Good News From The Financial Crisis
Here’s a rare bright spot as a result of the global financial crisis. The World Bank’s Doing Business Report, which tracks how easy or hard it is to start new businesses in various countries around the world, is just out today, and more countries than ever are slashing red tape around starting businesses. Even as governments are getting more heavy handed in regulating banks and financial institutions, they are lighting things up for entrepreneurs – government reforms aimed at making it easier to start a company are up 20 percent this year, the highest jump since the survey started in 2004.
What’s interesting is that poor countries have taken the lead – Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Africa are cutting the time and money involved in starting new businesses most quickly, in large part because they’ve been hit hardest by the financial crisis. “For developing countries, this is a jobs crisis that effects their real economy – their policy moves are all about trying to create new jobs,” notes Neil Gregory, one of the World Bank directors who worked on the project. Even the Middle East and North Africa, areas traditionally reluctant to liberalize, are encouraging more business-friendly reform thanks to the collapse in oil prices from their high in the summer of 2008.
Will the tide turn once the good times are back? Unlikely, say World Bank experts – once countries start down the path of red tape cutting, there’s usually little impetus for them to reverse laws, since the job growth tends to lead to new jobs and thus new tax revenue. Good news for bureaucrats everywhere.
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Rana Foroohar is the deputy editor in charge of international business and economics coverage for Newsweek. She conceives and edits a weekly section of breaking news stories, features and guest articles. She also writes economic cover stories and opinion pieces, and pens a bi-weekly column on the global economy.
Foroohar oversees Newsweek's team of global correspondents and stringers, directing their reporting on the week's business news. She edits regular columnists such as hedge fund manager Barton Biggs, Morgan Stanley emerging markets head Ruchir Sharma, Yale professor Jeffrey Garten and PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian. She is in charge of economic coverage for Newsweek's annual Davos special issue, which features pieces by world leaders and economic thinkers, and also chairs panel discussions while at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Prior to taking this New York based position in 2007, Foroohar spent six years as Newsweek's European Economic Correspondent based in London, covering Europe and the Middle East. During this time, she was awarded the German Marshall Fund's Peter R. Weitz Prize for transatlantic reporting. She has also worked as a general editor at Newsweek, a reporter for Forbes magazine, and as a writer and editor at various other national and international publications. Foroohar graduated in 1992 from Barnard College, Columbia University, with a B.A. in English literature. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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