In The News

China Reluctant to Lead

Orville Schell March 11, 2009
As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized during her first trip overseas, the US has great expectations for China's leadership and help on fixing the economy, and reducing climate change. Following the model of Richard Nixon in the 1970s, who sought to make common cause against the Soviet threat, Clinton emphasized common challenges for the two nations, playing down any differences...

How Washington Can Prevent “Zombie Banks”

James Baker March 10, 2009
The word “zombie” describes a corpse-like being, under a spell that allows it to move about, but not undertake any deliberate or meaningful action on its own. Such is the term used by former James Baker, former US treasury secretary, to describe banks that accept huge government bailouts, but don’t go about the business of lending. When Japan suffered economic collapse in 1990, the US sternly...

A Textile Capital of China Is Hobbled by a Downturn Gone Global

David Barboza March 10, 2009
The world’s largest economy that once thrived on consumption took a sudden turn to thriftiness. But a global slowdown in spending has hurt factory towns in China that once packed US closets at low prices. Thousands of workers have lost jobs and two out of every three textile and apparel factories in China could go out of business, reports David Barboza for the New York Times. “Experts say that...

The Multilateral Trading System: A Response to Its Challengers

Ernesto Zedillo March 9, 2009
Protectionism could derail all the efforts applied on the fiscal and monetary fronts to address the ongoing global crisis, suggests Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. In an essay for a new ebook published by VoxEU he writes, “Despite the multitude of statements against protectionism made by leaders and their finance and trade ministers in recent months,...

Rebalancing Sino-US Ties

Nayan Chanda March 9, 2009
Until recently, the global economy relied on production and savings in China and spending from the US. But the imbalanced structure was unsustainable, explains Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal editor, in his column for Businessworld. US spending has come to a grinding halt, paralyzed by job losses and anxiety, and the government approved a massive stimulus package to encourage economic movement. But any...

Despite Rhetoric, Offshoring Won’t Stop

Dinesh C. Sharma March 9, 2009
As economic crisis sweeps the globe, citizens expect their political leaders to create jobs, but it leads to other problems in the process. For example, in the US, President Barack Obama has vowed to end “tax breaks” for companies that ship jobs overseas, causing consternation among some in the Indian IT industry. Indian IT provides services to financial, banking and insurance firms around the...

Should China and the U.S. Swap Stimulus Packages?

Bill Powell March 6, 2009
The US and China’s economies have been intertwined for a long time but the solutions they each have adopted to fight global recession are polar opposites. The author argues that in order to effectively grow the economy, they need to do opposite things. They both need rebalancing and should swap their own stimulus packages. The US needs to spend less and save more, while China should spend more...