Mr Obama then met with India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh, the two leaders then appeared at a joint news conference. President Obama emphasized the close ties between his country and India.

Obama: “On the commercial level, on the person to person level, the strategic level I think this relationship is extremely important. As I said yesterday I don’t think India is emerging, it has emerged. India is a key actor on the world stage.”

And India has a growing middle class with huge buying power. American companies want to tap into that consumer base and so President Obama announced ten billion dollars in business deals during his visit.

The White House hopes these deals will reassure Americans that India offers opportunities of more us jobs to counteract the American jobs lost through outsourcing. In return the President announced the lifting of restrictions on American technology.

Those sanctions were imposed after India conducted nuclear tests in 1998. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh welcomed Mr Obama’s move.

Singh: “In my discussions with the President we have decided to accelerate the deepening of our ties and to work as equal partners in a strategic relationship that will positively and decisively influence world peace, stability and progress”.

Another area of interest for the US and India is the fight against terrorism. India has been pushing America to condemn Pakistan for exporting terror to India. President Obama told a joint session of parliament that his administration is tackling the problem.

Obama: “we have worked with the Pakistan government to address the threat of terrorist networks in the border region and we will continue to insist to Pak leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable and that terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks must be brought to justice….”clapping

The highlight of the speech for many Indians was President Obama’s support for India’s bid for a permanent place on the UN Security Council. India has been lobbying for a permanent seat for years.

Still, some groups who used the occasion of the Obama visit to stage protests. These demonstrators complained that the president looks at India and sees only a commercial market place. A larger demonstration featured survivors of one of the worst industrial accidents in history. Tons of toxic gas escaped from a union carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984. The final death toll was estimated at 3,800.

Union Carbide has since been sold to Dow Chemical. Satinath Sarangi heads the Bhopal Group for Information and Action: he says the people of Bhopal are still suffering.

Sarangi: “We want positive action from President Obama on the continuing disasters in Bhopal, caused by two American corporations, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical. We want to tell him that because he is promoting American corporate interests in this country, he is morally responsible to also ensure that American corporations like Union Carbide and Dow chemical do not run away from Indian courts.”

President Obama departs early tomorrow for Indonesia, where he spent four years as a boy. From there it’s on to South Korea and Japan. Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• The President’s visit in pictures
• India’s nuclear power plans hit bumps
• India’s job market attracts Americans

In a video Q&A from the Carnegie Endowment, George Perkovich discusses the significance of President Obama’s trip and relations between New Delhi and Washington.

“About almost two years ago now I had gotten a call from a friend who is living over here,” Vincent said.

“And obviously real estate development in the US had come to a halt. So I was looking for opportunities where I could go and get more experience and work on great developments and he had said how about come check out India. So I packed everyone up and moved over here. It’s been a great experience so far.”

Vincent is managing a large construction site in the southern city of Bangalore. It’s now in the excavation phase. He says it was the chance to work on such big projects – this one is four hundred thousand square feet – that attracted him.

“You don’t have the funding issues that you did in the US,” Vincent said

“People were able to get loans here even throughout the entire economic crisis. I knew that there would be some challenges adapting to the Indian culture. But I came with a very open mind and said I want to experience the culture as much as I can and try and bring the things that I know from the US.

Most Americans working in India are in the IT field like the main character in the NBC sitcom Outsourced

But that’s starting to change, says Pritam Banerjee. He heads the trade policy division of the Confederation of Indian Industries.

“We’re also seeing increasing numbers of employment in the medical profession, in the entertainment industry and also in the hospitality industry,” Banerjee said.

“These are some of the other big industries that they are coming. The concentration is really in the services sector. I won’t be surprised to see when retail industry becomes much bigger in India in the next 10 years, big Indian retail companies going and actually recruiting people from American campuses.”

Solon Stuart Rose moved to Diwali, India November 2008, about three months after this huge stock market crash. Rose works as an energy efficiency engineer for an Indian company now.

“A lot of my friends back in the US that are similar ages, graduated from college,” Rose said.

“Right after college they moved back in with their parents. They’re either looking for a job. They have some mediocre jobs waiting tables.

“The more people see India’s growth and the longer the economy in the US is stagnant you’re going to see more and more people come across to India or to China or try the expatriate experience,” George Vincent said.

