In The News

For Russia's Migrants, Economic Despair Douses Flickers of Hope

Michael Schwirtz February 16, 2009
Russia has the second largest immigrant population the world, after the US, once inviting workers from former Soviet republics to construct luxury hotels, office buildings and homes amid a decade-long oil boom. A drop in world oil prices hit the emerging economy of Russia, striking its migrant workers particularly hard. Employers withhold wages, and the government sets quotas on jobs for...

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...

Statistics Chief Karen Dunnell Inflames Row Over Foreign Workers

Sam Coates February 12, 2009
Foreign workers make up less than 10 percent of the UK employment base. Rather than accept responsibility for a bleak job outlook and problematic financial policies, politicians lambasted release of a statistic that exposes disappearing jobs for citizens in the midst of a campaign on “British jobs for British workers.” UK ministers were chagrined, notes a team of reporters for the Times in...

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...

Britain Must Not Go Wobbly on the Free Market

Emma Marcegaglia February 10, 2009
When jobs are hard to come by, communities naturally try to support local businesses. Domestic workers demand job protection, without stopping to calculate how many might work for foreign firms. Any defensive posture comes at a grave cost, as foreign employers retaliate, abruptly halting efficient trade and hiring. Unfortunately, even the nations that have benefited so much from free trade, such...

Obama Risks Flap on “Buy American”

Neil King Jr. February 9, 2009
Anyone who has read recent reports on the global economic crisis should understand that protectionism is dangerous and that protectionist legislation prolonged the Great Depression during the 1930s. Despite modern agreements that regulate open trade, some US workers and politicians can’t help but be tempted to direct public spending to domestic firms and workers. In preparing a multibillion...

Made in America

Nayan Chanda February 6, 2009
As jobs vanish by the hundreds of thousands, the desire to intervene from politicians is only natural, an attempt to restore economic order and prevent social unrest. In capitals throughout Europe, workers protest and vow to remove politicians who fail to provide immediate economic relief. The US is no different, as the president and Congress race to save jobs with a stimulus package now valued...