Игроки всегда ценят удобный и стабильный доступ к играм. Для этого идеально подходит зеркало Вавады, которое позволяет обходить любые ограничения, обеспечивая доступ ко всем бонусам и слотам.
WikiLeaks has really stirred things up for the U.S. Government, ushering in questions regarding its policy for preventing insider data leaks. And that’s a good thing.
A highly detailed 11-page memo prepared by U.S. intelligence officials and distributed by Jacob J. Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, suggests that agencies use psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the “relative happiness” of workers or their “despondence and grumpiness” as a way to assess their trustworthiness.
The memo was sent to senior officials at all agencies that use classified material. And though it is clear that the White House is in need of more rigid data leak prevention policies, some see the memo as paranoia.
Steven Aftergood, a national security specialist for the Federation of American Scientists, claims the Obama administration is borrowing heavily from strict programs used at the CIA and other intelligence agencies to root out potential spies. He even goes so far as to call the idea of requiring workers to report any contacts with members of the news media as “triply absurd.”
But for others, what’s absurd is the fact that 200,000 diplomatic cables between the U.S. State Department and its diplomatic missions were leaked.
Each year, the Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting company, releases its list of the top risks for the upcoming year. Generally, atop the rankings are a lot of unstable nations ripe for collapse or regional disruption. (Think places like Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan and Venezuela in recent years.)
This year, however, only one rogue nation cracks the top five (North Korea). Instead, global macro-shifts and emerging, nontraditional global conflicts are viewed as the largest threats.
The concept of the “G-Zero” presents a world devoid of global leadership. Ever since American primacy has dwindled on the international scale, most thinkers have looked at a few likely realities for the coming decades: (1) the United States re-establishing itself as the dominating global power, (2) the start of a “Chinese Century,” (3) the “Rise of the Rest” in which multiple emerging economies (China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc.) become the most important political force or (4) the coordinated rise of international cooperation via bodies like the G-20.
Another scenario, the G-Zero, seems increasingly likely to the Eurasia Group and its head Ian Bremmer. And with no apparent global leadership, conflict rooted in nations increasingly operating for their own self interest will emerge.
the default policy response to a breakdown in global economic governance is every man/nation for himself. As demonstrated even in a politically integrated Europe, without common rules, there’s no such thing as collective economic security. In the G-Zero, domestic constituencies will become increasingly effective in pushing populist agendas on trade, currency, and fiscal policy. However much economic dispositions become ideologically statist, in the absence of agreed global norms, economic agendas are overwhelmingly resolved at the national level
On a conference call about this list today, Bremmer mentioned that this new reality was probably coming anyway due to various factors but has been delayed by the cooperative sentiments and two years of panic following the meltdown of the global financial system. Obviously, the fallout of that is far from over, but the panic has at least subsided.
Thus, enter the G-Zero — probably this year, they say.
2. Eurozone Economics
With the debt and fiscal concerns still mounting throughout the Eurozone, the next year may see increasing tension between the struggling economies (specifically, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain) and those tasked with bailing them out (namely, Germany and France). Obviously, populist sentiments in Germany and France are making it harder and harder for Berlin and Paris to continue helping out other countries. Given this, the Eurasia Group sees a future of “bailouts with conditionality” that aren’t altogether appealing for either party, much like those adopted by the IMF and World Bank while loaning “strings attached” money to South American and African nations throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In the meantime, real Eurozone reform remains difficult and far away. And the resulting uncertainty will make the market and investors increasingly leery of the region in the coming year.
3. Cybersecurity and Geopolitics
Despite Time magazine’s assertion that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was the man of the year, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange kicked a much bigger hornet’s nest last year. Now, information anarchists of his ilk will make more disruptions for nations that have their secret information exposed. (Companies, too … tread lightly.)
More importantly, cyberwarfare in which states attack states has become a reality. We have seen it in Iran, from China and (probably) from Russia. We will likely see it more in 2011.
