beating the drum for an ethnic civil war in the heart of europe. infiltrates one of the continent's fastest growing far right organizations. and exposes links to members of the european parliament and the reenlist plan our. generation paid. a special two part investigation coming soon on the jersey. hello i'm has i'm sick of this is counting the cost on al-jazeera your weekly look at the world of business and economics as leaders from the world's richest countries meet in latin america we'll ask if the g twenty could be facing an identity crisis also this week petrol food and medicine shortages what's changed for them barbarians since the fall of robert mugabe. plus motoring blues why

general motors restructuring plans are making us president donald trump unhappy. who runs the world well when it comes to the economy it could be argued the g twenty does these are the group of countries that generate eighty percent of world output they also burned more fossil fuels than the rest of the world they are in fact the dirty rich and if you want to change the world surely it starts here the group was formed in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine but took on greater importance in the wake of the global financial crisis of two thousand and eight its purpose to develop global policies to address today's most pressing challenges these days the g twenty finds it hard to agree on almost anything let alone trade disputes migration and climate change and this week's summit was in argentina the first time a south american country got to host a meeting that i suppose has more. the mothers of class of emanuel

have been demanding to know the whereabouts of their missing children since they disappeared during argentina's dictatorship forty years ago. the g twenty gives them a chance to take their message to a wider audience. the city is under siege it seems like we're under curfew but we made it here and once again we call on world leaders to stop the policies that create hunger poverty and that hurt the working class. they were into thousands of people are promising to take over the streets of one of cite is. in spite of these protests this is a historic event for argentina and an opportunity to be at the center of world affairs even though there are several issues overshadowing the main objective which is to build consensus on crucial issues like climate change and inequality. among them the presence of saudi crown prince mohammed bin salomon and the request by

human rights watch to investigate him over the murder of journalism i casually. skilling has changed relations between saudi and the western world. in one way mark on says he's ready to talk to the crown prince about what happened sure to take a sure i have always been very clear in the case of saudi arabia and i will inevitably have the opportunity to discuss it with the saudi crown prince on the margins of this g. twenty meeting donald trump arrived in when a site is ready to discuss the trade war between the united states and china he's cancelled he's meeting with russian president vladimir putin after the seizure of crane and ships by russia at the crimean peninsula. these protesters all the way from the united states carrying a baby trump balloon he's been an activist opposing the u.s. foreign policy since the vietnam war we would like the president of the united states to act a little bit more mature adults if i was going to boil it down to just one

statement it would be that we think it's asinine that he's on twitter we think it's asinine that he's casual and that he. picks fights seems to want to take the smallest and lowest road instead of the high is this mass yoga session was organized to help leaders concentrate on we solving their differences. the protest around when a site is will remind them how hard that task is likely to be. other g. twenty is made up of nineteen countries the european union is also a member collectively g twenty members account for eighty five percent of global economic output two thirds of the world's population and seventy five percent of international trade. joining me now from sydney is tim harcourt economist and author thanks very much for being with us so let me ask you first of all how much importance do you attach to the g twenty is an organization is it is it still an

important forum for exchanging views or has it kind of lost its way since two thousand and eight well i think it was a very important organization in two thousand and eight during the global financial crisis and the finance ministers g. twenty was an invention of a strike year and south korea it's one of the few forums where you get the major powers together in a somewhat like this i think it's still got its relevance particularly at a time when we need good international economic institutions another big issue of course and a very contentious one at the moment is the whole issue of climate change and what to do about it two big reports there were out in the last few days on the cost of this two economies in the u.s. and in europe is there any consensus among countries about what to do or country like australia is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for export revenues so in some

ways the burdens are being shared quite properly and in some cases the expecting developing countries to share some of the burden right of the time when industrialization is actually pulling a lot of people of poverty so they're probably less less willing to to give up some of that some of that momentum they've been able to get in countries like china india and indonesia i expect there won't be much consensus on climate change in terms of causes but also in terms of what solutions you use whether a market mechanisms or not if i'm not mistaken this is the first time that a south american nation is hosting the g. twenty summit what does this summit mean for argentino. which is of course dealing with its own very serious economic problems right now it's been a matter of dunbar from a argentina because in some wise in terms of resource and down meant in terms of agriculture manini and immigration detainees should be like

