" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Mass immigration will save the European Union

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/BillGates/photos/a.10150331291841961/10155645521796961/?type=3&amp;theater">Bill Gates/Facebook</a></span></p><p class="caption">Bill and Melinda Gates</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Bill and Melinda Gates keep saying the word is getting better and it's easy to look around and shrug off their optimism.</li><li>So I spent a day at their foundation, talking to the people working on some of the world's hairiest, most intractable problems.</li><li>And they are winning.</li></ul><p>Bill and Melinda Gates keep insisting that - despite problems like climate change, political divisions and income disparity, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-trust-me-the-world-is-really-getting-better-not-worse-2018-1">world is getting better for most people on Earth.</a></p><p>In late January, Bill Gates expertly trolled the 10-year challenge meme with a tweet that said: "It's hard to beat this #10YearChallenge." The tweet <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/18/18188511/10-year-challenge-global-poverty-good-news?linkId=62841733">included a graphic </a>that showed how, in the last 10 years, extreme poverty, child mortality and youth illiteracy were all way down, while life expectancy was up.</p><p>The Gates' optimism is delightful. But it's easy to shrug it off as the rose-tinted perspective of a couple luxuriating in an abundance of gifts: intelligence, love, family, success and more money than King Midas.</p><p>I recently spent the day at the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, walking a mile in the billionaires' shoes, so to speak, and talking with some of the managers and directors who run various programs there. </p><p>Hearing about their work was inspiring and gave me a newfound hope for the future, just like Bill's.</p><p>And the reason is simple. These people are taking on some of the world's hairiest, most complex and seemingly intractable problems. </p><p>And they are winning.</p><h2>Death to polio and malaria</h2><p>Gates' father, Bill Gates, Sr., was the first to run the family charitable foundation in the late '90s. The foundation has morphed into a much bigger entity over time, especially after it became the main focus of Bill and Melinda Gates themselves.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bill-gates-sr-and-bill-gates-are-seen-during-the-the-lasker-news-photo/181317443">Brian Ach/Getty Images</a></span></p><p class="caption">Bill Gates with father Bill Gates, Sr.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The elder Bill Gates' presence still hangs large at the Foundation's visitor's center, which is a cross between a techie interactive kids' museum, a community educational facility, and a place to learn about the Foundation's work.</p><p>A video of Gates' dad introduces himself, and explains that because of the "other fellow" - that is, his famous son - he's known as "Senior." </p><p>In its early days, the foundation focused mostly on local charity, but turned its attention to global health after Bill Gates Jr. read an article on children in poor countries dying from preventable illnesses.</p><p>He sent the article to his dad with a note that said: "Dad, maybe we can do something about this."</p><p><span>Those words are now plastered in giant letters in the visitor's center.</span></p><p><span>T</span>he foundation has since become a major force in global health. It joined a global effort to eradicate polio in 2007. In 1988 there were an estimated 350,000 case of polio worldwide. In, 2018, there were only 29 reported cases.  </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Gates Foundation visitor's center</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Gunning for malaria</h2><p>The success with polio is a source of pride and inspiration at the foundation. To them, it's proof that hard problems like distributing vaccines to poor, remote children can be solved by smart people and repeatable systems. </p><p>With Bill and Melinda as their leaders, the people at the foundation are stunningly smart with impressive credentials: I met neuroscientists, biologists and infectious disease specialists. </p><p>With polio almost over, the foundation now wants to end malaria.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Gates Foundation mosquito nets</p></div><p></p></div></div>Like the others I met, Philip Welkhoff, the director of the Malaria team, has a personal interest in the mission - and impressive credentials. He grew up in Haiti and had malaria himself as a kid. He became a rocket scientist, then earned his PhD in computational neuroscience from Princeton and turned his attention to global health.</p><p>He loves his job because he's saving lives.</p><p>"All the work that the international community does together saves about 500,000 people from malaria every year compared to the early 2000s. That's a half million lives every single year," he told me. </p><p>The current challenge is to reach the most remote locations, which the foundation has expertise in doing, and containing outbreaks. No malaria vaccine is rolled out yet, but the foundation is having a lot luck by increasing the distribution of mosquito-killing bed nets.