Vincent is so please with his life in India that he’s thinking of raising kids here after he gets his MBA in the US. Solon Stuart Rose is planning to stay on for the foreseeable future and Pritam Banerjee says India is happy to have the American workers, at least for now.

“The kind of jobs that are being taken up by Americans now and will be in the foreseeable future are not the kind of jobs typically an Indian coming out of college can fulfil that role,” Banerjee said.

“But if the numbers grow and 10-15 years it’s anybody’s guess but right now I don’t think there’s any resentment at all.”

At this point, the number of Americans living and working here are still relatively small. But the numbers are likely to rise in the next few years as India continues to grow and develop.

• Fort McCoy
• Veterans’ Employment & Training Service (DOL)

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Young American soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan face another battle here at home.  They’re trying to find work at a time when unemployment is just under ten percent.  Many of these veterans and reservists say they’d settle for just about anything that pays.  Kurt Carapezza caught up with some of those who are about to start the difficult hunt for a job.

KURT CARAPEZZA:  At Fort McCoy in southwester Wisconsin, more than 300 soldiers filed pat the barbed wire perimeter and enter the military headquarters building.  Fresh from duty in Iraq, the soldiers of the 32nd Infantry Brigade Unit are sunburned and tired.  They’ll stay here at the sprawling military training center for five days, demobilizing.  That involves sitting through seemingly endless briefings covering everything from marriage counseling to coping with stress disorders.

RICK LARSON:  And as you know with the economy, it’s hard out there.  So I’m not going to try to blow smoke.

CARAPEZZA: Rick Larson is a retired Army Officer.  He leads the briefing on finding work.

LARSON:  How many people here will be looking for jobs when they go back to their home?

CARAPEZZA: About half the soldiers raise their hands including 24-year-old Sergeant Lee Jones.  Jones was a high school senior when the war in Iraq began.  Over the last four years he’s been deployed three times.  Working his way up to Special Operations in the Army National Guard and Reserves.  He says his time in the service has taught him about leadership and discipline, but coming home and looking for work is like having been stuck on a deserted island.

SERGEANT LEE JONES:  Everyone’s moved on, but you seem to have been in the same place the entire time.

CARAPEZZA: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says in 2009 veterans 24 years old and younger had an unemployment rate of roughly 27%.  About 10% higher than civilians of the same age group.  Ken Grant with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development says it’s party because some employers simply won’t hire a veteran.

KEN GRANT:   Let’s face it, you know having the guard and reserve soldiers on multiple deployments and then taking them away from that employer, that does hurt them.

CARAPEZZA: Grant says even when young vets do get jobs; many of them find their positions difficult to keep in this economy.

GRANT:  The younger person is the first one to let go from a factor or a closing.  They don’t have the experience or the seniority, so they would be the first ones out the door.  We’re a heavy manufacturing state, such as the auto industry, these employers have closed their doors.

CARAPEZZA: Making it difficult for young veterans and reservists like Raymond Lynch.  The 23-year-old signed up for the Army in 2003, has been deployed to Baghdad two times since then, and was laid off from a landscaping job last year, three months before his most recent deployment.

RAYMOND LYNCH:  They usually lay off anyways in the winter.  But they had to do it a couple of months short, a lot more guys, just because there wasn’t much money coming in for landscaping because of the economy.

CARAPEZZA: Lynch says he’s planning to ride out the recession by going back to school, though he’s not sure for what.

LYNCH:  At one time I wanted to be a teacher.  One time I wanted to be a psychologist.  Now I don’t know.

CARAPEZZA: During a short break in the briefings at Fort McCoy, Sergeant Lee Jones listens as another veteran’s representative talks about finding a job.

MALE VOICE 1:  The process can be as simple s you get referred to a job, you go down, you interview, you kill the interview, you’re ready to go.  Or, it can be more time consuming and we need to more things to make you job ready.

CARAPEZZA: Jones says he’s like a law enforcement or security job.  Something, he says, that has a rigid structure outside the barbed wire.  But Jones says he’s getting married in the spring and will take any job he can find.

JONES: I would like to be somewhere where it’s a self-worth job, not a job where I feel stuck and right now with getting married and everything, it’s crucial to have paycheck.