a study about it says situations of light who have let it down i think in many cases there's countries in south america that are doing quite well like peru and chile colombia members of the pacific a lot small stajan toners probably be one trouble spot in south america even though . the army did prize argentina when there was a pilot a c.e.o. i think the mine thing is to restore trust in the institutions because argentina does have very good have down months of mining and agriculture and a very strong vice of human capital large and tons do very well around the world so i can tap into that great reserves of human capital then they can have some chance of maybe in term recovery but certainly they'll try and use the prestige of the g twenty to focus on some of the better aspects of the of the argentine economy. and there are of course a lot of changes happening in the digital world right now on the internet and this

year in particular has been a big one for the whole issue of data privacy addie think the twenty is the g. twenty nations as a whole and tackling that it's a very interesting question because in some ways the g. twenty nations that are a good boy the great information in the great information rich kept most institutions in the u.s. and japan they're using data mining for consumer driven behavior whilst countries that have a bigger tradition of social control china are using data mining for social control with its own citizens in terms of their own social credit so i think they're both tech clean with asylum issues of had together data but they're putting them to quite different purposes i think in the cases of the more kepler sort of the g twenty they're using it to buy sickly drive consumer behavior and better target

demand whilst in other cases they use them all for internal social control which is actually quite a worrying trend probably not what some of these great great leaps in technology was was meant to was meant to perform tim harcourt in sydney good to speak with you thanks very much for the time thanks having me on. all right still to come on counting the cost if it were a country the ocean would be the seventh largest economy on the planet looking at the trillion dollar economy. for first microsoft over took its tech rival apple as the world's most valuable publicly listed company this week it's been sixteen years since the software giant has held the top spot microsoft shares jumped three percent on wednesday pushing its market value to eight hundred fifty billion dollars it's become a major player in the cloud computing services world britain's economy will be

worse off outside the european union no matter how it leads that is the upshot of a report from the bank of england looking at post briggs it scenarios in the worst case where britain crashes out of the block with no deal the central bank says the economy would shrink by as much as eight percent in a year while under the agreement being pushed by prime minister to resign may the economy will be about four percent smaller over fifteen years a woman may face a much wider wage gap than commonly cited data indicate that's according to a new study by the washington based for women's policy research economists there analyzed the incomes of men and women who work for at least one year between two thousand and one and two thousand and fifteen the new study found women earn just forty nine cents to the typical men's dollar far less than the eighty cents usually reported of thousands of jobs will go in the largest restructuring by u.s.

carmaker general motors since the two thousand and eight financial crash the planned closure of five big car manufacturing plants in north america is a blow to u.s. president donald trump whose promised to turn around the industry she has written see reports. estimates for the number of jobs lost as general motors restructures are as high as fourteen thousand seven hundred some eight thousand white collar the remains of factory workers the plants affected are in michigan ohio and maryland in the u.s. and on teria in canada production also you see said to as yet unnamed plants outside north america by the end of twenty nineteen in lordstown ohio workers despaired not just for those being laid off but for the whole community for every one of our jobs they you know i've heard around seven jobs on the outside are. obviously impacted show you know not only not only the folks that are working. in the part supplying sector but look at the grocery stores right look at the

restaurants the doctors' offices the hospitals g.m. says the layoffs on necessary to adapt to a changing u.s. kamarck it sales of sit downs are down as sales of s.u.v.s and trucks grow the company also says it will focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles it's been ten years since general motors was bailed out with taxpayer money a fact not lost on the united auto workers union which is about that the decision will not go unchallenged g.m. has production decisions in light of employee concessions during the economic downturn and a taxpayer bailout from bankruptcy it said put profits before the working families of this country whose personal sacrifices stood with g.m. during those dog days these decisions are a slap in the face to the memory and recall of that historical american made bailout we must step away from the empty work of thinking of seeking simply the lowest labor cost on the planet g.m. exceeded expectations with better than expected third quarter earnings of two point five billion dollars boosting shareholder value and monday's announcement led to

a further rise in its share price g.m. says it will save six billion dollars in cash as a result of the restructuring this is a bloated old trump he said his corporate tax cuts will help save the u.s. as manufacturing industry the president has repeatedly boasted about his role in g.m.'s future job creation and on monday he said he remains hopeful i'm not happy about it that bar is not selling well so they'll put something else i have no doubt that it is not just that but something else they'd better but something else as a result of trump's economic policies the trade deficit is going to nearly double over the next five years it's going to cost millions of manufacturing jobs two of the plants affected are in swing states that ricky trump's victory in twenty sixteen the president's pitch to the american workers who voted for him is frank. but to zimbabwe now the country is trying to reboot its economy one year on from the army that overthrew robert mugabe president emerson man and god where was elected last year lie but his government is failing to attract much needed foreign

