Savers across Europe will look on in horror at the Troika's raid on Cyprus

It's now become clear: the threat to European savers and banks isn't anti-austerity parties but the Troika

• 
• • Michael Burke
  • The Guardian, Sunday 17 March 2013 17.06 GMT

Account-holders withdraw money from a cash machine in the Cyprus capital, Nicosia. Photograph: Barbara Laborde/AFP/Getty Images

The imposition of a levy on savers in Cypriot banks marks a new turn in the European crisis. Savings of over €100,000 will be subject to a 10% tax, and those under €100,000 one of 6.7%. The raid has been instructed by the "Troika" – the European commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank – as part of a characteristic "take it or leave it" ultimatum to the Cypriot government. The parliament in Nicosia is being pressed to ratify the deal with the threat that without it there will be no bailout funds and the ECB will withdraw all liquidity support to the stricken banks.

The Troika and its supporters have justified the levy by arguing that the state could not support the debt burden of a bank bailout. But this simply means the debt burden has been transferred from the banks, where it properly belongs, to households, who had no part in their lending decisions.

As part of that propaganda campaign, the focus has been on Russian oligarchs and tax evaders who have been laundering funds through Cypriot banks. In fact, among those caught in the upper savings bracket are bound to be pensioners for whom this represents their entire life savings, and others who have recently borrowed enough money to buy a modest home. But even if only oligarchs were affectedE, this is surely an admission of guilt by the European and international authorities, who are responsible for the global regulation of banks and co-ordinating anti-money laundering activities. Their own failure can hardly be a justification for expropriating the small savers of Cyprus.

The irony is that all this is done in the name of promoting stability. When anti-austerity parties have made strong showings in elections – in Greece, Ireland, France and Portugal – the pro-austerity parties have warned that the cash machines would dry up because no bailout fund would be made available to an anti-austerity government, and banks would be given no liquidity support. It is now clear that it is not anti-austerity parties but the Troika that is the direct threat to the savers of Europe and their domestic banking systems.

The question arises as to why Cyprus has been treated so much worse than other countries – the contrast with the treatment of Spain is marked, despite all the prior bullying. This is partly because the savers of large EU countries will not be directly affected by what happens to Cyprus, although the British press is already focused on the potential losses to British pensioners and service personnel based there. More important, however, the big banks of the same large countries are not facing any losses. If Spain collapses, it will take a large portion of the major European banks with it; this is why the Troika backed off from forcing Spain into a bailout programme.

But it is foolish of the Troika to assume that its confiscation of Cypriot savings will have no international implications. Savers all across Europe will look on in horror, and are bound to wonder whether it could happen in their own countries. It is entirely possible they will respond by shifting their savings into state or postal savings banks at the very least, even if outright bank runs are avoided. If this happens on sufficient scale, it could further undermine the fragile banking system in a number of countries.

It also has implications for the anti-austerity parties of Europe, who have long argued for nationalisation of the banks. As British government ownership of RBS shows, such nationalisation achieves nothing without directing the banks towards increased investment. In the single currency area, the left is now faced with an additional risk of the Troika withdrawing funds, and organised capital flight.

To prevent Troika raids, deposits need to be put into protective custody to preserve both savings and the domestic banking sector. For anti-austerity governments, these funds could then be used to support state-led investment and reverse the European depression.

Metformin can help reduce cancer prospects!

Diabetes pill beats cancer...and costs just 2p a day

A DIABETES pill that costs just 2p a day could prevent thousands dying from Britain’s biggest cancer killers every year.

By: Jo Willey in The Express

Published: Sat, March 16, 2013

  

Metformin is already taken by millions of diabetes patients

The drug, already taken by millions of patients to control blood sugar levels, is thought to be capable of starving some cancer cells to death.

New research suggests it can slash the risk of developing liver cancer by an astonishing 78 per cent, breast cancer by a third, pancreatic cancer by 46 per cent and bowel cancer by nearly a quarter.

Together, these are the biggest cancer killers – and among the hardest to treat. They claim the lives of 39,336 people each year – a quarter of all UK cancer deaths.