</p><p>But even a limited outbreak can turn into a bigger infection once mosquitoes start transmitting the illness, and people move from place to place. And so, malaria is even more complicated to eradicate than polio.</p><p>Still, there's steady progress, and the goal is to reduce malaria deaths 90% by 2030 compared to their 2015 level.</p><h2>The toilet team</h2><p>Outside of malaria, one of the projects that gets a lot of attention is Bill Gates' off-the-grid toilet project, which asks scientists to rethink the toilet.</p><p>Gates launched the<a href="https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/Fact_Sheet_Reinvent_the_Toilet_Challenge.pdf"> Reinvent the Toilet</a> challenge in 2011, asking researchers to come up with toilets that could sanitize human waste with no water, electricity, sewer or septic system. The toilets were to clean the waste and reclaim the water to safe drinking water standards, as well as to harvest other nutrients for other uses, a game-changer to those living without sanitation.</p><p>Some of those original teams went to the nines on their designs. One team even held a "smell summit" working with perfume makers who recreated latrine smells. This to help them test their methods for countering such smells. That work involving taking whiffs of those lovely scents.</p><p>The director of the toilet project is Brian Arbogast - though his real title is "director, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene," and his job involves more than just toilets. He's funding a variety of projects that improve human sanitation.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Gates Foundation toilet</p></div><p></p></div></div>Arbogast was an early Microsoft employee, spending 22 years rising to the level of corporate vice president. He left the company to become a cleantech investor, and has been on the boards of various clean-water entities and charities. He worked closely with Bill Gates for decades before joining the foundation in 2013. </p><p>When the toilet project was first started, no one knew if it could really be done, Arbogast said. In 2015, though, one inventor produced a system called the Omni Processor. It's not a toilet, but an off-grid fecal sludge treatment plant that outputs purified water. One day it may also output electricity.</p><p>A working prototype has been operating in Dakar, Senegal in Africa for a few years. Arbogast believes the tech will eventually influence sanitation in the developed world, including green buildings, septic systems and remote, off-the-grid cabins.</p><p><span>The latest version has been licensed to three commercial companies: the US company created by the tech's inventor, Sedron Technologies, as well as a company in China and one in India.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVzppWSIFU0&amp;t=25s">YouTube/GatesNotes</a></span></p><p class="caption">OmniProcessor inventor Peter Janicki pours Bill Gates a glass of water processed from human fecal sludge.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><h2><span>Poop hats and toilet water</span></h2><p>Bill Gates famously drank the sewage water produced from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVzppWSIFU0">Dakar Omni Processor in 2015. </a>And there are lots of stories at the foundation and in the Gates household about that water.</p><p>"Two weeks before [Bill drank], I had to drink from it, as did most of the team," Arbogast told us.</p><p>Melinda Gates told us that her daughter made her drink that water, too. Bill Gates drove around with a 2-liter bottle of it in his car for weeks, and every time someone got in the car, their daughter made them drink some.</p><p>"I<span>f we got sick - which we didn't - it would not have not been from the water, but because we're all passing it around,"  Melinda Gates laughed.</span></p><p><span>Gates spread the love around, too: In 2015, he <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-jimmy-fallon-poop-water-2015-1">tricked Jimmy Fallon</a> into drinking that water on the air, as well. </span></p><p>And there are actual toilets in development, too, with models on display (but not available for use) at the foundation's visitor's center. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Amazon</span></p><p class="caption">The Poop emoji hat is a symbol of honor for the Gates water sanitation team. The person who came up with a brilliant idea gets to wear it for the day.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>In November, Arbogast's team and Bill Gates spearheaded the Reinvented Toilet expo in Beijing. It drew in 1,200 attendees, and loads of exhibitions for new sanitation tech.</p><p>Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, keynoted the event - but Gates stole the show by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-wants-world-to-move-past-flush-toilets-2018-11">bringing a jar of poop on stage</a> to use as a visual aid.</p><p>The group wears their association with poop as a badge of honor, Arbogast says.</p><p>He keeps a hat that looks like a poop emoji in his office, and someone on his team often gets to wear it like a crown.</p><p><span>"The poop hat gets passed on for a job well done," he said.</span></p><h2>Worldwide clout</h2><p>Dr. Kathy Kahn is a scientist who funds agricultural projects. Kahn is having success with projects that improve how <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/03/681941779/scientists-have-hacked-photosynthesis-in-search-of-more-productive-crops">plants do photosynthesis</a>. These plants grow faster using far less water. It's a promising field for arid countries, as well as for growing food adapted to climate change.