In The News

Untested Solutions

Nayan Chanda April 13, 2009
The G-20’s proposed solution to sanitizing toxic assets and to solving plummeting trade is nothing short of monumental. But is it enough amid a backdrop of moribund data – exports are down 20-50 percent – and bleak forecasts – the World Bank expects export volumes to fall 9 percent in 2009? The answer is, not likely. These solutions are untested and brushed aside is perhaps the most important...

Losing $63 Billion in Diverted U.S. Goods Is Sleuth Obsession

Carol Wolf April 9, 2009
Old-fashioned arbitrage on an international level has a new name: “product diversion.” It means the same thing though: buying low in one market and selling higher in another. The difference is that many multinational corporations (MNC) are now employing investigators and litigators to identify and crack down on the practice. Some MNCs have gone so far as to end business relationships with...

The Real Summit has been Between China and the US

Hamish McRae April 2, 2009
Posturing and theatrics aside, the most discussed issues of the G-20 summit – tax havens, financial regulation, or the IMF’s voting powers – are of marginal importance at best. The crying need of the hour is to ensure that the current financial crisis does not worsen: a difficult task given that governments so far have tended to exacerbate, rather than solve, recessions. This means governments...

In Toyota City, Japan, the Good Times Rolled…Away

John M. Glionna March 25, 2009
Many analysts predicted problems with excessive debt and sub-prime mortgages in the US, but few expected that the woes would rapidly spill over into the world’s most successful companies. The global economic recession hits hard at company towns like Toyota City in Japan: “Unlike in Detroit, where years of steady decline preceded the current financial crisis, Toyota City's fortunes went from...

No One Model for New Global Economy

Yoichi Funabashi March 23, 2009
As the global crisis deepens and countries seek different ways out, devising new global economic institutions would do little to restore confidence. Instead, the institutions in place – the International Monetary Fund, the Bretton Woods system on exchange rates and the World Bank – should take immediate steps to incorporate a rising Asia into their systems of global governance. Otherwise the...

A Global Retreat as Economies Dry Up

Anthony Faiola March 18, 2009
The countries and ports that benefited most from a rapid rise in global trade now feel the most pain from an economic slowdown. In an article for the Washington Post, Anthony Faiola emphasizes the speed of the economic reversal: Freighters and containers of unwanted goods wait in ports, and workers, including educated financiers and poor immigrants, return to home countries to rethink future...

Globalization Disrupted

Nayan Chanda March 17, 2009
Throughout history, global crises have disrupted trade, immigration and other activities that connect far corners of the world and promote wealth. Modern-day governments in wealthy, developed countries had assumed that their institutions, regulations, stockpiles and systems would secure against problems emerging elsewhere in the world. “The acceleration of transport and communication, and reduced...