CARAPEZZA: To help these young veterans to adjust and find that elusive paycheck in a jobless recovery, labor officials say they’re planning additional job fairs specifically targeting veterans late this year.  For The World, I’m Kurt Carapezza, Madison, Wisconsin.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Around the Middle East, Islamic financiers stood by and watched as the Western financial system imploded last year.  They thought that what’s known as Sharia-compliant investing would keep their money safe.  Then came word last week of the collapse of Dubai World.   It revealed that some Islamic financing wasn’t quite as safe as it was cracked up to be.  The World’s Aaron Schachter reports.

AARON SCHACHTER: Put simply, Sharia-compliant financing is any kind of monetary transaction in accordance with the laws of the Koran.  The most basic of those laws forbids people to buy, sell or invest in products that are haram, forbidden like alcohol, gambling or pornography.  But the biggest financial sin in Islam is usury, or  charging interest.  So Islamic financiers had to come up with something else.  John Foster is former editor of Islamic Banking and Finance magazine.

JOHN FOSTER: And so, instead of just giving money to somebody, okay, to go away and then charging interest, what Islamic finance tries to do is, it tries to go into joint ventures with people. So the risk is shared between the person who is borrowing the money and the person who is providing the capital, and they both share in the profit.  Today it’s called private equity, or even venture capital.

SCHACHTER: To ensure that financial transactions or products are halal, the Muslim equivalent of kosher, financial institutions hire religious authorities to review and approve each product.  One of those authorities is Sheikh Zaher Nsouli, with the Lebanese Islamic Bank in Beirut.  Nsouli says sharing risk is intended keep financiers honest.  He says Islamic finance isn’t against making money, on the contrary.  But it is against taking risk with someone else’s money.

SHEIKH ZAHER NSOULI: You’ll not invest in anything except if you know the business risk is good, it’s healthy for the economy, it’s [INDISCERNIBLE].  You’re much more involved in the real economy.

SCHACHTER: Nsouli says Islamic banks have on average outperformed conventional ones   because when people deposit money, they’re buying shares of real projects that are Sharia-compliant.   But Islamic financing as a whole isn’t immune from Western troubles.

MOHAMMED SAID RAHMAN: If you put a chimpanzee behind a Rolls Royce, is Rolls Royce still a good car or is chimpanzee still a bad driver?

SCHACHTER: Mohammed Said Rahman is Chairman of the Institute of Halal Investing, based in Portland, Oregon.  He says in Dubai, greed got the better of  some  Islamic  financial institutions,  the chimpanzees .

RAHMAN: So what happened is that the chimpanzees that were loaning the money out to the people, their eyes were focused towards quick flip over of profits.  So Dubai was a casino.

SCHACHTER: The problem was something called a “sukuk,”  or an Islamic bond.   In theory, a sukuk should equal the cost of a project, so assets equal liability.   But in Dubai, that wasn’t the case.  They was just as much speculation there as anywhere else.  But John Foster, formerly of Islamic Banking and Finance Magazine, says the Islamic finance industry has lost its way.

FOSTER: What a lot of the modern Islamic banks have done is they’ve tried to recreate conventional finance, except with an Islamic wrapper.  So a lot of the banks would find a sheikh for hire.  But the problem which Islamic finance has got at the moment, it needs to have a good look at itself; it needs to address where it is and what it’s trying to achieve.  It shouldn’t try to be Wall Street, it should be Main Street, and it should be for the good for the whole of humanity.

SCHACHTER: Islamic banker Zaher Nsouli says that’s why the crisis in Dubai may actually be a good thing, at least for Islamic financing.

NSOULI: Dubai World’s crisis will lead to a shift in the way of structuring the sukuk, the way of imitating conventional models.   You need corrections from time to time.

SCHACHTER: Nsouli and others says modern Islamic finance is in its infancy.  Give it a few years to catch on, and for the mainstream to realize that  their form of ethical finance is not just something for the world’s billion Muslims.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter, Beirut.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Global Economy podcast
• Alex Gallafent on the Dubai crisis

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai today tried to reassure investors about the health of its finances, but investors didn’t buy it.  Stock markets in both Dubai and neighboring Abu Dhabi fell sharply today.  The problem, as investors see it, is Dubai World.  That’s the main investment arm of the government of Dubai.  It’s having trouble repaying billions of dollars of debt, and the emirate’s government has announced that it won’t guarantee repayment of that debt, which, no surprise, makes investors nervous.  The World’s Jason Margolis explains the global implications of this Dubai mess.

