Will Beijing continue to prop up the dollar or will it conclude that it’s just throwing good money after bad?
Money Wars: Beating up on Beijing? (Part 2)
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global economy
Money Wars: Beating up on Beijing? (Part 1)
Does China bear some responsibility for the high jobless rate and the inability of the American economy to recover from the deep recession?
2010: Year of the Nini
If Time magazine had any inkling of sense, it would name the Nini the person of the year for 2010. Just what, you might ask, is a Nini? Adopted in Mexico during the crisis, the slang word means a young person who does not work or study.
Another War in Lebanon? Not Likely
Israel is focused on Iran. But the Obama administration should not ignore the few voices inside Israel that want escalation against Hezbollah.
A REALLY BIG Black Swan
Watch out for those “black swans” — like the one paddling up the bayou at this very moment — carefully dodging the oil slicks. We’re so busy looking at old threats and repeating our old prejudices at ever higher volume that we can’t hear the splash of those big, webbed feet.
Global Economy: C
Barack Obama raised the hopes of global justice advocates by committing to significant changes in our international economic policies. As president, however, his efforts to implement alternatives have been slow to get off the ground.
Bye-bye, Dubai
It’s bad enough when a person drowns in debt. Shock waves multiply when a corporation teeters on the verge of failure. The economy becomes even more agitated when a country declares bankruptcy, as Iceland did in 2008 and Hungary and Latvia almost did in 2009.
Can Migrants Save the Global Economy?
The global economic crisis has devastated workers around the world, none more than migrants whose daily wages are dependent on the whims of global financiers. Witness Dubai. Even before the meltdown of Dubai World, migrants whose labor literally built Dubai from the ground up suffered serious job losses with the onset of the global recession in 2008.
U-20: Will the Global Economy Resurface?
The Group of 20 (G20) is making a big show of getting together to come to grips with the global economic crisis. But here’s the problem with the upcoming summit in London on April 2: It’s all show. What the show masks is a very deep worry and fear among the global elite that it really doesn’t know the direction in which the world economy is heading and the measures needed to stabilize it.
The Chinese Economy
A recent New York Times editorial gives China broad advice on the economic and financial crises, most of it wrong. Headlined “As Goes China, so Goes…” (an allusion to the old U.S. presidential election bromide, “As goes Maine, so goes the Nation), the editorial distills the essence of the macroeconomists’ conventional wisdom about the proper future direction of the Chinese economy: reduce exports, expand imports, and create a modern consumer economy. The Times implies that China’s government budget surplus, high individual savings rate, and endless consumer and social welfare needs make the task easy, if only Chinese policymakers would catch on. In fact, this transformation would be far more disruptive. Moreover, neither China nor the world can survive the creation of a clone of the 20th-century U.S. economy in the coming era of high-cost energy and low-carbon footprints.