4. An Unresponsive China
With China’s economy and exports still booming even amid sluggish global consumption, Eurasia Group believes that Western nations will implore Beijing to adjust its growth model to one that better dovetails with the policies of the world’s other leading economies. This is what is referred to as “global rebalancing.” China, in theory, agrees with the need to do this — not just to integrate with the rest of the G-20, but for its own self-interest. Long-term, its export-driven economy just isn’t sustainable, and it knows this.
But it is very unlikely that Beijing’s rebalancing schedule will come as quickly as other nations want it to. And this may cause great contention.
China will talk of participating in global coordination, but they will not follow through.
China’s pattern of export growth that is twice the rate of economic growth, with resulting large current account surpluses, will be the object of intensified international outcry as the world’s second largest exporter in a demand-constrained world economy. In 2010, the gloves started to come off between the United States and China. The trend broadens this year with Europe, japan, and much of the emerging markets and the developing economies also looking to China to adjust its growth model …
frustration with and pressure on China will build. So too will the risks of market-moving international reactions to China’s incremental, deliberate, consensus-driven approach.
Much has been made about how China will disrupt the “old world order” in the next few decades. For the next 12 months, however, Bremmer and company see this as the largest factor that may cause market disruption.
5. North Korea
Kim Jong Il was — and is — utterly nuts. So him beginning to transfer power to his son is, in a way, a good thing. How can anyone possibly be as certifiably insane as that guy?
But the transition also might prove to be a major destabilizing force on the Korean peninsula. And that could be disastrous for South Korea, the region and the international community.
North Korea’s decision to keep pushing the South Koreans’ buttons is almost certainly the result of a faster-than-expected leadership transition in Pyongyang. That’s the only variable that could explain the sudden dramatic change in behavior. The belligerence could be coming from external concerns—that Kim Jong Un will be vulnerable to international “testing” if Pyongyang doesn’t first prove his mettle. Or it could be internal if Kim Jong Il doesn’t believe he can win agreement within the North Korean leadership for his son’s safe accession, especially in the event that the father dies suddenly. The latter scenario is much more troubling in terms of North Korea’s willingness to provoke military conflict on the peninsula. There’s no way of knowing which of the two is the more likely.
On today’s conference call, Bremmer added that war on the peninsula is indeed a possibility and that, in fact, it is “probably the only place in the world that large-scale conventional warfare is possible.”
From political to economic to security risks, there are many and they are far-reaching.
I was lucky enough to participate in a webinar yesterday on this very topic. Leading the presentation was Fareed Mohamedi, partner and head of markets and country strategies for PFC Energy and Raad Alkadiri, partner and head of PFC Energy.
Iraq, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil — the world’s second largest proven reserve — and also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and is a focal point for regional and international security issues. Mohamedi and Alkidiri see this oil-rich country as a ongoing risk.
The presenters also focused on OPEC constraints on oil production and the eventual quota applied to Iraq, stating that “OPEC may be able to live with maximum Iraqi production of 6 mmb/d by 2017 assuming relatively benign supply/demand fundamentals, but the risks are all on the downside.”
But let’s not leave out Iraq’s neighbor and fellow oil-rich country, Iran. According to PFC Energy, the country’s oil production forecast looks something like this:
But this excessive production doesn’t come without some consequences. Iran faces severe natural decline rates from its reservoirs, forcing Iran to rely heavily on proven undeveloped reserves (PUDs). However, the country’s unstable investment climate is a downside risk for PUD development. And as the webinar stated, “Iran’s production struggles will continue, or even worsen in the future due to geological constraints, lack of domestic technical capacity and the impact of sanctions on investment.”
U.S. dependency on foreign oil may decrease as the Obama administration opens up even more water for exploratory drilling. But, as we have seen recently with the Deepwater Horizon, that too comes with extreme risks.