The discovery raises the possibility that the drug – metformin – could be a potent weapon in the battle to find a cure for cancer. Scientists think the drug could prove to be cancer’s Achilles’ heel.

It works by reducing the amount of glucose – which feeds cancer cells – being produced. It helps cells mop up sugar circulating in the bloodstream, cutting off cancer’s energy supply.

Metformin has been safely used by millions of people with Type 2 diabetes for more than 50 years.

Now, researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics at Shandong University in China, have analysed 37 studies involving more than 1.5 million people. 

They found that diabetes patients who took metformin were far less likely to get cancer.

And even if they did get the disease, they were less likely to die from it.

They concluded: “Metformin can reduce the incidence of overall cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer as well as the mortality of overall cancer, liver cancer and breast cancer.”

The researchers found no such benefit for men suffering from prostate cancer.

If the Chinese researchers are right the drug could be marketed for cancer treatment far more quickly than a newly discovered drug because it is already prescribed widely without ill-effects.

Previous studies have also shown metformin to be a powerful cancer buster, apparently seeking out an destroying the deadly cells which give birth to tumours and fuel their spread.

Recent studies highlighting the drug’s effects against a variety of tumours have generated considerable excitement among cancer researchers looking for powerful new treatments.

In 2011, scientists discovered it could slash the risk of ovarian cancer by around 40 per cent.

And Cancer Research UK is funding a major five-year study, involving nearly 5,000 British women with breast cancer, to see if the drug can stop the disease returning and boost survival rates.

Other research teams around the world are investigating metformin’s powers against skin, lung and pancreatic cancer – with promising early results.

New research suggests metformin could be a powerful weapon against cancer

Dr Martine Bomb, Cancer Research UK’s health information manager, said: “Some evidence analysed in this review shows that metformin may be able to lower diabetic people’s risk of developing and dying from some cancers.

“But other studies show metformin’s effect could be less powerful. Clinical trials are investigating whether this cheap, readily available drug could help save the lives of cancer patients.”

The new research is just the latest to hail this wonder drug to treat conditions other than diabetes.

Last year, research suggested that metformin could help beat the degenerative brain disease Alzheimer’s by triggering the growth of new brain cells.

A recent study at Dundee University showed it also interferes with the formation of toxic “tangles” of protein which clog the brain in Alzheimer’s patients, destroying memory cells.

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Your five worst medical nightmares

From a doctor amputating the wrong leg, to a woman given the wrong baby, hospital treatment does not always go to plan. Luckily, though, mistakes are rare

One unhappy patient … Kenneth Williams in the 1967 film Carry on Doctor. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

It sounds like a classic nightmare – waking up during an operation to find you can't move. But that's what happened to one patient, Sarah Newton. "I was trying to scream. I tried to wiggle my toes desperately hard but I couldn't move anything." Thankfully, "accidental awareness", as it is known, is rare. A survey from the Royal College of Anaesthetists says it occurs once in every 15,000 operations under general anaesthetic, or 153 times in 2011 – and is usually brief and painless. But what of our other medical terrors?

Wrong site surgery

Usually the cause is a catastrophic series of administrative errors, such as when Dr Rolando Sanchez, a Florida surgeon, was told by a nurse that he was amputating the wrong leg of his patient just as he finished cutting through it. Luckily, with only 70 incidents recorded by the NHS in the year 2011-12, it is extremely unusual.

Wrong patient surgery

Never mind the wrong limb. How about operating on the wrong body? Sometimes there may be a mix-up over two people with the same name. Or similar procedures. The reality may not be as scary as it sounds – recently a patient in Cambridgeshire was given another patient's lens during eye surgery, although this was soon corrected. Plus there were fewer than 10 incidents reported in the UK during 2011-2.

Retained instruments

Leaving surgical instruments inside patients occurred 161 times in 2011-12. Often it's a sponge, which can lead to serious infections. The risk arises in emergency surgery, and in surgery on obese patients, but it is still very unlikely to happen to you.