JASON MARGOLIS: In terms of major world companies, Dubai World isn’t that big a deal.  When General Motors filed for bankruptcy this year, GM’s debt was nearly three times larger than Dubai World’s.   But Dubai World is different from GM.  The emirate of Dubai owns Dubai World.  So, if Dubai World, or by extension, the emirate of Dubai, can’t meet its debt obligations, that spells wider troubles, says Christopher Davidson, a Dubai credit expert from Durham University.

CHRISTOPHER DAVIDSON: Dubai’s disaster, as it unfolds, is certainly tarnishing the rest of the region.  The rest of the region by reputation will find it difficult to refinance debt too because the cost of insuring that debt increases drastically.

MARGOLIS: Davidson says banks might also think twice before loaning money to emerging economies in other parts of the world.

DAVIDSON: Dubai has tarnished the reputations of emerging markets around the world, especially Asia.

MARGOLIS: Not that there’s anything new happening in Asian markets. In fact, Dubai’s excess could also potentially tarnish other nations that have even less to do with the emirate.

DESMOND LACHMAN: A bunch of countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, together with Ukraine, and Bulgaria, and Hungary.

MARGOLIS: That’s economist Desmond Lachman at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.  And Lachman says it’s not only emerging economies that might have trouble getting access to credit.

LACHMAN: If Dubai is reminding people there’s a lot of risk outstanding and if people begin to become a lot more risk averse, lenders become wary about lending to a country that has got very large imbalances.

MARGOLIS: Lachman says some western European countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal could have trouble getting loans at reasonable rates.  The problems in Dubai pose another kind of risk to the world economy, to the world’s stock markets.  Banks in the United Kingdom are the most exposed with an estimated $50 billion in outstanding loans to the United Arab Emirates.  American, French, and German banks are all on the hook for about $10 billion each.  These loans sent investors scrambling this week, dumping shares, guessing which western banks are most exposed to risk.  Right now, and this might be sounding familiar, nobody is certain which banks are holding which bad loans.   But maybe it’s not all that bad. Of course, markets often overreact.

DOUG REDIKER: There’s the reality, then there’s the perception of the reality.

MARGOLIS: Doug Rediker is a former investment banker and is now with the Washington think tank the New America Foundation.

REDIKER: The reality there’s a problem in Dubai, there’s a problem in a specific area of Dubai.  Not area geographically, I mean Dubai World and Dubai World’s holdings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are problems throughout emerging markets or throughout the Gulf.

MARGOLIS: But then there’s the perception of the reality.

REDIKER: From a snapshot of a trading floor mentality, if you see “Dubai Crisis” on your screen, you could, without having a greater understanding of the nuance, assume that this a broader crisis, sell your positions in a panic and as result trigger something that really isn’t warranted.

MARGOLIS: Warranted or not, that’s what we saw investors do last week. Whether their perception of reality changes this week, that’s another story.  For the World, I’m Jason Margolis

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Global Economy podcast
• The World’s Alex Gallafent reported from Dubai in 2007

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Shoppers are turning out in strong numbers today for the start of the holiday season, but cloudy economic skies hover over this Black Friday.  Unemployment is high, credit is tight, and most investors have less money today than they did yesterday. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 154 points to close at 10,310.  Wall Street may have been reacting to financial trouble in Dubai.  That’s the semi-autonomous city-state that’s part of the United Arab Emirates.  The World’s Alex Gallafent begins our coverage.

ALEX GALLAFENT: You may have heard about some of the things that made Dubai famous as a kind of Disneyland for grown-ups.  The indoor ski dome in the middle of a desert, the tallest tower in the world, the biggest man-made islands.  These were all part of a program of colossal spending in Dubai, but it wasn’t paid for with oil money.  Dubai’s wells are dry.  Matthew Martin is editor of the Middle East Economic Digest.

MATTHEW MARTIN: A lot of the massive growth that we’ve seen in Dubai over the past few years has all been fueled not directly off the government balance sheet but by taking on debt from the capital markets.

