Clinton boosted by debate as candidates rally support
ricky l2 seconds ago
In a snap CNN poll of 521 voters, 62 percent judged that Clinton had won the debate against 27 percent for Trump, with most mainstream political analysts agreeing Clinton was the stronger performer.
"A lot of Americans will look at tonight's debate and see an individual who is prepared to become president of the United States, and she was up against an impostor," said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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Hope the positive poll will be translated into votes for Hillary.
This will exposed the opportunist, an impostor - Donald Trump wanting to occupy the Presidential office - that will have tremendous impact on the lives of all Americans.
ricky l1 second ago
Donald Trump should have been eliminated in the 1st round during the GOP primary.
But he emerge from it and even come so close.
Surely, the political mood in US, albeit in many developed countries (one very similar example - the Brexit) seems to be swaying voters against traditional establishment.
It is not the political structure that the voters feel alienated --- it is the Economic system ---- the jobs, the business --- and the widening income divide --- that has altered voters appetite against establishment ----- as it did not benefit the majority of the people - only the few minorities.
It is vital Hillary must try to address this in her debate - on how Establishment can modified themselves to be inclusive -- to ensure Economic pie, jobs, business, investment - benefits all the people and will not alienate the majorities that did not benefit from the traditional establishment.
Only then, can Hilary beat the political impostor cum opportunist - to really save America, in fact the World - from falling into the hands of this opportunist.
5 pieces of evidence that Hillary Clinton won the big presidential debate
image: https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57e9f6b5077dcc1b008b85d6-2400/gettyimages-610599278.jpg
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton smiles during the Presidential Debate at Hofstra University on September 26, 2016 in Hempstead, New York. The first of four debates for the 2016 Election, three Presidential and one Vice Presidential, is moderated by NBC’s Lester Holt.
The political events of the last 15 months have ruined my confidence in my own ability to predict how the electorate will react to events.
So here are a few pieces of evidence, aside from my own impressions from watching, that Clinton got the best of Trump at Monday’s debate.
- Prediction markets moved toward Clinton during the debate. PredictWise, which aggregates odds from betting markets and bookmakers, showed her odds of winning the presidency rising from 69% before the debate to 73% after.
- TV news focus groups said Clinton clearly won. The CBS undecided voter focus group, run by Frank Luntz, gave it to her by a margin of 16 to six; CNN’s gave it to her by 18 to two.
- Trump’s own surrogates won’t argue forcefully that he won. The rules of this are usually simple: If you’re a surrogate, you go into the spin room after the debate and say your candidate killed it. Clinton’s supporters are following the usual script. But lots of Trump supporters can’t even bring themselves to do that. Laura Ingraham said on Fox News that Trump left a lot of material on the table and complained about Lester Holt’s topic choices. Even Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager who now works for CNN, would only say Trump won the first half of the debate.
- One focus group participant said something telling. A CNN panelist who gave the win to Clinton noted, approvingly, that she “took control of the situation.” This is true: She projected confidence and brought up topics that were difficult for Trump, while Trump failed to raise many of his strengths and her weaknesses. Trump spent 25 words on Rosie O’Donnell, yet said nothing about the wall, the Clinton Foundation, or Clinton’s comment about “deplorables.”
- Trump skipped a post-debate victory party he was supposed to attend and went straight home. Trump said he enjoyed the debate but didn’t seem too eager celebrate. Maybe he was sad, or was feeling low-energy, or lacked the stamina to greet his supporters.
My mind keeps sticking on point four. Clinton drove the debate. This was a big shift from the primary debates, of which Trump was the dominant star, and that undermines one of his big appeals to his fans — that he’s the strong guy in charge of everything.
We’ll have to see over the next few days whether the debate mattered at all for the polling, but those are a few signs she got the best of it.
This is an editorial. The opinions and conclusions expressed above are those of the author.
Read more at http://www.businessinsider.sg/why-hillary-clinton-won-the-debate-2016-9/#MOVH3bSWIipM01KS.99
IMF warns of protectionist threat to global growth
Posted 04 Oct 2016 22:11
Updated 04 Oct 2016 22:20
The International Monetary Fund said advanced economies were slowing and warned of the threat of protectionism to growth. (Photo: AFP/Philippe Huguen)
WASHINGTON: The IMF on Tuesday (Oct 4) left its global economic forecasts unchanged into 2017 but called governments to take action against the threats of low growth and protectionism.
