IMF wants Japan to implement clear fiscal reform plan to cut debt |
- IMF wants Japan to implement clear fiscal reform plan to cut debt
- Abandoned bear cub gets a second chance in life (VIDEO)
- British finance minister: Britain backs eventual yuan inclusion in IMF’s SDR basket
- Roel Reine — the unlikely auteur
- Show the red card to suspensions
| IMF wants Japan to implement clear fiscal reform plan to cut debt Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:52 PM PDT
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put off a sales tax hike last year and has been slow in pushing through painful spending cuts, arguing that Japan should focus more on boosting tax revenues by reflating the economy with stimulus. The Bank of Japan's massive stimulus, deployed in 2013 and expanded last year, has kept borrowing costs ultra-low. But bank lending has failed to pick up as companies hold off on spending. Inflation ground to a halt on slumping oil costs, keeping alive expectations that the BOJ will ease again this year. Kalpana Kochhar, the International Monetary Fund's mission chief for Japan, said the BOJ has done a lot already and with some promising signs of wage growth, Japan will see inflation pick up toward the end of this year. She added that the effectiveness of the BOJ's stimulus depended "very much" on the government's creation of a clear, course of action to fix the country's worsening finances. "Japan really has no choice but to start doing some form of fiscal consolidation," Kochhar told Reuters yesterday. "It's very important to be able to convince the Japanese public that this fiscal situation will be brought under control at some point" so that they become confident enough to spend, she said. Kochhar also stressed that Japan must stick to its new schedule of raising the sales tax to 10 per cent in April 2017. Abe delayed a second sales tax hike, initially scheduled for October 2014, by 18 months after the first increase to 8 per cent from 5 per cent pushed Japan into a recession. Abe promised not to delay the tax hike again and to lay out a new, medium-term fiscal reform plan around mid-year to meet its commitment to the global community of bringing its primary budget to a surplus in fiscal 2020. But analysts doubt the plan will have much details on how Japan will cut its debt which, at double the size of its economy, is the biggest among major industrialised nations. Kochhar said Japan must come up with strategies on fiscal consolidation that includes a numerical target on the yearly size of debt adjustment and "fairly specific" measures well thought through. But she also called for patience on how quickly Abe succeeds in pulling Japan out of stagnation with his "Abenomics" mix of fiscal spending, monetary stimulus and structural reforms. "This is country that is facing a monumental, really unprecedented task" of beating deflation despite an ageing population and high debt burden, Kochhar said. "You wouldn't find (solutions) in any text books... We're all doing a bit of groping in the dark." — Reuters  |
| Abandoned bear cub gets a second chance in life (VIDEO) Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:50 PM PDT MOSCOW, April 18 — A family in the Russian far eastern Irkutsk region has adopted a bear cub found wandering after its mother was likely killed by poachers. The little bear, nicknamed Mishutka, took up residence with the Shcherbakov family in the town of Tulun, after he showed up at their house gate three weeks ago. The family matriarch cooks the bear porridge and feeds him milk from a refashioned beer bottle, and she says he loves sweets. The family is trying to have Mishutka resettled elsewhere. They have taken out an internet ad and hope TV coverage of him will lead to a circus or zoo taking him in. — Reuters
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| British finance minister: Britain backs eventual yuan inclusion in IMF’s SDR basket Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:42 PM PDT
British finance minister: Britain backs eventual yuan inclusion in IMF's SDR basket
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, however, voiced disappointment with Britain's surprise decision last month to join the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) on its own, instead of taking a joint Western approach on the issue. The internationalisation of the yuan and the creation of the AIIB are part of China's efforts to take a more dominant role in global finance, and advanced economies have not been in total agreement on how to respond. "I think our approach to China is one that reflects the very best of British values, which is we want to involve and include important emerging powers in the world system, and I don't think it's sensible to shut important economies... out from the institutions of the world," Osborne told reporters during the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Britain was the first member of the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialised countries to announce its intention to join the AIIB, about which the United States and Japan have expressed reservations. A reporter asked Sapin yesterday if he was surprised and disappointed by the British decision to go it alone, which he said went contrary to G7 intentions. "Surprised? No. Disappointed? Yes, because what we had decided to do was to look at this question together and to act together if possible. That's what we did at the level of the euro zone," he said. "Britain chose a different route." In the end, the other three European G7 members, France, Germany and Italy, quickly followed suit, and G7 member Canada then announced it was actively considering joining. Sapin said France decided to take part "because it's interesting," adding that it was imposing conditions on governance, anti-corruption and other issues. A British official, speaking on condition of anonymity, took issue with the idea that Britain had broken ranks with the G7, saying it had made clear its intentions to get in on the ground floor of the new multilateral bank. Referring to the AIIB, Osborne said Britain was focused on "helping to ensure that... new institutions operate on the principles of transparency and integrity, that we like to see in all international organisations." The yuan, also known as the renminbi, will be considered by the IMF later this year for inclusion in its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of currencies. "That is something that's under discussion now, and clearly at some point it will be sensible, as part of the internationalisation of the renminbi, to see the renminbi come into the basket," Osborne said. "The UK has been at the forefront of trying to encourage the internationalisation of the renminbi, and London has become the preeminent Western centre for renminbi issuance," he said. — Reuters |