To view an archived version of the webinar click the following link:
http://www.talkpoint.com/viewer/starthere.asp?Pres=130886 Password: pfcglobalrisk
Each year, Time magazine does a story on “10 ideas that are changing the world.” This year, the editors have made it a more forward-thinking feature, labeling it “10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years.” And as is the case with most everything these days, I managed to see several risk management-related angles in some of the trends they expect to shape the coming decade.
Here is a run-down with some thoughts.
Time’s Idea: Remapping the World “Good borders make good neighbors. Bad ones make wars”
This idea basically says that physically redrawing some national borders — or at least minimizing their importance over logistical factors like multi-national infrastructure — will cause less international and intra-national conflict. Obviously, the risk management benefits here would come from less political risk across the globe.
If Sudan could be divided, the civil wars there may become less intractable and economic opportunities may open up to multinationals — which could help both companies otherwise too concerned about conflict to set up shop in-country and the people living there who desire jobs and better access to goods. A world full of “good neighbors” also clearly benefits any utilities or other companies trying to lay down the transnational pipelines or internet cables that will be increasingly necessary in our increasingly globalized future.
An under-reported risk, the dependence on bandwidth for real-time information exchange is increasingly vital to all companies and organizations. Whenever this is interrupted, so is business. Today, aside from major disaster situations, this interruption is mostly an inconvenience. But in the future, as more and more of this bandwidth is taken up by video and other resource-intensive applications, there may be real problems.
In time, the mere slowdowns we see today may be eclipsed by full-scale information traffic jams. But beyond that, the deeper problems will be with high prices and possible profiteering. As demand for bandwidth goes up, suppliers will logically be able to charge more, as happens in energy markets.
Can we rely on private industry — the cable and telephone companies — to build its way out of these problems? In a word, maybe.
It will be difficult to manage this risk individually, but organizations need to be thinking about these “information jams” in years to come. Tim Wu of the New American Foundation explains it further in this video.
This idea centers on the idea that the great innovation that marked the United States’ ascendence to the front of the global economy in the 20th century was greatly aided by the fact that its citizens were not afraid to fail. They took big chances knowing that even if they failed, they would have a chance “to try, try again” without being entirely wiped out.
The article worries that this courageousness is waning, mainly due to macroeconomic realities, and that “rather than launch a quixotic war on failure” as the author argues has been done against complex financial instruments on Wall Street, “we should be using what we’ve learned to build a system that fails better.”
This, of course, is the new tenant of risk management: We should never try to avoid all risks — we just need to make sure we are taking calculated risks with contingencies built in for failure.
Globally, the biggest impediment to better disaster preparedness and building codes is poverty. Places like Haiti and rural China just don’t have the resources to mandate and enforce developed world standards for things like foundations and reinforced concrete.
Somewhere lower on the list of challenges — but no less worth striving to overcome — is the educational gap. More so than in the developing world, the United States and Europe have learned from their past disasters. A lot of this has come from in-depth, post-mortm investigations of disasters. And a lot of the demand for such investigations has always come from the proliferation of TV news and the fact that citizens are generally outraged that such calamities could happen. People want to know why people were allowed to die or houses were permitted to burn, and the impetus behind that outrage often comes from seeing the tragic images in moving picture form on TV.
Too much TV has been associated with violence, obesity and social isolation. But TV is having a positive impact on the lives of billions worldwide, and as the spread of mobile TV, video cameras and YouTube democratize both access and content, it will become an even greater force
Sure, a lot of TV is more candy than vegetables (think Jersey Shore, SportsCenter or American Idol), but if you are still among those who erroneously think that television will rot your brain, you obviously haven’t seen The Wire. Or Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, which premiered on HBO.
In related news, The Wire creator David Simon’s upcoming HBO show Treme will focus on the music scene in post-Katrina New Orleans. Expect something amazing that will speak on what was the worst “natural” disaster to hit this country.
And, yes, this was mostly just an excuse to make you watch the new trailer for Treme embedded below. (via Video Gum) (UPDATE: That trailer is no longer available … replacement video below. Don’t worry, it’s just as good. Probably even better.)