Global output is expected to grow this year at a rate of 3.1 per cent before rising to 3.4 per cent next year, estimates that are unchanged from July, according to the International Monetary Fund.
But the Fund downgraded forecasts both for growth in global trade volume and for advanced economies' output, saying that prospects for richer countries had darkened this year.
"It is vitally important to defend the prospects for increasing trade integration," said IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld. "Turning back the clock on trade can only deepen and prolong the world economy's current doldrums."
The IMF notably cut its growth forecast for the United States, the world's largest economy, but upgraded those for Japan and the eurozone.
'SUB-PAR GROWTH'
"Taken as a whole, the world economy has moved sideways," Obstfeld said in remarks accompanying the new forecast. He said that "sub-par growth" was stirring negative economic and political forces around the world.
The IMF downgraded its outlook for advanced economies this year by 0.2 percentage points to 1.6 per cent but raised it slightly for emerging and developing economies to 4.2 per cent. Next year's forecasts were unchanged.
The world trade outlook also soured, with growth pegged at 2.3 per cent this year, 0.4 percentage points lower than forecast in July, before rising to 3.8 per cent in 2017.
"Over the medium term, while we expect that advanced economies will continue along a disappointingly low growth path, emerging market and developing economies should accelerate," said Obstfeld.
The IMF's projections faced notable risks, however, such as further economic shocks in China, a continued fall in commodity prices and the sudden imposition of new trade barriers.
"Geopolitical tensions could flare up, adding to the humanitarian crises already afoot in the Middle East and Africa," the report said.
Following a lacklustre second quarter, the United States suffered the report's sharpest downward revision of 0.6 percentage points, with growth now foreseen at 1.6 per cent this year and 1.8 per cent in 2017.
With a strong dollar dragging on exports, weak business investment and three straight quarters of declining productivity have held growth down despite strong jobs markets and consumer spending.
Japan was a surprise bright spot, however, with forecasts for this year and next revised upwards over July's forecast. The Japanese economy is now due to grow by 0.5 and 0.6 per cent this year and next.
Likewise, the eurozone also had its forecasts moved upwards by 0.1 percentage points, with output expected to increase by 1.7 per cent this year and 1.5 per cent in 2017.
But Obstfeld warned most darkly of the "gathering political fallout" of a low-growth era in wealthy countries where income distribution has skewed "sharply towards the highest earners."
"The result in some richer countries has been a political movement that blames globalization for all woes and seeks somehow to wall off the economy from global trends rather than engage cooperatively with foreign nations," he said. "Brexit is only one example of this tendency."
RECOVERY IN RUSSIA
Contractions in Russia and Brazil are also due to end, returning to positive growth next year of 1.1 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively.
Prospects for China, where revaluation of the currency and the transition from an export to a services economy have caused shocks, were unchanged, with the world's second economy expected to grow a robust 6.6 per cent this year and 6.2 per cent next year. But debt and worries about the management of state enterprises could make things "bumpier" in the longer-term, the report said.
The IMF has repeatedly warned in recent months that failure to stimulate growth could "trap" the global economy in poor performance for the long-term and said stimulus has relied excessively on central banks, whereas it said structural and fiscal policies should used as well.
- AFP/ec
Protectionism's rise a balancing act for World Bank, IMF
Posted 06 Oct 2016 20:39
Updated 06 Oct 2016 20:48
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WASHINGTON: Protectionism's rise in Europe and the United States is pushing the world's economic leaders toward a delicate balancing act: defending globalisation but acknowledging the pain that sometimes comes with it.
With the US presidential elections a month away, the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund kicked off this week in Washington with a stern warning: For the world to turn its back on trade now would only worsen the ills of a flagging global economy.
"Increasing pressure for inward-looking policies are a particular threat to the global outlook," the IMF said in downgrading growth forecasts for advanced economies, pushing concerns about Deutsche Bank's stability and China's commercial debt binge into the background.
The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, urged world governments to banish "the storm clouds of isolationism and protectionism," saying that open borders had lifted a billion people out of poverty in over a quarter century.
UNRECEPTIVE AUDIENCE
Long bandied about by the major international financial institutions, this message faces an increasingly unreceptive audience.
In the United States, long a bastion of trade liberalisation, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has rallied supporters by promising a trade war with China and retaliatory import duties on Mexico.
Across the Atlantic, the British vote to secede from the European Union threatens to spur other countries to roll back economic integration in Europe. The free-trade pact currently under negotiation with the United States, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, faces stiff resistance in Europe.
