In The News

Think Twice Before Migrating - The Grass There Won't Always Be Green

Goh Chok Tong May 3, 2004
Singapore seems to be at a low point economically, especially as compared to the emerging regional powerhouses, China and India. However, urges Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Singaporeans should not despair over the country's difficulties. With the brain power, technical skill, and sheer perseverance that Singaporeans possess, they can easily overcome the hard times, Goh says. Most...

Silicon Valley Dons a Brave Face, Despite Worries

S.L. Bachman April 28, 2004
During the 1990s, Silicon Valley reigned supreme as the heart of technological innovation and the birthplace of the information technology revolution. Today, says globalization scholar S.L. Bachman, the tech hub is scrambling to mobilize regional resources to compete in the international technology market it helped to create. Economically, the San Francisco Bay region is recovering from the...

Losing Our Edge?

Thomas L. Friedman April 22, 2004
After talking to high-tech entrepreneurs in California's Silicon Valley, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman felt "a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-à-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation." Executives "complained bitterly" that the...

Cost, Language Barrier Still Keeping Tourists Away

Kaho Shimizu April 20, 2004
Japan wants to attract more tourists but faces many hurdles: a confusing transportation system, limited ATM and currency exchange access, and expensive accommodation. The government has already changed the coding for Tokyo's subway system to allow tourists easier orientation. But changing ATM access will face considerable costs. At the moment, Japan's magnetic strips on bank and credit...

Looking for a Villain, and Finding One in China

Eduardo Porter April 18, 2004
A couple years ago, economists warned that China was exporting deflation to the US. Now that is over, but many still see China as the problem. To some, China is a big cause of inflation, and economists, businessmen and politicians have blamed it for every economic woe. "China is choking off the profits of American companies with its hunger for commodities pushing up the price of raw...

Topsy-Turvy World

R Ravimohan April 16, 2004
When R. Ravimohan, a columnist for India's Business Standard, reads anything about the American outcry over the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries, he blames one root cause: the wide economic disparity between the developed and developing world. "Given the unshakeable viability of the differences in cost structures of different economies," he writes, "it is but natural...

World Set Back 10 Years by Bush's New World Order, Says Blair Aide

Paul Brown April 14, 2004
In a recent statement, the British prime minister's senior advisor Jonathan Porritt says US President George W. Bush has had a "devastating impact" on the world's work on sustainable development. Porrit accused the Bush administration's bad policies in a wide range of issues related to sustainable development, including climate change, international aid, family planning,...