GALLAFENT: The company at the center of the current crisis is facing the consequences of that approach.  That company is Dubai World.  It’s a real estate group backed by Dubai’s government, and it’s one of the prime movers in the city-state’s explosive growth.  But Dubai World has racked up almost 60 billion dollars worth of debt.  This week the company asked creditors if it could postpone repayments on that debt for six months.  Christopher Davidson is the author of Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. He says Dubai World’s troubles are the result of a broader economic strategy in the emirate.

CHRISTOPHER DAVIDSON: What we’ve seen in Dubai is trying to build an economy that’s been aimed at bringing in foreign direct investment to keep it in a desert creating a sponge like economy to bring in wealth from the region, from Britain, America, anywhere that wants to invest in real estate.  And this really has been tinkering with Dubai’s historical success as a port economy, a place where money passes through and goes somewhere else. But really, the last few years has seen a shift in the focus of the economy, and that’s really what’s been its undoing.

GALLAFENT: The global economic crisis exposed Dubai’s flawed business model. Real estate prices plummeted after years of flying ever higher.  Foreign investment slowed down.  Mahmood Nadi is a Jordanian mechanical engineer who has worked in Dubai for two years.  He says you can see the emirate’s problems in its glittering collection of high-rise buildings.

MAHMOOD NADI: Almost fifty percent not finished yet, thirty percent still not occupied.  You can say twenty percent are occupied, from the new high-rise buildings. The situation is really not stable.

GALLAFENT: Indeed, Dubai has a skyline bought on credit, and Christopher Davidson thinks creditors are unlikely to accept Dubai World’s request to postpone its debt repayments.

DAVIDSON: For the last several months, there have been a number of international companies that have been owed sums for labor and construction work they’ve conducted in Dubai.  They’ve been rather quiet and polite about that hoping the good times will return, but I think now we’ll get to the stage where lawsuits will be pressed on the government of Dubai.

GALLAFENT: Dubai will probably look to its neighbor for help.  That’s Abu Dhabi, another part of the United Arab Emirates.  Unlike Dubai, Abu Dhabi does have oil.  In February, it bought 10 billion dollars worth of bonds from Dubai.  Many saw that deal as a bailout, but it’s not clear when or at what price Abu Dhabi would come to its neighbor’s rescue again. That uncertainty propelled today’s market worries. Another concern of investors is the lack of detail about how Dubai’s proposed debt rescheduling would work.  But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted today that Dubai’s problems will not set off a second global economic meltdown.

GORDON BROWN: If this is a localized problem, then it can be dealt with, and I believe that that is the case. And I believe that this is one of things that we will see over the next few months as the world economy returns to growth, but it is an event that can be dealt with.

GALLAFENT: That’s a hope investors in the United States most likely share.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• Global Economy podcast
• Global economic conditions: interactive map at Moody’s Economy.com
• Gross National Happiness American Project
• French Government’s Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress
  
• United Nations Human Development Report

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The great recession is technically over.  The US economy grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent last quarter.  That’s measured by the gross domestic product, or GDP.  Here’s President Obama.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: This is obviously welcome news and affirmation that this recession is abating and the steps we’ve taken have made a difference but I also know that we’ve got a long way to go to fully restore our economy and recover from what’s been the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression

CLARK: The recession sure doesn’t feel over for the tens of millions of unemployed in the US and around the world.  That’s one reason why there’s a growing chorus of voices saying it’s time to ditch GDP as the leading indicator of economic health.   Here’s the World’s Jason Margolis.

JASON MARGOLIS: That’s the sound of GDP. It’s essentially a measure of the combined value of all economic transactions.  For decades, the health of a country has generally been tracked by growth in GDP.  But a growing number of people are taking issue with the measure, because GDP also includes things like this.

[sound of car crashing]

MARGOLIS: Under GDP, that’s also a sound of economic progress.

ERIC ZENCEY: One of the basic problems with GDP is it just measures economic activity. If, for instance you dent your car, GDP goes up.

MARGOLIS: That’s Eric Zencey, a professor of historical and political studies at Empire State

College in New York. When you take your car to the body shop and your insurance company pays off another driver, money is changing hands.  So, Zencey says, your car crash is spurring the economy.

ZENCEY: And it’s difficult to count that as progress. You’re just trying to restore the state you had.

