•/Let them eat caviar Zambia’s economy may be in reasonable shape (just don't mention the copper price), growing at above the African mean this year, but even that rosy fact fails to gratify Caleb Fundanga, who once ruled the nation’s central bank. Speaking to OOTW in Lima, he lambasts his successors for failing better to husband the nation’s finances. “Zambia is slipping into high indebtedness,” he laments. “The government must start to prioritise. If you don’t have the money for caviar, you have to cut it out.” While also dispensing presumably with the Wagyu beef and Matsasuke truffles.
•/Happiness is a green bond Over at Bangladesh’s central bank meanwhile, governor Atiur Rahman is purring like the cat who got the salted mint lassi — and with rising reserves and 6%-plus growth, who can blame him? Indeed, he bragged, the country has so much money, it can afford to sink its surplus cash into green bonds. Rahman even sank a claw or two into his less environmentally-minded peers, chortling that “few central banks have had the guts” to invest in the asset class. We didn’t have the heart to remind him that most green bonds are risk-free, triple A-rated instruments.
•/Maximum chill, minimum irony The Museo Nacional did its bit for the climate today — for good or bad. The sprinkling of the world's press waiting for the OECD’s big reveal on how much the rich countries are ponying up to help the poor with climate change (answer: $62bn in 2014, if you count the private sector, and don't ask whether it’s new money) were shivering in their seats. Never mind that the weather outside recalled Antwerp in November, the air conditioning was whacked up to full as if it was Dubai. Ties were donned, scarves wrapped, and one journalist muttered in Spanish: “it’s a crime against the environment”.
•/For the love of Rascar Capac Japan is happy to trumpet the benefits of Abenomics while India’s economy continues to barrel along under the auspices of Modinomics. Not content to dwell in the shade of this sovereign identity politics, Peru is blazing its own trail. Its economy may be slowing, but a senior official tells OOTW that Lima has a plan: to decouple from a slowing China, and forge new ties with more robust economies. Raise your pisco sour then and toast the emergence of: Incanomics!
•/Gridlock Holiday Question: why is there no seminar on transportation at this year’s meeting? Answer: because it is unlikely anyone would make it on time. Delegates used to the compactness of Washington have been shocked by the logistics of trailing around Peru’s capital. The perma-jams that bookend each day, keeping delegates snarled in traffic for hours at a time, have forced Lima’s officials to declare an additional holiday on Friday (in addition to the usual one on Thursday.) That should keep the roads quiet until Monday — when the chaos, at least for the locals, starts again.
•/It’s always sunny in Asunción A bemused Paraguayan official wanted to know why the IMF’s 2015 growth forecast for the Latin American country was 3%, rather than the healthier 3.7% advertised by his own, more optimistic government. “Look at it this way,” answered a senior IMF member of staff. “You will have the same GDP as Brazil this year but with a minor difference: they are shrinking at 3%, while you are growing at 3%. Look on the bright side!”