Baby mix-ups

Despite being a common storyline in films or stories, there are few documented cases of mothers sent home with the wrong baby. But you have to ask: how would they know? In Romania in 2008, Cristina Zahariuc noticed because the daughter she was sent home with turned out to have a penis. Despite a few awful stories, the risk will be lower now that most babies stay with their parents immediately after birth.

Being treated by an impostor

Well, it has happened. In September 2011, 17-year-old Matthew Scheidt was convicted, of impersonating a physician's assistant in Florida. He dressed wounds, attended surgery, examined naked patients and even administered CPR. While New Zealander Richmal Oates-Whitehead treated victims of the 7 July 2005 bombings in London, despite not being medically qualified.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara managed fairly well when he conducted a series of major operations by speed-reading textbooks during the Korean war. And a man called Gerald Barnes even managed to impersonate a doctor, and be convicted of it, five times. Thankfully pretenders do tend to get caught.

The long and short of open defecation

 

DEAN SPEARS in THE HINDU

  

TOPICS

peoplechildren
social issues (general)health and hygiene
social conditions

There is statistical data to show that the height of Indian children is correlated to their and their neighbourhood’s access to toilets

You can learn a lot from measuring children’s height. How tall a child has grown by the time she is a few years old is one of the most important indicators of her well-being. This is not because height is important in itself, but because height reflects a child’s early-life health, absorbed nutrition and experience of disease.

Because health problems that prevent children from growing tall also prevent them from growing into healthy, productive, smart adults, height predicts adult mortality, economic outcomes and cognitive achievement. The first few years of life have critical life-long consequences. Physical or cognitive development that does not happen in these first years is unlikely to be made up later.

So it is entirely appropriate that news reports in India frequently mention child stunting or malnutrition. Indian children are among the shortest in the world. Such widespread stunting is both an emergency for human welfare and a puzzle.

Why are Indian children so short? Stunting is often considered an indicator of “malnutrition,” which sometimes suggests that the problem is that children don’t have enough food. Although it is surely a tragedy that so many people in India are hungry, and it is certainly the case that many families follow poor infant feeding practices, food appears to be unable to explain away the puzzle of Indian stunting.

‘ASIAN ENIGMA’

One difficult fact to explain is that children in India are shorter, on average, than children in Africa, even though people are poorer, on average, in Africa. This surprising fact has been called the “Asian enigma.” The enigma is not resolved by genetic differences between the Indian population and others. Babies adopted very early in life from India into developing countries grow much taller. Indeed, history is full of examples of populations that were deemed genetically short but eventually grew as tall as any other when the environment improved.

So, what input into child health and growth is especially poor in India? One answer that I explore in a recent research paper is widespread open defecation, without using a toilet or latrine. Faeces contain germs that, when released into the environment, make their way onto children’s fingers and feet, into their food and water, and wherever flies take them. Exposure to these germs not only gives children diarrhoea, but over the long term, also can cause changes in the tissues of their intestines that prevent the absorption and use of nutrients in food, even when the child does not seem sick.

More than half of all people in the world who defecate in the open live in India. According to the 2011 Indian census, 53 per cent of households do not use any kind of toilet or latrine. This essentially matches the 55 per cent found by the National Family Health Survey in 2005.

Open defecation is not so common elsewhere. The list of African countries with lower percentage rates of open defecation than India includes Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and more. In 2008, only 32 per cent of Nigerians defecated in the open; in 2005, only 30 per cent of people in Zimbabwe did. No country measured in the last 10 years has a higher rate of open defecation than Bihar. Twelve per cent of all people worldwide who openly defecate live in Uttar Pradesh.

So, can high rates of open defecation in India statistically account for high rates of stunting? Yes, according to data from the highly-regarded Demographic and Health Surveys, an international effort to collect comparable health data in poor and middle-income countries.

International differences in open defecation can statistically account for over half of the variation across countries in child height. Indeed, once open defecation is taken into consideration, Indian stunting is not exceptional at all: Indian children are just about exactly as short as would be expected given sanitation here and the international trend. In contrast, although it is only one example, open defecation is much less common in China, where children are much taller than in India.

