In The News

The Rising Risk of a Hard Landing

Stephen Roach November 4, 2005
In 2005, America’s deficit will account for 70 per cent of the total deficit positions in the global economy, By contrast, it will take ten countries to account for 70 percent of the global surplus. While Washington wants to shift the blame, this disequilibrium is largely the result of a US economy short on savings, writes Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. And because of the...

European Luxury Brands Challenge Chinese Pirates

Jonathan Watts November 4, 2005
Centuries ago, China exported its luxurious silks out to the world on camel caravans over the meandering Silk Road. Now, Chinese venues like the Silk Market in Beijing offer counterfeit luxury goods to tourists at a fraction of their legal cost. In the past decade, the Asian giant has become the source of seventy percent of the world’s counterfeit products, frustrating foreign businesses and...

Summit Rhetoric Soars While Economy Sinks

Jeffrey E. Garten November 3, 2005
As the fourth annual Summit of the Americas get under way in Mar Del Plata, a pressing question lingers in the background: Are regional meetings truly worth the trouble? According to Jeffrey E. Garten, Juan Trippe professor in the practice of international trade and finance at The Yale School of Management, world leaders' efforts would be better spent at home, developing and implementing...

Prepare Now for Sino-Indian Trade Boom

Niraj Dawar October 31, 2005
China and India are natural trading partners, but years of political hostility have prevented the two from taking full advantage of their complementary relationship. That is changing: Sino-Indian trade may skyrocket from $14 billion annual in 2004 to as much as $450 billion in 2010. Multinational corporations now need to change their business models if they hope to profit from this new surge...

How the West Came to Run Islamic Banks

Owen Matthews October 29, 2005
It may come as a surprise to some that when wealthy Muslims have millions of oil dollars to invest they are increasingly turning to subsidiaries of giant Western banks like Citigroup to manage their money. Attracted by oil money and the desire to participate in the Middle East’s fastest growth in a generation, Western banks have successfully established Islamic subsidiaries that are dominating...

The Fate of ‘Made in the USA’

Robert J. Samuelson October 28, 2005
The specter of declining industry has loomed over the USA in recent years. As the imperatives of free trade and globalization send jobs and factories across borders and beyond oceans, the American worker and the American CEO both recognize they’re in a bind. American manufacturing, once the hallmark of the nation’s booming business, now faces a tenuous future. Robert J. Samuelson, writing for...

Egypt Pushes to Modernize Industry

October 25, 2005
Egypt is investing US$35 million in its National Supplier Development Program in an effort to prepare its protectionist economy for gradually-increasing openness to international trade. The venture targets small- and medium-size Egyptian businesses supplying larger "mother companies" whose size and efficiency allow them to compete far more effectively in the global marketplace....