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I need information on sponsorship.

"an apparent lack of “alignment” of these programs with (US) national interests. " Yet no mention of the world's poor in terms that highlight the disparities between them and us: Last year, the World Bank reported: "Global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill" "Today, almost 700 million people (8.5 percent of the global population) live in extreme poverty - on less than $2.15 per day. Progress has stalled amid low growth, setbacks due to COVID-19, and increased fragility. Poverty rates in low-income countries are higher than before the pandemic. Around 3.5 billion people (44 percent of the global population) remain poor by a standard that is more relevant for upper middle-income countries ($6.85 per day), and the number or people living on less than this standard has barely changed since the 1990s due to population growth." What happened to our being part of the wealthy west ? Sharing some of that wealth with the poor of our world ? And it is "our world" - not a country to be hidden away behind tariff walls. The GATT/WTO negotiations over many decades and agreements were intended to share the benefits of international trade, especially those who contributed to that trade from what used to called "developing countries". I bought a a light all-weather jacket recently - to my delight, it had been made in the Ukraine. Some wealth shared where it was needed.

I wish to compliment John Conroy for his insightful analysis of the life and work of Dr Fred Fisk. I had the privilege of working closely with Fred in the period 1984-1987 when I was the Economist on the Pacific Regional Team (PRT) assisting DFAT (then AusAID) in the Pacific Islands Region (PIR). I truly look forward to reading the complete book which John has produced on Fred. I will keep my current comments very brief: 1. Curiously, while I worked closely with Fred on many assignments, I never did get a sense as how to best access his theoretical work. 2. Certainly, he seemed best known for his notion of "subsistence affluence". I personally found this very useful in the context of Tuvalu; there, the concept of "unemployment" had to be understood in a special way. For example, if people of working age did not have formal employment which paid a wage, then generally they could readily take up subsistence employment - fishing, tending to poultry and minor crops (including coconuts and pandanus), making handicrafts, weaving mats, gathering shells, repairing and making shelters, and so on. Some of these activities could lead to a cash income, albeit minor (such as sale of handicrafts). Hence, it would be misleading to use the concepts of employed/unemployed with their conventional meanings in a Western sense. 3. Another of Fred's concepts was that of dividing the PIR countries into three categories, namely "fully furnished", "partly furnished", and "unfurnished", based on the availability of land, water, forests, mineral resources, and so on. In this context, Fiji for example could be considered as fully furnished; Tonga being much smaller might be considered to be partly furnished; and the atoll countries of Tuvalu and Kiribati would be generally considered as unfurnished. I do not think John covered this matter in his two blogs, but he may well have done so in his book. Or possibly John was not overly impressed with this somewhat subjective insight, and in this respect, I would be inclined to agree with John. 4. Some observers viewed Fred as a very "dry" and hard-hearted economist. As I saw it, the truth was precisely the opposite. Dr Fisk was person who emphasized fully with the people in the economies he studied, and his intentions in his work were to always aim to improve the economic well-being of the inhabitants of these countries based on a sound economic analysis of their respective situations. Colin Mellor 10 April 2025

Thanks, Anna & Stephen, for the insightful analysis. Yes, I concur that the 30% income tax is too high.

Too good, Anna and Stephen.

Thank you for the piece. it was helpful in our writing at UOG.

The FMTF focuses on AML/CTF across transactional crimes and ratings, how about those corrupt transactions that are structured and ordered by people in authority through the normal systems?

Hi there, please provide information so I can be well informed of the latest events from your end. Best regards. Lazarus Apso

Timely highlights. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for this timely blog. Don't forget the impact on some Pacific Island government budgets through their Trust Funds (FSM, Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, RMI, Timor-Leste and Tuvalu) with earnings negatively impacted by the global fall in the stock markets.

Thanks, Maho. The links we provided refer to major 2024 money laundering investigations and convictions—amounting to billions—mostly in the Global North. In the Global South, the largest case last year was in Australia. To clarify, it’s not about the share of GDP. The FATF greylist doesn’t necessarily reflect the volume of money laundered. Instead, it assesses “technical compliance” and, more recently, “effectiveness” or “outcomes.” This means a country can have billions being laundered but still avoid the greylist if it has implemented most AML/CTF standards and shown evidence of successful prosecutions. In contrast, many developing countries lack both—due to capacity constraints, limited resources, and often political will. As a result, even without clear evidence of large-scale money laundering (as is the case for most if not all greylisted countries), they can still be greylisted for failing to meet technical standards.

Another timely article, thanks to the authors. For the billions you mention being laundered in the global north, have you quantified how much is estimated to be laundered? The share of GDP (or size of financial sector) of money laundered would allow for global comparisons to see the extent to which money laundering is potentially destabilising, and if FATF is justified in pursuing poorer countries (if indeed their share was higher).