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Iraq's economic woes stem mainly from the huge drop in the price of oil, which accounts for 90% of the country's revenues. Last summer the price of oil soared to nearly $150 a barrel. Now the price is roughly a third of that, leaving Iraq struggling to fend off a financial collapse within its government. Iraq has an estimated $30 billion in surplus funds generated from oil sales in years past, but that money is dwindling. Iraq expects to run a deficit this year of roughly $20 billion, which could be covered by the surplus funds...
Other sources of revenue have gone dry or are about to. Foreign investors have been slow to spend in Iraq because of the violence and huge uncertainty surrounding the security situation following the U.S. drawdown going forward this summer. U.S. reconstruction funds are dwindling as American troops move to go. And Iraq at present cannot sell government bonds on the international market without risking them becoming entangled in a myriad of reparations lawsuits related to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait...
Infrastructure and sanitation remain huge problems. Major roads are still in need of repair; large towns still do not have safe tap water. Schools cannot provide students with textbooks, and civil servants grumble over the $100 monthly salary they receive. And Zimbabwe owes international financial organizations more than $1 billion. While the World Bank has agreed to resume aid to Zimbabwe for the first time since 2000 with a tentative $22 million grant, bigger loans will follow only after Harare retires its debt. (See pictures by James Nachtwey on some of the poorest people in the world, including in Zimbabwe...
...There are huge expectations for him to do great things,” said Alfred F. Fantini, the senior School Committee member and one of the two who voted for Turk. “People...really think some amazing things are going to happen...
...Internet," says Jean-Clément Texier, a media expert and founder of the Compagnie financière de communication consulting group in Paris. "Of course, readers initially react by saying it's a terrible move that breaks French tradition and deprives them of their paper. But since a huge portion of French dailies come in the morning mail - which doesn't operate on holidays - will anyone really miss getting those obsolete papers a day late...