</p><p>Kahn came to the foundation after working at the <span>U.S. Department of Agriculture. She said one of the things that makes her work here different is the foundation's name recognition. </span></p><p><span>While other nonprofits toil in obscurity, the Gates Foundation carries prestige. She gets a seat at the table with worldwide policy makers and the top scientists in her field. It's a scientist's dream, she says. </span></p><h2><span>In awe of the Gates'</span></h2><p>One of the themes we heard repeatedly was how much employees appreciated their access to Bill and Melinda Gates. They are heavily involved, eagle-eyed, ask penetrating questions and they work as a team, each bringing different perspectives. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Elaine Thompson/AP Images</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Progress meetings with them can feel exhilarating and nervewracking, like any employee feels about presenting to their CEO.</p><p>But there's a general sense of good humor, too. </p><p>If a technical issue occurs, say with the videoconferencing system, and an employee can't immediately fix it, Bill Gates can do it without blinking an eye. There's nothing like having one of the fathers of the PC industry in the room when tech support is needed.</p><p>Another theme was just about the thrill of having Bill or Melinda Gates get excited about the employee's projects or work. </p><h2>Helping whole countries get healthier</h2><p>Of all the stories, Dr. Jean Kagubare's was one of the most moving.</p><p>Born in Rwanda, his parents fled the country when he was a baby. He became a doctor and returned to Rwanda right after the genocide of the 1990s. He ran several national health programs and one the country's biggest hospitals before moving to the US and getting his PhD in health systems at John Hopkins. He stayed in the US, working in global health, landing at the foundation about two years ago. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Business Insider/Julie Bort</span></p><p class="caption">Gates Foundation takes a broader approach to global health and measures holistic outcomes.</p></div><p></p></div></div>His job is to coordinate resources and measure results to ensure the healthcare system is improving. For instance, the foundation has funded a telemedicine app that helps doctors treat far-flung patients in villages without forcing them to travel to a healthcare facility.</p><p>Prior to this program, global healthcare workers would sort of parachute in to a country and focus on their one area - distributing vaccines or providing prenatal care, he explained. Those programs still exist, but now they are coordinated in a more holistic way, and his program measures total healthcare improvement, rather than just progress in one area.</p><p>"<span>Bill Gates asks the question all time: Is our money going to where it should be? Are the right people getting help?" he said. </span></p><p><span>All of this means that Kagubare is helping far more people across the globe, and especially in his home country, than he could when he worked as a doctor.</span></p><p>"<span>I was in Rwanda two months ago and talked to people and patients there. Patients are getting treatment that costs less and they don't have wait four hours at facilities, the average wait time, or pay to go to [far away] clinics," he said. </span></p><p>It's the best feeling.</p><ul><li style="list-style-type: none;"><ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/melinda-gates-explains-why-data-can-be-sexist-2019-2">Melinda Gates points out a major problem with how we make decisions: data is sexist</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-warns-cow-farts-climate-change-2019-2">Bill Gates warns of the dangers of cow farts - and the world should take his words seriously</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/melinda-gates-advice-working-moms-manage-stress-2019-2">Melinda Gates has some great advice on how working parents can reduce stress</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/after-talking-to-teens-last-year-about-anger-management-bill-gates-admits-that-some-of-his-famous-microsoft-tantrums-might-not-have-been-wise-2019-1">After talking to teens about anger management, Bill Gates admits that some of his Microsoft meltdowns were over the top</a></li></ul></li></ul>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-macbook-air-laptop-microsoft-surface-go-tablet-review-2019-1">We compared the $1,200 MacBook Air with the $500 Surface Go, and the results were a mess</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

I spent an uplifting day at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and discovered what it's really like to work there