MARGOLIS: Similarly, if a toxic spill pollutes a river, the cost of the clean-up counts towards GDP.  When Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, the cost of rebuilding was a boon for GDP.  Bad for communities and the environment, but good for the economy.  This idea that GDP shouldn’t be the ultimate determinant of prosperity isn’t new: It’s spelled out in many economics text books.  Critics say a major problem with GDP is that it lumps all economic activity together.  Former World Bank economist Herman Daly says think of it this way: imagine using GDP to gauge how well your store is doing.

HERMAN DALEY: You wouldn’t expect a merchant or a business to add up its revenues and its expenditures. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. You compare revenues and expenditures.

MARGOLIS: GDP also ignores the value things that don’t involve market transactions. Things like clean water, healthy ecosystems or a low infant mortality rate aren’t taken into account.  So why then do we cling to GDP as the holy grail of prosperity? I put that question to Herman Daly.

DALEY: <laughing> That’s a good question.  There just seems to be an enormous resistance. Economists are just, well, how shall I say? I really don’t know the answer to your question.

MARGOLIS: Perhaps it’s because of inertia.  We’ve just been doing it this way for decades.  And we can only count what’s countable. GDP is good at that. Still, some countries are trying to move beyond GDP.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently gathered some Nobel laureate economists and social scientists in Paris to identify the limits of GDP and come up with an alternative measure.  Here’s Princeton economist Angus Deaton speaking at the Sorbonne.

ANGUS DEATON: We must measure well being broadly, including not only income but other measures such as health, education, democratic and social participation, as well as measures of well being as people themselves perceive them.”

MARGOLIS: That’s the tricky part: How do people measure well being? Or, put another way, how do we measure happiness?  It’s a question that’s vexed philosophers for centuries. Here’s Nobel economist Amartya Sen in Paris.

AMARTYA SEN: The remark of Protagoras from the 5th century BC, Greece, that, I quote, “man is the measure of all things” unquote, has been differently interpreted in history.

MARGOLIS: The academics in the Sorbonne freely admitted,  coming up with a quantifiable, alternative measure to GDP won’t be easy.   Still, the idea is gaining traction worldwide.  The United Nations has developed what it calls the Human Development Index, a combination of GDP along with life expectancy and literacy.  In Bhutan, the government already measures what it calls “gross national happiness.”   But not everybody is excited about finding a new economic metric. Brian Dimitrovic is an economic historian at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

BRIAN DIMITROVIC: If economists want to talk about happiness, they should understand that most people won’t listen to them, because economists are statisticians and mathematicians. And the people who tell us about happiness are literary types and spiritual leaders. It is simply beyond the competence of the kind of, dare I say, social misfits that are economists. They should really stick to what they’re best at, which is simply counting things.

MARGOLIS: Dimitrovic concedes that GDP is not a perfect measure.  But he says it’s an important tool to gauge production and progress.  Critics agree, but say the importance of GDP has become over-inflated.  And Eric Zencey at Empire State College says countries with strong GDP cling to it for the wrong reasons.

ZENCEY: And so it’s a little bit like we’re winning at this game, and now you want to change the rules? I think that’s part of the resistance to moving beyond GDP.  That resistance to moving beyond GDP probably got stronger today.  That’s because in the US and many other nations, GDP is once again up.  And that means elected officials can point to one simple yardstick to show that their economic policies are succeeding.  For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The US unemployment rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month.  Unemployment has been a big concern during the economic crisis, not least because job losses signal trouble throughout the economy.  In Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel just won re-election, unemployment is also a big worry.  Merkel promised in her victory speech to make jobs a top priority.  Germany’s unemployment rate is running about 8 percent.  That number might have been higher, if not for some private and public schemes to keep people working.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Hamburg…starting in its port.

[CARGO LOADING SOUNDS]

GERRY HADDEN: When you’re floating among some of the world’s largest cargo ships….watching towering cranes load them up with thousands upon thousands of containers, you might be tempted to say, “What crisis?”  The port of Hamburg, the second largest in Europe, appears busy.  170,000 people work here.  Seagoing vessels unload, load and set sail around the clock.  But business here is actually down…way down.

[SOUNDS OF AN ENGINE]

BENGT VAN BEUNIGEN: We are hit through economic and financial crisis very hard in Hamburg because we are very much dependent on trade with China and Russia.

