TPT March 2010

G lobal M arketplace

largest gathering ever held under the aegis of the UN. It was designed as a platform from which the concerns of the 119 heads of state in attendance would be heard, addressed, and codified before expiration of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, in 2012. The conference was hardly that. The “accord” that emerged ran to only 12 paragraphs, strongly suggestive of the strains and acrimony of the proceedings. But this brief instrument did record one striking achievement: a pledge by industrialised and major developing nations alike to act on carbon emissions, with formal commitments to be made by 31 January of the New Year.

its current form in 2004. Other economies top-heavy with financial services, such as Britain and Iceland, also fell back in the rankings. The WEF said the US economy is still extremely productive but that weaknesses were becoming apparent. It noted that concern was growing as to the quality of corporations’ auditing and reporting standards, and about Washington’s ability to maintain its distance from the private sector. The full report is available free at: www.weforum.org/gcr › Canadians need not fear that their country will slip back into recession, but should prepare themselves for more temperate

employment and wage gains and stock market increases than the red-hot rates seen at times over the past decade. As reported by the Toronto Star , this was the consensus of the Outlook 2010 panel convened 7 January by the Economic Club of Canada. Leading economists from big Canadian banks took a business crowd through their predictions for the Canadian and US economies, and global markets. Sounding a theme increasingly heard north of the border Canada shares with the US, Warren Jestin of the Bank of Nova Scotia called for a shift in focus away from automotive and other familiar North American markets. Calling that traditional strategy “a losing one for people and governments,” he stressed the need to look to expanding markets in India, China, South America, and elsewhere in the developing world where growth will be much stronger. Is there a role for ‘clean coal’ in the effort to slow climate change? The 11-day Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December was the After Copenhagen

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