<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The outbreak of Ebola fever brought to the world's attention on March 22nd 2014 by Médecins Sans Frontières, an international charity, has infected some 25,000 people and killed more than 10,000 of them--almost all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is abating. Liberia is close to declaring itself free of the virus and infection rates are falling in Sierra Leone. But it is not over yet, for in Guinea Ebola still kills dozens of people a week. Moreover, the aftermath will harm the three countries' economies, costing at least $1.6 billion in forgone economic growth this year, according to the World Bank.</span></p><p>Though it could have been a lot worse (at the height of the crisis some epidemiologists were talking of hundreds of thousands of deaths) it might also have been a lot better. Previous Ebola outbreaks killed dozens or hundreds. The whole episode therefore suggests that the world's defences against epidemics, though they have been strengthened since the rapid spread of SARS in 2002 and 2003 demonstrated their weaknesses, could do with reinforcing still further.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The prime directive of epidemic prevention is early detection. That means good surveillance. Unfortunately, only 64 of the 194 members of the World Health Organisation (WHO) have surveillance procedures, laboratories and data-management capabilities good enough to fulfil their obligations under an agreement known as the International Health Regulations. This, though, is changing.</span></p><p>In Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda have sharpened up. So has Vietnam. America is now helping 30 other countries, including the three affected by Ebola, to follow suit while, at the same time, improving their networks of clinics. Groups of neighbours are also coming together to form regional surveillance networks that can follow outbreaks across borders. Researchers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, for example, have formed what they call the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.</p><p>Along with early detection, the world needs to get better at responding--both institutionally and technologically. The WHO, notoriously slow off the mark when it came to Ebola, is widely regarded as too ponderous and bureaucratic to react with the speed needed to nip an emerging epidemic in the bud. There is talk of setting up a specialist international epidemic-prevention organisation.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bill Gates, a philanthropist whose foundation does a lot of work on disease control in poor countries, encourages this idea in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. He notes that epidemics and war are similarly costly of blood and treasure, but that only war is taken seriously by politicians--at least in terms of preparations such as standing armies. As if to prove the point, the threat of bioterrorism has been one motive for what preparations have been put in place.</span></p><p>An army, of course, needs weapons. And, in the case of epidemics, it is important to think about what those might be. The temptation is to put money into high-profile areas like vaccines and drugs. It may, though, be more useful to concentrate on diagnosis, because this can stop people spreading a disease. The <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> of diagnostic testing is advancing rapidly, making it easier to come up quickly with a test for a new pathogen.</p><p>That, Mr Gates believes, presents an opportunity. But it is one, he says, which requires the establishment of a rapid approval and procurement process, so that diagnostic tests can be made available quickly during outbreaks. They also need to be portable, like pregnancy tests, to keep people out of clinics where they might otherwise spread infection.</p><p>Drugs and vaccines are still important, of course. Research is going on into ways to make new vaccines quickly, so trials can start within days of an outbreak. Modern biological techniques mean a pathogen's genome can be copied and stuck into other cells to turn out proteins which might be used as a vaccine's active ingredients. Once a vaccine has been identified, the same techniques could be used to make it quickly, and possibly locally if a portable factory were shipped to an affected area.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>The sinews of war</h3><p>But none of this rapid response can happen without cash. One lesson of an earlier incident, the H1N1 influenza ("swine flu") pandemic of 2009, was the lack of a contingency fund to deal with such things. This is a problem Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, is determined to solve. He has been meeting with politicians and the private sector to advance the case for a "global pandemic emergency financing facility".</p><p>One more modest possibility is that pools of research funding could be set up in advance, along with agreed research protocols, allowing health studies to start more quickly. An existing example of this is a fund created by the Wellcome Trust, a British medical charity.</p><p>Even on the coldest of calculations, a contingency fund would be a wise precaution. The damage caused by Ebola to west Africa's economy is trivial compared with the cost of, say, a global influenza pandemic. The World Bank reckons that might reduce global economic activity by almost 5%. How many would die would depend on the virus's virulence. But even a 1% death rate, for something that was truly worldwide, would add up to millions. That is too much blood, and too much treasure, for politicians to ignore.</p><p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p><p> </p><p>This article was from The Economist and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container nc_pixel"><div class="image"></div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-earth-would-look-like-if-ice-melted-world-map-animation-2015-2">Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5xam5iczrSx4Ibx8MvarDsu3zOG88omE" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Why pandemic disease and war are so similar

