EU leaders were set to back a doubling of the IMF’s resources to US$500 billion at summit talks yesterday, and were ready to pay up to a third of the increase to help the fund handle and prevent crises.
The expected move by the 27 leaders came ahead of a key meeting of the G20 in London on April 2, which is meant to tackle the worsening global downturn.
Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek said on Thursday’s EU summit talks agreed that “a considerable increase” was needed to bolster the IMF’s role.
Dutch and Danish officials said the EU was ready to provide 75 billion euros (US$102 billion) of the additional 250 billion euros in IMF capital.
The EU leaders were also to call for the IMF to have more powers and cash, to allow it to watch out for new economic crises.
The EU argued that the IMF, created during the closing days of World War II, needed a greater role in surveillance and in providing more funds it could offer in emergency loans to countries in financial trouble.
Yesterday’s discussions among the EU leaders were to prepare the bloc’s position heading into the talks among the G20 group of leading industrialized and emerging countries.
The G20 talks are set to discuss global efforts in jump-starting economic growth.
EU leaders refused on Thursday to sign up to spend more cash to get out of a worsening recession, rebuffing calls by the US and European trade unions for more aid to bolster jobs.
The European Commission said that the bloc was spending 3.3 percent of GDP this year and next year on stimulus efforts — but most of this was extra welfare payments.
Government programs to boost the economy totaled 1.2 percent of GDP.
The US Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it would launch a US$1.2 trillion effort to lower rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said more deficit spending would be “a deadly idea.” He said EU nations needed to know whether a 200 billion euro EU-wide spending package was working before digging into depleted state coffers for more.
European leaders said that package would be matched by automatic spending on rising unemployment benefits and social programs to help those hit hardest by the downturn.
“The European Union has a much stronger social safety net. The United States has a much bigger problem in public finances,” Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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