In The News

Calling for a Green Revolution: An Interview with Tom Friedman

October 31, 2008
Developing alternatives to fossil fuels – solar, wind or other energy technologies yet undiscovered – is the most pressing task confronting the globe, presenting a new frontier of opportunity. Tom Friedman, best-selling author and columnist with the New York Times, decries a planet being destroyed by climate change in his latest book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How...

Financial Crisis Belies Myth of US Independence

Edward Goldberg October 30, 2008
Countries make the mistake of assuming that they can pick their way through globalization – that they can block products from other countries yet sell in those markets, or set rules for others to follow while intending to ignore those same rules at home. No community or country, as economic units, can escape financial decisions made thousands of miles away, argues Edward Goldberg, international...

Underdevelopment and Aid: Search for a Right Balance – Part II

Edward Friedman October 29, 2008
Africa remains one of the poorest aid recipients of the world, enduring challenges of high rates of disease, inadequate infrastructure and power sources, as well as corruption and poor governance. This YaleGlobal series examines diverse approaches on foreign economic aid emerging from the West and China. In the second article of a two-part series, Edward Friedman, political science professor at...

Missing Links: After the Fall

Moisés Naím October 27, 2008
The attacks of 9/11 were a watershed event in the institutional makeup of US and global security institutions. The push for rejecting old, seemingly outdated frameworks, explains Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím, helped lead to the Iraq War, in addition to "the Guantánamo Bay prison, the erosion of civil liberties, disdain for the Geneva Conventions, and the belittling of mechanisms...

Mortgage Prospects Dim for Illegal Immigrants

Miriam Jordan October 27, 2008
Undocumented immigrants who work hard and save money can no longer easily invest in US businesses and real estate. The US Internal Revenue Service accepts the payment of taxes from undocumented workers who use tax identification numbers. Even as the US Department of Homeland Security attempted to deport undocumented workers, other government agencies encouraged their tax payments and investments...

Do You Really Want This Job?

David Dapice October 24, 2008
An era of the US living beyond its means has come to an abrupt end, with a flailing stock market and credit freeze, mounting job losses, wages that do not keep pace with climbing housing prices, and the world’s costliest health care system that fails to cover all citizens. The next US president, to be decided in the November 4 election, will inherit a battered economy that restrains any US role...

How Can We Preempt Investment Protectionism?

Ernesto Zedillo October 23, 2008
Nations laden with debt fret about investments by overseas cash-rich sovereign wealth funds. “The most common fears are that the SWFs, being government-owned, may be used not only for the purpose of receiving attractive returns on their investments but also for pursuing geopolitical objectives, gaining control of strategic natural resources or extracting sensitive technologies; that they could...