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst </p></div><p></p></div>The <keyword id="6355284" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="senate">Senate</keyword> will hold a rare Sunday session as US politicians grapple with how to reopen the shuttered government and avoid a potentially calamitous failure to pay the country's debt obligations.</p>
<p>With Republicans in the House of Representatives blaming President Barack Obama for the collapse of talks on extending US borrowing authority, the Senate's Republican and Democratic leaders scrambled to piece together a bipartisan exit strategy.</p>
<p>The top senators showed an intensifying desire to end the two-week government shutdown and ease the threat of default with just three working days next week before the US Treasury's October 17 deadline for raising the <keyword id="648838" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="debt-ceiling">debt ceiling</keyword>.</p>
<p>Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama's top wingman in Congress, said he held "extremely cordial but very preliminary" talks Saturday with top Republican Senator Mitch McConnell.</p>
<p>"Nothing conclusive" emerged from the pair's first face-to-face discussion about the twin crises, Reid told reporters, downplaying hopes of a quick fix.</p>
<p>McConnell suggested a bipartisan offer spearheaded by moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins as a workable template, but Reid rejected it.</p>
<p>The measure would extend borrowing authority into 2014 and fund the government for six months, but it would also repeal a medical device tax introduced under Obama's health care law.</p>
<p>Democratic leaders were most concerned, however, with the proposal to keep the existing automatic spending cuts, a move that would put agency spending at $70 billion below what Democrats have proposed for fiscal 2014.</p>
<p>World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim urged policymakers to avert the crisis.</p>
<p>"If this comes to pass, it could be a disastrous event for the developing world, and that in turn will greatly hurt the developed economies as well," Kim said at the close of the annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington on Saturday.</p>
<p>International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde compared the effects of failing to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government to the 2008 global financial meltdown.</p>
<p>"The standing of the US economy would, again, be at risk," Lagarde said on NBC's Sunday show "Meet the Press."</p>
<p>"If there is that degree of disruption, that lack of certainty, that lack of trust in the US signature, it would mean massive disruption the world over. And we would be at risk of tipping, yet again, into recession," she said, according to an advance transcript of the show.</p>
<p>With negotiations with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in tatters, Obama called a snap meeting at the White House with the Senate's Democratic leadership to regroup.</p>
<p>"Their conclusion was that while Democrats remain united, Republicans have yet to coalesce behind a clear negotiating position," a Senate Democratic leadership aide said after the Saturday talks.</p>
<p>"Democrats are willing to negotiate on anything Republicans want to discuss as soon as we reopen the government and pay our bills."</p>
<p>Obama on Saturday made clear that he wanted a long-term deal, rejecting a proposal floated by House Speaker John Boehner suggesting a six-week extension to US borrowing authority.</p>
<p>"It wouldn't be wise, as some suggest, to just kick the debt ceiling can down the road for a couple of months, and flirt with a first-ever intentional default right in the middle of the holiday shopping season," Obama said in his weekly broadcast address.</p>
<p>House Republicans fumed over the change of heart.</p>
<p>"They felt they were duped," Congressman John Fleming said of the House leadership as he exited from a Republican caucus meeting.</p>
<p>"They were led to believe that the president did want to negotiate in good faith and now they find out that that was never in the cards."</p>
<p>House Republicans have argued for any budget deal to include concessions on funding Obama's health care reforms, while Senate Republicans are more willing to reopen government without such conditions.</p>
<p>Some lawmakers were adamant that the House -- which does not meet again until Monday, when world markets might start seriously digesting Washington's impasse -- remains the linchpin for any agreement.</p>
<p>"At the end of the day, whatever they do (in the Senate) still has to come through here," said Republican Representative Tom Cole.</p>
<p>On Friday, the framework of a possible deal appeared to be forming.</p>
<p>The government, shuttered since October 1, would be fully reopened, possibly on an interim basis.</p>
<p>Both sides would also commit to work toward an elusive deal to tackle the deficit, rein in spending and possibly reform social programs and some aspects of the tax code.</p>