| Roel Reine — the unlikely auteur Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:42 PM PDT APRIL 18 — As defined in Wikipedia, the "auteur theory holds that a film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary auteur (the French word for "author"). In spite of — and sometimes even because of — the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process." Of course this can and has been debated ever since Francois Truffaut made the term popular in his article titled A Certain Tendency in French Cinema which was first published in the January 1954 issue of the Cahiers Du Cinema magazine. There are various interpretations of the theory out there, but I find myself most often agreeing with Andrew Sarris, an American champion of the theory who wrote for The Village Voice, especially his belief that a director's work should be judged on its artistry rather than the subject matter. This paragraph he wrote when recommending Andre Bazin's classic book What Is Cinema? for The Browser simply said it best, "Before I became familiar with the work of Bazin, I felt that film had to be ambitious and socially conscious to be valuable. Bazin and Cahiers helped me realize that cinema was sui generis, that film didn't have to prove its social relevance, and that film should be judged on its own terms. But back then, bucking mainstream American criticism and showing appreciation for commercial pictures was a risky proposition." As great as the auteur theory is, it has now become stagnant, as film critics worldwide are just content with showing appreciation only for films and directors that have already been inducted into the canon or are current staples of the arthouse and international film festivals. There's nothing safer than singing praises for Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lars Von Trier, Andrey Zvyagintsev or any number of currently established auteurs out there. Where's the appreciation for today's equivalent of Howards Hawks, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray or Anthony Mann? The reality is that even now it is risky to show appreciation for commercial films. Just take a look at the Fast And Furious films, even though the majority of them are quite bad, it is an undoubted fact that The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift was a sensational genre picture, and its director Justin Lin deserves some examination and recognition for his auteurship of the current behemoth that is the Fast And Furious franchise. How about current comedy kings Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) or Adam McKay (the Anchorman films, The Other Guys)? I'll probably write about these guys in the future but for now let me present to you the case for the most unlikely of today's auteurs, a certain fellow making movies almost strictly for the Direct-To-Video (DTV) market, Dutch director Roel Reine. If making DTV movies are already disreputable enough, how about making an unusually large number of DTV movies with the number 2 or 3 in them? As the great John Hyams (Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning) once mentioned in an interview, he became agent-less the minute people found out that he's now making DTV movies instead of "real" movies for the cinema. So imagine the kind of kiss of death that landed on Roel Reine, who's now looking more and more like the go-to guy when it comes to DTV sequels. So far he's made The Marine 2, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded, Death Race 2, Death Race 3: Inferno, Seal Team 8: Behind Enemy Lines 4, The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption and his latest contribution The Man With The Iron Fists 2. That's 7 DTV sequels in the 10 years since he first moved to the US from the Netherlands in 2005! Before he more or less became king of the DTV sequels, he made other movies, some of them DTV and some of them not, like the Steven Seagal flick Pistol Whipped and his debut The Delivery, for which he won Best Director at the Dutch equivalent of the Oscars, The Golden Calf. But those 7 DTV sequels, which doesn't include the non-DTV sequels he's made since 2005 like Dead In Tombstone, The Lost Tribe, Deadwater, Drifter, the aforementioned Pistol Whipped and the upcoming Dutch film Admiral meant that he's made 12 films in 10 years, an astonishing amount for a pretty much unknown director working on the fringes of the Hollywood system. Even more impressive is how the DTV sequels are never pale shadows of the original movies, some of them even surpassing the original like The Marine 2, 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded and The Man With The Iron Fists 2. His Death Race films (prequels in narrative although technically sequels in terms of release date), surely much lower on the budget scale than the original Death Race (itself a sort of remake of Death Race 2000) are no slouch either, which is not something to snigger at. It's this kind of work rate, similar to the old Hollywood studio system in which directors championed by the supporters of the auteur theory usually churn out 2 to 3 movies per year, that brings out signs of the director's authorship of his movies, despite the factory-like working conditions and the collaborative nature of filmmaking (i.e. working from someone else's script or idea, producer control etc). In the case of Roel Reine, his case is helped even further by the fact that he's also the Director Of Photography and the 'A' Camera Operator in practically all the movies he's directed. There's even a recurring theme to his work, especially in the DTV sequels, as almost all of them are about stoic and solitary men who are forced to deal with a high pressure situation that's out of their hands. But most of all, it's his instinctive way of tailoring different aesthetic approaches according to the needs of a particular movie that marks him as an auteur in the vein of studio journeymen like Raoul Walsh or Richard Fleischer. Like those auteurs, his films are not always great, but the great ones will wow you and stay in your mind. And dare I say, that is enough proof that in his own way, making his kinetic little DTV movies (surely today's equivalent of the B movies of the studio era), Roel Reine is already a treasure, And yes, an auteur. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Show the red card to suspensions Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:37 PM PDT APRIL 18 — In Paris on Wednesday night, Lionel Messi received a pass from Andres Iniesta and took advantage of the wide open spaces in front of him to surge forward and release a pass to Neymar, who applied a simple right-footed finish. Goal. Barcelona led Paris St Germain 1-0, and the decisive moment in their Champions League quarter-final meeting had arrived. No game is as simple as just one incident, of course, but without any doubt the turning point in the encounter — and the tie as a whole — was that opening goal. From that moment, the visitors were in the ascendancy and PSG had to force the pace, with the gaps that consequently appeared allowing Barca to score two more goals — brilliantly taken by Luis Suarez — and establish a 3-1 lead which will surely not be overturned in next week's return leg. And the decisive element in Neymar's opener — even more than his cool finish and Messi's well-timed pass — was the space available to Messi when he received the ball from Iniesta. With no PSG midfielders closing him down, Messi had the time and space to move forward and then draw David Luiz out of the defence, which in turn created the space for Neymar to run inside his full-back and find the opening to shoot. As much as it was about Barca's attacking precision, the goal was about PSG's defensive negligence in allowing probably the greatest player of all-time so much space to run into. And that space, it is almost certain, would not have been there if Marco Verratti had been playing. Verratti, despite still only being 22 years old, is PSG's midfield general and chief organiser. The kind of player whose work is not always conspicuous at first glance, the Italian is the glue that holds the team together, using his positional intelligence to maintain a solid collective structure and protect the back four. We will never know for sure, obviously, but with Verratti on the field it is highly unlikely that Messi would have been given such a simple route to the edge the penalty area. The reason Verratti was not playing? It had nothing to do with injury. Rather, he was suspended after fouling Eden Hazard during his team's meeting with Chelsea a month earlier. In that same game, not uncoincidentally, PSG's superstar forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic was sent off — wrongly, according to nearly every independent observer — for a foul on Oscar, meaning that he was also suspended for Wednesday's game against Barcelona. Therefore, through nothing they had done to deserve it, Barca were able to take on significantly weakened opposition, who were missing their best two players as they attempted to progress into the semi-finals of the Champions League. Apologies for the long-winded build-up, but context is important. And you may have already guessed where I'm going next: I do not like the current disciplinary system of yellow cards, red cards and suspensions. Why should Barcelona receive a benefit from a game played by PSG a month ago? Why should their task in reaching the last four be made easier by something that had nothing to do with them? Why should the watching world be denied the opportunity of seeing PSG field their best players in such a high-profile game? Of course, bad tackles must be punished and overly aggressive players have to receive some kind of sanction for foul play, or there would be anarchy on the field. But I believe these matters should be dealt with there and then, not allowed to carry over into subsequent games. Football could, perhaps, introduce the sin-bin which is used in many other sports: rather than Verratti's foul on Hazard making him miss the game against Barcelona a month later, for example, he could have been banished from the field of play for ten minutes straight away. The worse the offence, the longer the duration of absence. That system would also directly benefit the team who had been the direct victim of the aggression. What good was it to Hazard or Chelsea that Verratti's foul against them made him miss a game against another team? It would have been more just — to Chelsea, PSG and Barcelona — if he had been temporarily removed from the action immediately. Verratti and Ibrahimovic is only, of course, the most recent case of players missing important games through suspension, and there have been plenty of far more significant examples in the past. Michael Ballack, for example, was perhaps the best midfielder in the world when Germany reached the World Cup Final in 2002. But he was suspended, therefore making Brazil's task in becoming world champions — which they did — much easier. Paul Scholes and Roy Keane missed out on the chance to win the Champions League with Manchester United in 1999 because they were suspended for the final — and without near-miraculous last-minute interventions from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, their absence would have been a major contribution to United's defeat to Bayern Munich. Brazil captain Thiago Silva missed his team's World Cup semi-final against Germany last summer, forced to watch powerless from the sidelines as his leaderless team conceded five goals in an unforgettable opening half-hour. The list goes on. And it is a litany of injustice. Unless something very serious happens — Luis Suarez biting an opponent or Eric Cantona kung-fu kicking a supporter, for instance — players, teams and watching spectators should not be weakened in the next game for something minor that had happened in a previous game. I'm not claiming to have a perfect answer and whatever system was in place, there would be disagreements, judgment calls and inconsistencies. That is inevitable, but it would surely be possible to find an improvement on the current system whereby teams and players are randomly helped or hindered by events that happened weeks previously. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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