Global child mortality, UK's historic migration surge, San Marino's financial debacle & the rise of the giant Turkey
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Antoine Bourdelle, sculptural figure fragment (ca 1900). Art - like poetry and prose, or anthropology or economics - can be ideologically a statebuilding project, forging narratives that cohere a national community. This piece is from a recent exhibition of Bourdelle’s preparations for his epic monument to the Franco-Prussian War:
Bourdelle won the competition for this commission in 1895, when he was 34… this allegorical piece, in addition to paying respect to those who served, were injured, and died, also projected hoped-for vengeance and optimism about the birth of the Third Republic after the collapse of the Second Empire.
Source: Joseph Nechvatal for Hyperallergic
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San Marino’s financial sector
San Marino is an extreme case of the pre-2008 policies sometimes lauded by the IMF for small nations — think Ireland, even — where this European microstate became a heartland for investment, free of much tax and regulation, for non-residents. Its banking system has still not recovered from the shock of the great financial crash (GFC) as we find here:
While the financial sector’s value added never recovered, the nonfinancial sector started a recovery in 2014 underpinned by cost-competitiveness in labor and strong balance sheets (Annex V). The financial sector’s value added remains at 20 percent of the pre-GFC level. The sector has gone through a painful deleveraging process that continues to this day—assets have declined from above 600 percent of GDP in 2008 to below 300 percent currently with 64 percent of GDP representing nonperforming assets.
Source: IMF
Brexit blues
“Breaking point” said the pro-Brexit poster fronted by Nigel Farage in the run-up to Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership — with a stream of migrants pictured arriving in Europe. So what has happened to net migration since Britain left the EU, amid war in Ukraine and visas for Hong Kong arrivals?
Net migration to the UK hit a record 745,000 last year — 139,000 higher than previously estimated — with big increases in non-EU nationals coming for work, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday.
Declining investment
Regular readers will be familiar with this quiet trend — capital is less and less flowing to startup innovation:
For the seventh quarter in a row, venture activity continued to subside in Q3 2023. Both venture financing volume and aggregate deal value worldwide hit tallies once again in line with the boom period observed in the early 2020s. All that said, it is important to note that subsiding from record tallies is to be expected in market cycles, especially given the array of shocks that economies and global financial systems have endured over the past three years and counting. In addition, there are signs of a moderation in the pace of slowing investment, i.e., a plateau may be in the offing. When additional data is collected, aggregate deal value could be closer to Q2’s tally than current figures suggest. Moreover, dealmakers seem to be further adapted to all the multiple volatile factors that have slowed the pace of investment thus far, while financing metrics are moderating to levels that may be more doable for many fund managers. It remains to be seen if a plateau does emerge, but there are at least some promising indicators.
Source: KPMG
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Antoine Bourdelle, “France and the Great Warrior in the Monument of Montauban” (ca 1900) (courtesy Musée Bourdelle, Paris)
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Antoine Bourdelle, “Frontal view of the plaster cast of the ‘Monument des Combattants’ in Brussels” (1901) (courtesy Musée Bourdelle, Paris)