<p>But, perhaps sensing that it now has the upper hand in the fight, the White House has rejected the idea of extending the borrowing authority by just six-weeks.</p>
<div class="nc_footer">
<p>Copyright (2013) AFP. All rights reserved.</p>
</div>
<p></p>

All Eyes Remain On The Senate To Break The Crisis In Washington

Sundance 2022 returns to Park City with an expanded lineup that includes Netflix's Kanye West documentary

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Carlos Barria</span></p></div><p></p></div>China has investigated <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-probes-more-than-25000-people-for-graft-in-first-half-of-year-2014-25">over 25,000 people for corruption</a> in the first six months of 2014. Probes into major cases were up 14% year-over-year.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-01/14/c_133044810.htm">182,000 officials were punished</a> by discipline inspection agencies in 2013, up 13.3% year-over-year.</p>
<p>Remember, Chinese president Xi Jinping came to power on the back of a very ominous message from his predecessor. In late 2012, outgoing president Hu Jintao <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hu-jintaos-speech-highlights-economy-corruption-2012-11">warned </a>that corruption could prove "fatal" to the Chinese Communist party, and even "cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state."</p>
<p>Xi, who has been described as "redder than red" took that message to heart. Under his watchful eye, China's anti-graft campaign has gathered steam.</p>
<p>At first we saw an austerity campaign that warned against lavish gift giving and wasteful consumption. Soon that spread to the takedown of corrupt officials in the Chinese communist party, though some would argue that the seeds of this were sown in the downfall of former Chongqing leader Bo Xilai.</p>
<p>Now, government officials have caps on daily spending when traveling around China. The Chinese military has been banned from buying foreign-made vehicles. The State Council is widening its probe into the use of public funds for travel, gifts etc among military officials. And officials have become nervous about being caught <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-officials-afraid-to-play-golf-2014-6">playing golf</a>.</p>
<p>Talking about the scope of this campaign in 2013, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-china-corruption-xi-idUSBRE90L0AA20130122">Xi said</a>,"we must uphold the fighting of tigers and flies at the same time, resolutely investigating law-breaking cases of leading officials and also earnestly resolving the unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems which happen all around people."<strong><br /></strong></p>
<h3><strong>The tigers and flies</strong></h3>
<p>Zhou Zhenhong, former member of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Committee and former head of the United Front Work Department, was <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1437111/senior-guangdong-official-zhou-zhenhong-sentenced-death-graft">sentenced to death</a> with a two-year reprieve. Zhou, a "tiger" was found guilty of <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-01/24/content_17254882.htm">accepting $4 million in bribes</a> and failing to account for about $6 million in assets. Zhou first came under the scanner in 2012. </p>
<p>Last year, Liu Tienan, former deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) was <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1295287/former-senior-official-liu-tienan-be-prosecuted-graft">expelled from the Communist Party</a> after being accused of corruption. Liu was one of the first tigers to be caught in the anti-graft sweep across China, based on accusations made online. </p>
<p>Liu Zhijun, former railways minister was given a suspended death sentence for corruption and abuse of power. Su Rong, former party chief for Gansu, Qinghai and Jiangxi Province before moving to the CPPCC, and a "tiger" was under suspicion for violating party rules and state law.</p>
<p>The latest to be ensnared in the crackdown is Rui Chenggang, a host on China Central Television (CCTV) and in the bigger scheme of things a fly. <a href="http://english.caixin.com/2014-07-14/100703599.html?utm_source=The+Sinocism+China+Newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=754b729af6-Sinocism07_15_14&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_171f237867-754b729af6-24573061&amp;mc_cid=754b729af6&amp;mc_eid=743b9e45b4">Caixin Online reported</a> that he was detained shortly before his program aired on July 11. Li Yong at CCTV2 was also detained. The probe has also extended to other television executives like Guo Zhenxi, director of CCTV2.</p>
<p>And now the campaign is shifting gears to focus on "naked officials," those with immediate families that live abroad. Over a thousand naked officials were found in Guangdong province in June, with 200 of those officials asking their families to return home and 866 agreeing to demotions.</p>
<p><strong>Xi's Consolidation Of Power</strong></p>
<p>But there are two names that truly stand out. First, is <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28305134">Zhou Yongkang</a>, a former Politburo Standing Committee member, is said be under investigation and so are three officials linked to him, Li Dongsheng, Jiang Jiemin, and Wang Yongchun.</p>