investment and thousands of zimbabweans have been are protesting how to metastasize more from the capital harare. the last time opposition supporters protested was back in august when six people were shot and killed by soldiers they are back on the street after the police assured them they'll be safe if they march with peaceful they once about his government to fix the struggling economy create jobs and bring down food prices they also say president bush should resign insisting he still elections in july. well that then there's a price isn't legitimate some way as was claimed by the god that was. one of you can do is measure that was. when i got was it'll take a long time for the economy to recover and that zimbabweans need to be patient.

government because of the enemy. it's just. a lot of time and rollie mummy mignolet. now lose everything that is not. some fuel pumps are dry most risky because of shortages is the second fuel crisis in just over a month it's also a shortage of foreign currency especially the u.s. dollar. the main opposition leader insists was administration has failed he says levy more protests if the situation doesn't improve we joining me now from london is charles robertson global chief economist at renascence capital could speak to you again charles so one year on how would you assess things are zimbabweans better or worse off after robert mugabe sadly there are still worse of this still huge challenges now particularly on the currency side on the banking side. still

a lack of foreign investment going into the economy so it hasn't got better yet let's talk about the lack of foreign investment wise. do you think part of the problem is that the elections didn't win an international seal of approval so the e.u. condemned them the problem with that is that it makes a deal with the i.m.f. to the world bank and the african development bank to clear up big arrears zimbabwe has and to reduce their foreign debt that sort of deal becomes much harder without international support and if you don't have a clear foreign debt story situation then it's harder for companies to say this is the right economy for us to invest in the government a saying that all of this takes time and there counseling patience was it realistic to expect things to change much in a year after decades of of corruption and mismanagement it was it was the best case

scenario the difficulties as a lot of power politics still of play in zimbabwe the top priority of the finance minister seems to be reform he wants to address a ridiculously large budget deficit some of the policies he's attempted to push through since early october look like an attempt to try and bring realism to the currency rates as well but it takes it takes strong political will to push through tough reforms and they that that has not been conveyed across to the population that this is the united view of everybody in government that they should be going on this one course you mentioned earlier inflation in zimbabwe what's the what's the big challenge there what's going on there it's they tried that they've got this problem where the currency is that the foreign currency is the dollars that you have had in your bank account in zimbabwe for years since the last part of hyperinflation two thousand and eight people just putting dollars into the bank

accounts they can now take those dollars out of the bank accounts. and the changes since early october seem to suggest they never would be able to. the government meanwhile has printed a lot of these a bomb notes to finances so for the election it gave big pay increases into your bank account if you work for the government but not an actual cash dollars because there weren't any and all of this is contributed to to inflation and severe shortages i took my twelve year old daughter to zimbabwe a few weeks ago for what it turned into a lesson in front ereka nomics he saw fuel queues that would take an hour for people to get fuel empty shops with with all the shelves in a shoe shop gong and wildly varying black market rates power market rates for the for the currency as well i mean where he was it's become very messy in the last couple of months if things are put right does zimbabwe have the potential to do to

do well economically does it have the natural resources in the agriculture there to to to flourish over i mean absolutely we've done looking at developments for from countries in south asia africa and latin america tells us you need three things three hundred underlying things to really take off to industrialize to to become a middle income country. and those three things are education and zimbabwe's got and has had a great education system for many decades a second he's got to have electricity and zimbabwe's got plenty. and then thirty eight high investment now and that's where zimbabwe's been lacking so even beyond the fact that they've got great mining resources and good agriculture resources which they do which can make a well of country to the tune of say a thousand two thousand dollars per capita g.d.p. what's fascinating about zimbabwe's it it has all the other resources the