Bit by bit, globalisation finds itself accused of depressing wages, causing industrial decline and keeping low-skilled workers unemployed.
Against a backdrop of sluggish global trade, these accusations extend far beyond the insular clique of activist NGOs and are starting to threaten established dogma.
But Germany says it will hold the line.
"We are committed to build an open world economy, reject protectionism, promote global trade and investment," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said in a statement published Wednesday on the IMF's web site.
And for now, only a few countries, such as Poland, have gone so far as to enact protectionist measures.
A RECKONING
But the possibility of a re-set, or at least a rhetorical one, is setting in amongst the world's financial centres, which fear they risk encouraging populist movements by remaining deaf to the rising grievances about globalisation.
The IMF and its managing director Christine Lagarde have been foremost in this reckoning, conceding that global growth benefits too few and globalisation's losers should receive dedicated support.
In an opinion piece published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal and co-authored with the heads of the World Bank and World Trade Organization, Lagarde also said global trade should benefit everyone.
"Despite the tremendous benefits of trade, too many people feel it has left them behind," the co-authors said. "Transforming trade into an engine of growth for all ... requires reinvigorating trade integration, not rolling it back."
There is no telling, however, whether this will suffice to weaken the appeal of protectionism, which is fed not only by economic malaise but also by a rejection of economic elites, which are epitomised by the World Bank and IMF.
The rise of protectionism is a sign of "a fundamental distrust of the financial elites," said Paulo Nogueira Batista, vice president at the New Development Bank.
"The problems that arose in the banking sectors, the multiple instances of fraud, misconduct, the failure of the organisations in Washington to face up to the challenges ... this all created a mixture of resentment, a feeling that this system doesn't represent the people," he told AFP.
- AFP/ec
World Bank, IMF challenged by anti-globalisation wave
Posted 07 Oct 2016 04:41
Updated 07 Oct 2016 07:38
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WASHINGTON: Global finance leaders on Thursday (Oct 6) publicly confronted the rising unpopularity of trade liberalisation, saying world economies needed to strive for more inclusive growth.
With Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leading a surge of anti-free trade sentiment in the United States, and Britain voting to secede from the European Union, top central bankers and finance ministers were pressed to defend long-standing ideology at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings.
"We shouldn't apologise for what has happened and hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty and opportunity being created," Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, told a panel on the global economy.
"But there are challenges with distribution," he said. "How do we work with people to share those fruits more effectively and how do we make trade tangible?"
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble expressed alarm at the rise of anti-trade populism across the developed world. "If you look at what we have achieved in reducing the number of very poor people all over the world," he said.
"We must have in mind that we must not increase the gap between elites - political leaders, economic leaders, media leaders - and the people. Otherwise we will risk increasing populism and that's one of the major risks."
At the same time, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, whose organisation has long advocated lowering trade and investment barriers around the world, warned that now was not the time to close the door on globalisation, which she said had benefitted so many. "We don't think it's time to push against it," she said.
TRUMP, BREXIT
Long promoted by the major international development institutions and leading economies, the message of trade liberalisation faces an increasingly unreceptive audience.
In the United States, Trump has rallied supporters by promising a trade war with China and retaliatory import duties on Mexico.
Across the Atlantic, the British vote to leave the European Union threatens to spur other countries to roll back European economic integration. The free-trade pact currently under negotiation with the United States, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), faces stiff resistance in Europe.
Globalisation finds itself accused of depressing wages, causing industrial decline and keeping low-skilled workers unemployed.
"I'm a believer of free trade. I think free trade will promote the welfare of mankind," said Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China. "But we have to deal with the inclusive growth seriously. I think now the problem, the challenge we're facing is real," he said.
"We gain a lot of efficiency from globalisation, from free trade, but also we have to see the problem of the growth is not even, income distribution is not even."
CONCEDING THE POINT
Speaking elsewhere in Washington on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew steadfastly defended his administration's two big trade projects, TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
But he also tried his hand at the growth-equality balancing act. "If you win the argument that a trade agreement grows the economy, you're most of the way there," he said at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
"There's a broad sense of anxiety that growing economies don't necessarily get to people where they live," he added.
The IMF and World Bank now more openly concede that global growth benefits too few and globalisation's losers should receive dedicated support.
Oxfam International on Wednesday said the IMF and World Bank were acknowledging the reality of social injustice in the current globalised economic regime.
"By saying that globalisation needs to work for all, Lagarde has recognised that it currently works predominantly for an elite minority. This has to change," said Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam International.
- AFP/de
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