Further analysis in the paper suggests that the association between child height and open defecation is not merely due to some other coincidental factor. It is not accounted for by GDP or differences in food availability, governance, female literacy, breastfeeding, immunisation, or other forms of infrastructure such as availability of water or electrification. Because changes over time within countries have an effect on height similar to the effect of differences across countries, it is safe to conclude that the effect is not a coincidental reflection of fixed genetic or cultural differences. I do not have space here to report all of the details of the study, nor to properly acknowledge the many other scholars whose work I draw upon; I hope interested readers will download the full paper at http://goo.gl/PFy43.

DOUBLE THREAT

Of course, poor sanitation is not the only threat to Indian children’s health, nor the only cause of stunting. Sadly, height reflects many dimensions of inequality within India: caste, birth order, women’s status. But evidence suggests that socially privileged and disadvantaged children alike are shorter than they would be in the absence of open defecation.

Indeed, the situation is even worse for Indian children than the simple percentage rate of open defecation suggests. Living near neighbours who defecate outside is more threatening than living in the same country as people who openly defecate but live far away. This means that height is even more strongly associated with the density of open defecation: the average number of people per square kilometre who do not use latrines. Thus, stunting among Indian children is no surprise: they face a double threat of widespread open defecation and high population density.

The importance of population density demonstrates a simple fact: Open defecation is everybody’s problem. It is the quintessential “public bad” with negative spillover effects even on households that do not practise it. Even the richest 2.5 per cent of children — all in urban households with educated mothers and indoor toilets — are shorter, on average, than healthy norms recommend. They do not openly defecate, but some of their neighbours do. These privileged children are almost exactly as short as children in other countries who are exposed to a similar amount of nearby open defecation.

If open defecation indeed causes stunting in India, then sanitation reflects an emergency not only for health, but also for the economy. After all, stunted children grow into less productive adults.

It is time for communities, leaders, and organisations throughout India to make eliminating open defecation a top priority. This means much more than merely building latrines; it means achieving widespread latrine use. Latrines only make people healthier if they are used for defecation. They do not if they are used to store tools or grain, or provide homes for the family goats, or are taken apart for their building materials. Any response to open defecation must take seriously the thousands of publicly funded latrines that sit unused (at least as toilets) in rural India. Perhaps surprisingly, giving people latrines is not enough.

Ending a behaviour as widespread as open defecation is an immense task. To its considerable credit, the Indian government has committed itself to the work, and has been increasing funding for sanitation. Such a big job will depend on the collaboration of many people, and the solutions that work in different places may prove complex. The assistant responsible for rural sanitation at your local Block Development Office may well have one of the most important jobs in India. Any progress he makes could be a step towards taller children — who become healthier adults and a more productive workforce.

The Ten Biggest Lies of B-School

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I went to B-School about 10 years ago.  I remember the good times, the parties, the camaraderie.  I also remember the long hours in the library, working on team projects with other keen classmates, and the sense of accomplishment at graduation.

However, 10 years later, Business School missed out on a lot in terms of teaching me the skills needed to succeed in my career and life.

Here are the ten biggest lies of B-School you should protect yourself against:

1. You will be rich. My experience (and from talking to others) is that it will take you 2 or 3 times as long as you think it will take to succeed after Business School.  So take it easy running up your student loans and credit card debts expecting you’re going to be a rock star later.

 

 

2. You are smarter than people without an MBA. You were smart enough to get in to Business School.  That doesn’t mean you are smarter than other people without an MBA.  Stay humble.

3. There’s always a right answer. B-School students are usually very analytical and achievement-oriented. They like to think there’s always a “best” answer. There’s not.  The perfect answer is always the enemy of the good enough one.  You make decisions you can with the best information available.  Life and business today doesn’t let you count how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

4. If you’ve made it this far (to B-School), you’re destined to succeed. In my B-School, there were always amazingly talented executives coming in to give talks on business and life. They’d always compliment us on what a great school we attended and why we had our future by the tail.  It made us all feel invincible — destined to succeed once we set out on our various career paths.  It doesn’t work that way. I know B-School classmates who’ve failed miserably, under-achieved, gotten divorced, gotten severely depressed, etc.  B-School is a great educational opportunity in life, but you still have to go out there and succeed. Nothing is given to you as a birthright.

