Are Central Bankers Currency Manipulators?

The term “currency manipulator” has been used by the United States to describe the monetary practices of nations such as China and Japan and by Germany to describe U.S. monetary policy. This charge transcends monetary regimes and includes both traditional monetary policy and that in the service of industrial or developmental strategies that center on export led growth. While the latter clearly has a negative effect on employment and economic growth in the rest of the world, the increased international mobility of capital, combined with the wide-spread use of flexible exchange rates, has led to the same external effects from the normal conduct of monetary policy. Acknowledging and dealing with these negative external effects will lead to improved and less tension-filled international economic relations than calling nations “currency manipulators.”.     

An epidemiological study of injury in mines: implications for safety promotion

This paper is intended to raise risk management as a topic for discussion among product safety professionals and discuss one particular key element of understanding risk. Risk management is an essential part of good product safety management, whether at the policy level or the implementation stage, and is relevant to all those involved in the development and use of standards, including regulators and suppliers. The risk management process involves measuring the risks at the initial stage, by looking at consequence (possible injury) and likelihood (of that injury occurring) which then gives us the ‘inherent risk.’ We then seek ways to treat the risks. A second assessment of the risks is subsequently done to establish the extent to which the treatment will address the problem (‘assessed risk’). In product safety, this means how dangerous is the product as it is and how effective will a measure be in reducing the risk. Communication is vital in this process. When standards are developed and policy adopted, the factors that are taken into consideration need to be properly documented. The rationales for decisions, i.e., what the hazard is and how it is treated by the product specification, should be recorded within the standard itself. In the absence of recorded reasons, assumptions are made and these may well be incorrect. This paper discusses this topic in some detail and provides illustrative examples.