HADDEN: Bengt Van Beunigen heads up marketing for the Hamburg port.  On this afternoon he’s touring its many terminals and canals on a small boat.

VAN BEUNIGEN: So, on one side, we are the biggest port for China trade in Europe.  So every third container we handle here in our port is China cargo.  And China went down last year dramatically to around 25 percent in cargo trade.

HADDEN: Container shipments to Russia are off by 50 percent compared to last year.  Still, Van Beunigen says virtually no port jobs have been lost.  That’s because the private port companies keep a huge pool of workers on a collective payroll…whether they’re working or not.  Van Beunigen says workers keep their income, and shipping companies get the flexibility they need.  Such private initiatives have helped keep Hamburg’s – and the country’s – jobless rate down.  Back in town, the ripple effect is obvious.  Hamburg is not a city in crisis, says a pizzeria owner named Angel…it’s just in a slump.

[SOUNDS OF MUSIC IN PIZZERIA]

ANGEL: [In German]

HADDEN: He says, “The economic crisis is affecting us but only a little bit.  We’re more or less satisfied with business.”  The jobs scheme at the Hamburg port isn’t the only program keeping Angel’s pizza ovens on.  The German government has put up hundreds of millions of dollars – for workers who are working less, or not at all.  The largest plan is called “Short Work.”  Short Work lets struggling businesses reduce their workers’ hours…and pay.  The state then steps in and makes up the workers’ wage shortfall.  The government says it’s preserved more than a million jobs this way.  And there’s more.

OSAR: [In German]

HADDEN: At an unemployment office in downtown Hamburg, an out-of-work salesman named Osar says he has a wife and baby to take care of.  They can’t afford child care, so his wife took a leave from her job.  But they’re only surviving, he says, because of what’s called “parent pay.”  Beginning last winter, the government began subsidizing maternity or paternity leave at 70 percent of salary… for up to a year.  Also this year, Germany swung a 500 million dollar financial bailout for banks and businesses.  All of this spending has helped Germany pull out of recession.  But the strategy is risky.  A year ago, Germany was running a surplus.  Today the budget deficit is at 1.5 percent of GDP. Analysts and government officials warn it will likely surpass the European Union limit of 3 percent.  Germany, and Germans, generally shy away from over borrowing.  But Bremen-based economist Rudolf Hickel says if the current recovery is to continue, Germany must ignore its growing deficit.

RUDOLF HICKEL: [In German]

HADDEN: He asks, what’s the alternative?  If we try to save now so as not to go into debt, we’re just going to weigh down the economy.  And that means we’ll take in less taxes, making it harder to pay back our debts.  So we must keep up the support.  But just when can the government spending stop?  Hickel and others say only when the world economy gets fully back on its feet.  For example, when orders for German machine parts pick up again.  Germany exports 70 percent of the machinery it makes.  A rise in orders would reactivate German factories and get more of its container ships sailing, helping Chancellor Merkel keep her victory speech promise…to save jobs.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden in Hamburg.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• FAQ: The G20 Pittsburgh summit
• BBC global recession aftershock
• The World’s Global Economy podcast

6

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. Almost a year ago today this was the news.

NEWS ANCHOR: Coming up in the next 60 minutes the major US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, goes bankrupt. It’s a financial earthquake on Wall Street.

WERMAN: The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15^th 2008 touched off a global chain of events. It lead the world into a deep financial crisis. But as The World’s Laura Lynch reports it also created some intensely personal dramas especially for one young man in London.

LAURA LYNCH: The day that shook the financial world was also the day that the bottom fell out of Edouard d’Archimbaud’s life. Today in front of what was Lehman’s Brothers London offices in Canary Wharf the atmosphere is calm as cars and busses drives past, as office workers come and go. But one year ago when d’Archimbaud arrived here for his very first day of work as a trader the 24-year-old French man saw a very different scene.

EDOUARD D’ARCHIMBAUD: So I arrived in front of the Lehman Brother’s building and there were a lot of journalists and some policemen. It was very strange.

LYNCH: D’Archimbaud wasn’t certain what all the fuss was about until he went inside and read the newspaper headlines in the lobby. He didn’t even make it to his desk before he lost his job.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: I knew the situation but in my opinion it was impossible that such a big company could fail into bankruptcy so my first reaction was the surprise.