<p>Of course for Xi the one happy coincidence to this corruption purge, is that it helps him knock off some of his rivals. "Power consolidation is of course very important and we should consider the ongoing investigation into Zhou Yongkang and his allies at least in part in that light," Bill Bishop author of Sinocism told Business Insider. </p>
<p>"There is little doubt these people were engaged in remarkable amounts of corruption, and there are all sorts of unproven rumors about plots and deals among this group in the runup up to the 2012 18th Party Congress, but taking down this network has also allowed Xi to gain control over the security services, and much faster than most observers expected."</p>
<p>"The other vital source of hard power is of course the military," explained Bishop, enter:  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/world/asia/china-moves-against-one-of-its-top-leaders.html?_r=0">Xu Caihou</a>, who once held one of the highest positions in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and was a member of the Politburo. Xu was expelled from the Party and handed over to prosecutors for accepting bribes. This of course is a further sign of Xi consolidating power over the PLA.</p>
<p>Jim Chanos sees the corruption drive as a much more serious effort to "cleanse the party." Speaking on  <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-on-china-anti-corruption-2014-7">Bloomberg TV's Charlie Rose Show</a> he said, "If you look at the people's daily overnight announcements - I mean, there is four or five headshots put up on Twitter and on their website, of people who have been taken away every night. I mean it's almost as if you're seeing a Soviet-style 1930s purge through a social media."</p>
<p>Some argue that this makes Xi more <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/xi-jinping-reminiscent-of-deng-not-mao-2013-11">a Maoist, than a Dengist</a>, with reference to Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader from 1978 until his death in 1997. But some argue he's neither.</p>
<p>"I see Xi Jinping more as a Machiavellian than a Maoist," Arthur Dong, professor of strategy and economics at Georgetown University told Business Insider. "The ends that Xi Jinping and his reform minded coalition wish to pursue relate to the long-term viability of the Communist Party."</p>
<p>"Institutional weakness as a result of endemic corruption on the part of government administrators has been a recurring feature of China's past and one of the driving forces that led to the end of the dynastic cycle.  President Xi knows that for the Party to survive it must maintain its legitimacy," he explained. "Invariably, some of the accused represent views that come to differ with Xi's. Their removal also presents the opportunity to remove a political rival. It is a messy game that Xi has so far been very adept at playing."</p>
<p>"It is a mistake however, to conclude that it is just about reshuffling officials so Xi can put his people in place," Bill Bishop author of Sinocism told Business Insider in an email interview. </p>
<p>"I believe that Xi is serious about improving governance and cleaning up at least the more egregious corruption in both the Party-state and the military," Bishop said. "I think the anti-corruption efforts are also clearly about reining in and in some cases removing special interests that are resisting the very ambitious reform plans passed at the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress in November 2013."</p>
<h3><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Bank of America" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53adf6026bb3f7222c83b203-960/screen shot 2014-06-27 at 6.52.19 pm.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Bank of America</span></p></div><p></p></div>The Economic Impact</strong></h3>
<p>There is however a snag to the anti-graft campaign. Unlike other countries, in the short-run, cracking down on corruption actually hurts growth in China, according to Alastair Chan at Moody's. </p>
<p>The austerity campaign that we saw in real force in 2013, deterred conspicuous consumption and lavish gift giving. At the time, it hurt sales of luxury goods, catering at high-end restaurants, and wasteful construction of government buildings. Top-end restaurant sales were down 35% YoY in 2013.</p>
<p>Now Bank of America's Ting Lu believes that corruption is going to start impacting fixed asset investment (FAI). "Even for the honest officials, the escalated anti-graft campaign is making them think twice before making investment decisions," wrote Ting. </p>
<p>"The officials are increasingly cautious as they don't want to be the next target of the campaign for the actions they have taken. Many feel the safest way during the heightened crackdown is to do nothing. This is part of the reason that Premier Li has repeatedly called for more action at local levels since May."</p>
<p>Ting points to "the abnormally high growth in bank deposits of governments and quasi-government agencies (up 28.3% and 23.6% yoy in February 2014 respectively),"  the slowdown in retail sales and FAI growth as factors weighing on the Chinese economy.</p>
<p>Of course, Xi is aware that he can't terminate the campaign at this point. In fact economists expect it to continue for another two or three years. Moving forward Beijing is left with a tough choice between the social benefits of lower corruption or economic growth.</p>

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