5. You know how to “fix” the first few companies you join after school. You’ve probably worked at companies were people who’ve been there for 2 decades roll their eyes telling you about the new hotshot MBA who just started and is now telling everyone how to do their jobs.  It’s so clear to him, yet others find it deeply offensive that he would think he knows how the company works when they’ve spent countless years there and are still trying to figure it out.  All hotshot MBAs should wear tape over their mouths for the first 3 months on the job and not be allowed to “fix” anything.

6. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) will always tell you what a company is worth. MBAs love DCF. They think the true answer to what a company is worth is always a DCF away.  Just crank it out on a spreadsheet or whiteboard, show the boss, and move on to the next problem.  Unless you’re going to be a sell-side analyst, you’ll never do a DCF after B-School.  And even the sell-side analysts get their underlings to do them.  And no one reading your reports will read them anyway.

7. The “soft” courses (leadership and people management) are least important. I remember talking to the professors from theManagement Department at my school who had to teach the courses on leadership and people management.  They used to lament that the MBAs never paid attention to them in class.  Yet, the Executive MBAs (usually in their 40s or 50s) always told them that these courses were the most important of all the B-School classes they took.  You learn after B-School that the perfect answer or strategy means nothing if you can’t get people around you to buy in to it and help you achieve it.  To do that, you need to motivate them, listen to them, connect with them, and support them when they need it.

8. You are going to be more creative and entrepreneurial after Business School than before. In my experience, B-School makes you less creative, the longer you’re in it.  They teach courses on entrepreneurship but it’s kind of an oxymoron the idea of the analysis paralysis B-School Students being entrepreneurial.  You will learn a lot of tools and frameworks in B-School, but you won’t learn how to start a company.  You just need to start a company.

9. Your peers will give you lots of tips and insights that will help you succeed in your career. In my experience, the majority of B-School students are lemmings.  They don’t know what they want to do afterwards, so they just do what their peers say they should do (maybe that’s why they applied to B-School in the first place).  Ten years ago, everyone at my school wanted to be a dot com entrepreneur.  That didn’t work out so well and most students later went back to being investment bankers or management consultants.  Your peers don’t know what you want to do with your career.  You need to start listening to that voice inside your head.

10. The Ivy League MBAs will be even more successful. An Ivy League credential will be a big plus for you on your resume – no question.  However, you have to realize that if you’re getting an Ivy League MBA, you’re probably 10x more susceptible to the previous 9 lies than other MBAs.  Don’t let yourself be the next Jeff Skilling, the smart Harvard MBA, who worked at McKinsey and then went to Enron and drove the company off a cliff.  He had a golden resume – and where did it get him?

If you treat B-School like an amazing educational experience, chances are you’ll get a lot out of it.  Just keep your attitude and sense of entitlement in check.As Casey Kasam used to say, “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.”

Motherhood, the career that dare not speak its name

By Cristina Odone Politics Last updated: March 13th, 2013 

Claire Perry MP: motherhood is a career

Claire Perry, Tory MP for Devizes and childhood guru to David Cameron, says she's had three careers: she's been a banker, a mother and a politician. It is brave of her – and not because bankers and politicians are the most despised professions around. Ms Perry is brave because she makes claims for motherhood that has too many feminists and members of the Coalition sneering: it is a full-time, unpaid job.

Perry is promoting "Mothers at Home Matter", a group that wants the Coalition to recognise the contribution of stay-at-home mothers. Their message is urgent: when the state has to step in to care for children, the tax payers end up paying millions in creches and programmes like SureStart – now recognised as a hugely expensive Labour failure.

Worse, psychologists are now worrying that being raised outside their home environment by a succession of "professionals" can scar children for life. In Sweden, where this is a matter of routine, school records show the highest truancy and "worst classroom disorder" in western Europe. The star witness for MAHM was Jonas Himmlestrand, expert in Swedish family policy, who reported that his homeland, where 90 per cent of children are in subsidised child care, has seen a serious decline in adolescent mental health, between 1986 -2002 declined faster than in 10 comparable European countries.