LYNCH: And after that he went out drinking with his friends and tried to figure out what to do next. Two days later d’Archimbaud went home to Paris. It took several weeks for him to find work with a brokerage and he tried to get over the life he was looking forward to in London but a few days ago he left that secure job to work with two friends on a new business start-up. He says it’s a natural step for a few reasons.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: The first is one is partly because it’s a dream for me to have my own business. A second reason could be that I don’t want to stay in a company just because it’s comfortable.

LYNCH: The company he’s now part of has developed software that forecasts demands for new products. It’s supposed to save companies money by reducing their risk when they market their wares. But starting up a new business, especially in the current economic environment, is a risky venture in itself. D’archimbaud acknowledges that but he says the harsh experience at the doorstep of Lehman Brothers a year ago has taught him a lot about taking chances.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: In the mind of a lot of people if you work for a small company there is a big risk of going bankrupt. But we saw with Lehman Brothers that it was also the case for big companies.

LYNCH: In the past year D’Archimbaud received other offers from headhunters in London to work at banks and investment firms. He’s turned them all down. He’s still in touch with the people he was supposed to work with at Lehman’s. They all act as a kind of support group. The day before yesterday he got one message that made him smile.

D’ARCHIMBAUD: I received an e-mail from my boss in Lehman Brothers. He was congratulating me for this new project.

LYNCH: His old boss is still working here at Canary Wharf in London at another bank. D’Archimbaud plans to spend the actual anniversary of Lehman’s collapse working on his new venture not thinking about the career and the life that began and ended on the same day one year ago. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in Canary Wharf in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Fair to say that many of those hurt by the global economic crisis weren’t bankers or stockbrokers. Take for instance migrant workers from the African country of Senegal. The World Bank estimates that Senegalese abroad sent home about $1 billion last year. That’s almost 10% of Senegal’s GDP. And the real numbers are likely even higher. Some portion of that money is always destined for local real estate and construction but now it looks like the money is drying up. Jori Lewis reports from Senegal’s capital city, Dakar.

JORI LEWIS: Many Serigne Mbodji’s family members live in cities like Paris or New York. They send money home to supplement the family income and to buy big things like a new house outside of Dakar paid for by Serigne’s New York-based brother.

SERIGNE MBODJI: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

LEWIS: At the beginning he and his mother took care of all of the administrative formalities, says Serigne Mbodji. His mother received the money and told her son how to supervise the construction. It was to be a big house. Enough for a whole extended family. And his mother and Serigne thought that this might mean the brother would come back to stay in Senegal eventually. They hired a contractor and construction went along. Recently though the pace of construction has noticeably slowed.

MBODJI: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

LEWIS: Serigne says his brother is having trouble finding the funds to complete his house. Since the economic crisis he’s had a lot of problems. He’s no longer able to cover his costs as he was before. Senegal is awash in stores like this. Everywhere you look in big cities or in small towns or villages you’ll find buildings in various stages of completion. Mansour Tall is the Dakar program manager for the urban development agency the UN Habitat Fund. He says that cement was the first signal that the economy was slowing down.

MANSOUR TALL: Cement is available. Before that every time you have to deal with cement we don’t find cement because demand is very, very high.

LEWIS: But now he says there’s no shortage at all. Tall says Senegalese building projects financed by migrants field demand for cement and other materials in the general building boom. Then the financial crisis hit followed by recession in Europe and North America. Now the migrants can’t send enough money to pay for even the day-to-day needs of the families they left behind. Again Serigne Mbodji.

MBODJI: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

LEWIS: Just a few days ago his brother had promised to send money to his mother and then had to call her and say that he just couldn’t. Now the family has to scale back their lifestyle for certain things. They can afford to have breakfast and lunch in the afternoon but there’s no longer any dinner. But Mbodji says his brother is still talking about finishing the house despite his financial problems in New York.

MBODJI: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

LEWIS: Serigne says he thinks that his brother wants to finish it but nothing is certain. And if by chance he can no longer make it happen he’ll have to sell – sell it unfinished or walk away leaving the family’s dream house to the gathering dust of the Senegalese streets. For The World I’m Jori Lewis, Dakar, Senegal.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• The year that shook the world
• BBC Aftershock series
• BBC Drama: “The Day That Lehman Died”

• Freeman’s press release