In The News

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...

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...

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,...

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...

For East Asia, Crisis Prompts a Rethinking of Dependence on Exports

Keith Bradsher March 5, 2009
For many years, East Asian exporters in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan have enjoyed a massive growth in surplus. But all that has changed. As trade withers away, exporters in East Asia are suffering because consumers, retailers and other importers in the West are cutting back on their purchases, orders and have even gone to the extreme of stopping orders altogether. The question is, how to...

Fixing Global Finance: An Interview with Martin Wolf

March 5, 2009
Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator and Associate Editor for the Financial Times, talks about his new book “Fixing Global Finance,” and the current financial crisis. In this interview with Nayan Chanda, editor of YaleGlobal, Wolf explains why global imbalances caused the financial crises, outlines the steps for ending this destructive cycle, and offers suggestions on how to help ensure...