In The News

Union in Crisis

Jonathan Fenby February 16, 2009
Europeans shrugged about a credit crisis in 2008, chalking it up to a lavish American lifestyle, dependent on debt, and assumed they were immune. But national economies are tightly connected, particularly those of the European Union, and crisis spread quickly. Compounding the financial crisis is seething anger over closed factories, long unemployment lines, banks that lost rather than protected...

The Reverse Swing

Nayan Chanda February 16, 2009
Migration is a major force of globalization: Workers on the move seek opportunity and alleviate poverty in the process of dispersing and collecting new ideas. A harsh global economic recession has reduced opportunities for foreign and domestic labor alike, stirred protectionist instincts and prompted reverse migration around the globe. The most immediate impact, explains YaleGlobal editor Nayan...

Testing Times: Collapse of European Industry Worse than Expected

February 13, 2009
An onslaught of bad news continues to hit Europe, with protests about economic troubles on the rise. Some European leaders, like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, resort to nationalist and protectionist approaches. Meanwhile, the European Union’s current president, Czech Republic Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, stresses the need for “adherence to the rules,”including continued trade among the EU...

Green Taxes Would Be Good for British Jobs

Irwin Stelzer February 13, 2009
Consumers don't like paying taxes, but pricing energy in a way that encourages conservation could help the British economy in the long run. The global economy depends on fossil fuels, but countries that lack energy often don't agree with policies of countries that control supplies. Subsidizing fossil fuels delays the development of alternatives. “All of this makes it even more urgent...

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

Robert F. Worth February 12, 2009
Globalization bestows and eliminates wealth with speed. A global credit crisis has struck tourism and financial industries hard, even for fast-growing economies like Dubai. Recent investors and home-buyers in Dubai have watched values plummet in the past year. Unpaid debt is a crime punishable by imprisonment. With a workforce that is about 90 percent foreign, many want to escape the downward...

A Global Credit Squeeze Is Felt Unevenly

Floyd Norris February 11, 2009
A “downside” to globalization struck when the US credit crisis had a global effect that neither Europe nor Asia could diminish or avoid. Many countries cannot borrow money to stimulate their economies as the US does and lack the savings of China, and some government leaders fear that the big economies will focus on domestic investments at the expense of poorer nations. Greater government...

US Recession: Spend Now, Save Later

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller February 11, 2009
To fend off an economic disaster, governments around the globe, from China to the US, lower interest rates, increase the money supply, enact stimulus packages and urge their citizens to shop to save jobs and fix the economy. All eyes are on the US, the worlds' biggest economy, where personal consumption makes up 70 percent of the gross national product. But US citizens are not buying into...