In The News

A Global Economy in Danger

Manu Bhaskaran May 21, 2012
The week’s global consultations are in order – a G20 Labor and Employment Ministerial Meeting convened in Mexico on employment policies; the G8 reached consensus on eurozone reforms at Camp David; NATO meets in Chicago to prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan. The globe’s major economies are interconnected in so many ways, and the separate set of difficulties of each threatens ability to...

Denying Imbalances, G20 Risks Chaos – Part III

Jonathan Fenby November 9, 2011
Mounds of unsustainable debt in wealthy nations threaten the global economy, and many of these nations must keep borrowing in demanding global markets for daily operations. The G20 summit in France, a meeting of the world’s most powerful economies, failed to develop a strategy to ease spending, protect bondholders and lift confidence among consumers and investors. The G20’s failure will have...

Denying Imbalances, G20 Risks Chaos – Part II

David Dapice November 7, 2011
Once again, the leaders of the world’s most powerful economies have procrastinated in coming together on a viable global strategy to end unsustainable imbalances. Overshadowing the G20 summit was the threat of a disorderly Greek default; the Greek government’s scrambled response; and rising bond prices and trouble for Italy’s debt. Eurozone leaders agreed to set up a rescue fund of at least $1...

The G-20 Must Get Serious

Gordon Brown, Felipe Gonzalez and Ernesto Zedillo September 23, 2011
World leaders could do more to pursue coordinated action on the global economy, contend former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo in an opinion essay for the International Herald Tribune. Failure to follow up on pledges to strengthen global financial regulation, find agreement on the delayed World Trade...

The Ticking Food Bomb

Nayan Chanda July 8, 2011
The globe confronts a perfect storm of challenges this century: climate change, rising inequality, limited fossil fuels and a growing population that put pressure food and water supplies. If population expands to 9 billion as expected, food demand will double by 2050 even as the rate of growth in the agriculture sector declines. Nations, fully aware, recognize that food shortages and price hikes...

Brace for Change as the Global Economic Order Crumbles

Jeffrey E. Garten December 13, 2010
Asia increasingly accounts for a greater share of global revenues and financial clout. Yet power in global institutions, like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, is weighted toward the United States and other developed economies. Transition is underway in the global economic order. Jeffrey E. Garten, Yale University international trade and finance professor, warns that adjustment...

Let Down by Politics

Nayan Chanda December 6, 2010
When 20 global leaders convened in 2008 to review the unfolding credit crisis, many anticipated a new forum for global cooperation. In meetings since, “the leaders failed to reach an agreement on any of the contentious issues that threatened economic recovery,” writes Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal, in his regular column for Businessworld. Chanda urges patience, noting “It will take more than...