electricity and education it needs to be a five thousand ten thousand dollars per capita g.d.p. country it just needs good policy. and it's it's quite shocking to see that it's had these very good inheritance is for such a long time now in the one nine hundred eighty s. zimbabwe was an industrial nation manufacturing with more than twenty percent of g.d.p. it just got blown by bad policies could this escalate though i mean things going to get worse before they get better the risk for zimbabwe that today's is still things like agriculture going wrong this talk of an el nino events or one of these you know periodic times when when the harvests get very bad and we had one a few years ago and that really does hurt a country like zimbabwe. you've also got the issue now that if savings are repriced from what was you put in one dollar you could take out one dollar you

did put in one dollar but now you can only take out point three of a dollar and they're going to be called zimbabwe notes if that's happened then the basic zimbabweans would have lost their savings twice in a decade hyperinflation in two thousand and seven i and now to have them read to nominated into a much weaker currency a second time in a decade i think that it's going to take such a long time for zimbabwe to restore confidence why would anyone put money into a bank account now in zimbabwe any time in the next five to ten years i think it could be a real challenge to get people to have faith in the banks but if they don't put money into the banks there's going to be no money for lending and no money for investment beyond what foreigners might bring in so this is i think some some really significant challenges now for government charles robinson thanks for being with us as a. and finally some years ago economists put a monetary value on the resources off. they estimated the ocean or blue economy to

be worth twenty four trillion dollars catherine reports from a conference which made a splash this week in nairobi on the sidelines of the world's first blue economy conference delegates are treated to a show of clothes and bags crafted from fish skin all the way from the shores of lake turkana in nothing kenya to that. and other seaside regions designers he has see the future of fashion can include fish skin. looks like nothing else you see in the market but this conference is more than just about fish and fashion delegates are discussing how to harness a sustainable water economy that is valued at up to six trillion dollars and to protect assets worth an estimated twenty five trillion of the twenty two make us cities of morning ten million fifteen the cities and ninety five percent of the trade is from that will study you so i think this is one of the also see these

really and we have to look at it in the form it will system. time transport systems and coordinated anti-piracy operations how full fishing practices and poaching plastic pollution as well as destruction of coastal eco systems make it difficult to fully harness the potential of the economy people from around the world from europe and asia even as far away as latin america are coming to africa waters to fish and they're doing so without using those resources in a manner that makes sure that this is stable and that none of the world is coming to africa everybody he asked off about how important this conference is schools addressing the gathering including heads of states have all the right things about doing. more to protect what the resources empowering local communities and of stories and growing economy but there's also concern that this may be another talks

with many good ideas but. organizers of the event see the real work of staying true to commitments made here begins now we want to focus on the leaders coming here and making commitments about what they will do in their countries not for the world but in their countries and it is the aggregate of what they're saying that we shall use to conceptualize what the world will be doing for the economy at the end of this three day conference heads of government and agencies committed to put in place policies to build a sustainable blue economy they've also promised to help poor countries build capacity to more effectively patrol the seas and oceans as well as strengthen political leadership and international cooperation all right that is our show for this week remember you can get in touch with us by tweeting me at as you see there and use the hashtag a j c t c when you do drop us an e-mail counting the cost at al-jazeera dot net is our address there's more for you online at al-jazeera dot com

slash c.t.c. that will take you straight to our page which has individual reports links and entire episodes for you to catch up on. that is it for this edition of counting the cost has a secret from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera is next. a recent u.n. report has given remuda agency to the fight against climate change over his threats like sea level rise at this year's climate talks in poland and the international community seize the opportunity to take concerted action say with al-jazeera the latest from the front lines of the climate crisis from the conference itself the story of one of the most successful p.r. campaigns in the us. study after study has demonstrated that israeli perspectives dominate american media coverage what part of this can you get through your thick head is hamas a terrorist organization the only thing that you're going to say is what we want to

use and if you don't say it when i go let you speak it would be very hard for ordinary americans to know that they're being deceived the occupation of the american mind on al-jazeera. al-jazeera. where ever you are. the important thing if you are walking around in beirut was known to be in the line of fire from the holiday. but also we heard gunshots i was the first one to feed the whole to. the battle lasted three days and three nights and there were no

prisoners at the end controlling in and you control the region around and that's why it was such a bloody battle an icon of conflict at the heart of the lebanese civil war beirut holiday in war hotels on al-jazeera. this is al jazeera. hello i'm daryn jordan this is the out as they are news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes the g. twenty opens with divisions and political differences dominating the summit. the saudi crown prince is warmly received by some at the gathering and sidelined by others. ukraine restricts russian men from entering the country following escalating tensions.