Editor's Note: Luay al-Khatteeb discusses the relationship between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad in an interview with Harem Karem of theThe Kurdistan Tribune. Harem Karem: How do you see the future of the current deal between Baghdad and Erbil? We are handing over the agreed oil volumes to Baghdad and fighting a war with ISIS. Why is the federal government still not paying the full monthly budget allocation to the KRG? How can Baghdad/Erbil relations improve? Luay al-Khatteeb: All oil deals between Baghdad and Erbil are doomed before they start. There is a history to this that goes back to 2007…

Many of the answers to the question in the title above may seem too complex or obvious: unemployment, poverty, corruption, discrimination, or lack of access to financial services and opportunities. All of these could keep a newly banked woman from getting to an agent and making a deposit in her new savings account. But so could much smaller events like a bus with a flat tire or a dead cell phone battery. At JUNTOS, we see everyday the ways that these kinds of seemingly mundane, simple obstacles can have such an outsized impact on financial outcomes and behaviors. In our work, much of…

At the start of 2016, the U.N. will launch a new set of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, to drive development efforts around the globe. But one question still needs some thought: How will we finance these new goals? Even more questions lie within this broader question on finance. Which countries need more resources? What types of resources are needed most? Where does international finance, both public and private, currently flow? Where does it not? Answers to all of these require reliable and easy-to-understand data on all international financial flows. When governments convene in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to agree…

One of the main tenets of technocracy is the abolition of the private property always been the case, even from the 1930s when Technocracy was first conceived as a coherent economic system run by scientists and engineers. The early Technocrats wanted to scrap money altogether and substitute "Energy Certificates" instead.  The Technocracy Study Course (1934, Scott & Hubbert) clearly delineated the requirement: "Under a technological administration of abundance there is only one efficient method-that employing a system of Energy Certificates. By this system all books and records pertaining to consumption are kept by the Distribution Sequence of the social mechanism. The income is granted to the…

NEW YORK—Two days before a United Nations summit on climate change, thousands of people marched in cities around the world Sunday to urge their leaders to act boldly to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the changes.   The "People's Climate March" took over much of Manhattan for several hours Sunday as more than 120 heads of state began gathering in New York City for the Tuesday summit, convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.   Ban, who joined in the New York demonstration, is urging heads of state to take concrete steps to switch to cleaner sources of energy, prevent deforestation, and help vulnerable countries protect themselves…