So, forget the Swedish model. MAHM believes the key to happy families is to change the tax system that right now forces women to work. The UK is almost alone amongst developed countries in not recognising family and spousal responsibilities in its tax system. The burden on the single earner has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Many single earner families are in the poorest third of the population. MAHM want families taxed on the basis of household rather than individual income. They call "for a debate about income-splitting, transferable tax allowances and protecting child benefit for parents with dependent children."

Politicians should pay attention: the number of mothers who stay at home is down to a third — but, as I found out when I researched "What Women Really Want" for the Centre for Policy Studies, the majority of mothers would like to stay at home to look after their children. That's quite a constituency, Messrs Cameron et al. Ignore it (and your pledge to introduce family tax credits) at your peril.

Cambridge University medicine admissions show race gap

Applicants with three A*s at A-level are 20% more likely to get offer if they are white than if they are from ethnic minority

• James Ball and Kurien Parel
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 March 2013 12.56 GMT

Cambridge University released the detailed admissions data, covering 2010 to 2012, for medicine only in response to a freedom of information request. Photograph: Brian Harris/Alamy

People applying to study medicine at Cambridge University with three A*s at A-level are more than 20% more likely to be given an offer if they are white than if they are from an ethnic minority, according to new data released by the institution.

Cambridge University released the detailed admissions data, covering 2010 to 2012, for medicine only in response to a freedom of information request. The university refused a similar request a few weeks before, which covered more subject areas, on the grounds of cost.

The data, which covers applications from within the UK by people who declare their ethnicity, shows that 329 out of 586 white applicants for medicine who went on to achieve three A*s were given an offer of a place, versus 190 of 412 applicants from ethnic minorities – representing success rates of 56% and 46% respectively. The difference between the two groups is statistically significant.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have been challenged by MPs and campaigners to do more to get students from ethnic minorities into their institutions, particularly as the headline admissions figures for the two institutions show a substantial gap in success rates between students of different ethnicities.

The universities have said this gap is explained in large part by students from ethnic minorities disproportionately applying for the most competitive subjects, such as medicine – but these new figures show that even within the competitive subjects, white students are more likely to receive offers.

Cambridge's race gap for medical applicants is substantially smaller than that of its rival, Oxford University. Figures released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, published last month, show white students applying for medicine who went on to achieve three A*s were 94% more likely to be offered a place than those from ethnic minorities.

A-levels are only one of several factors taken into account by admissions tutors for medicine at both universities. Applicants are also required to take a specific entrance exam, the bioMedical admissions test, while work experience and performance at interview are also factored in to whether to make an offer. Those handling applications may also be unaware of the ethnicity of prospective applicants rejected prior to interview.

A spokeswoman for Cambridge University said analysis of applications based on A-level grades "ignores a significant number of relevant variables" and is therefore "superficial".

"Admissions decisions are based on students' ability, commitment and their potential to achieve," she said. "Our commitment to improving access to the university is longstanding and unwavering … [and] we aim to ensure that anyone with the ability, passion and commitment to apply to Cambridge receives all the support necessary for them to best demonstrate their potential."

She added that Cambridge had run initiatives to encourage gifted students from minority backgrounds to apply to Cambridge since 1989.

Oxford University declined to comment on the difference in size of the medical race gap of applicants between itself and Cambridge University, but said in an earlier statement it constantly reviewed the race gap of its applicants.

"Oxford University is committed to selecting the very best students, regardless of race, ethnicity, or any other factor," a spokeswoman said.

"This is not only the right thing to do but it is in our own interests. Differences in success rates between ethnic groups are therefore something we are continuing to examine carefully for possible explanations."

The Oxford spokeswoman also noted Cambridge made more use of students' grades at AS-level than does Oxford, and said ethnic minorities were well represented at the university, making up 22% of all students and 13% of UK undergraduates.