In The News

There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS

Charles P. Pierce November 20, 2015
High-cost military equipment like fighter jets or missile defense shields won’t stop coordinated terrorist attacks like those in Paris against youth enjoying city life on a Friday night. Intrusive surveillance won’t prevent brothers, roommates or loners contemplating suicide and plotting murder, argues Charles Pierce for Esquire: “Abandoning the Enlightenment values that produced democracy will...

Is It Time for Global Money?

Larry Hatheway and Alexander Friedman November 18, 2015
A fragmented set of currencies pose some risks, argue Larry Hatheway and Alexander Friedman for Project Syndicate, and a global currency could reduce currency wars and increase efficiency and price transparency. But such a currency is unlikely because the system would require legitimacy unavailable beyond the level of national-state. “At the supra-national level, legitimacy remains highly...

G20 Leaders Endorse Crackdown on Tax Evasion

November 18, 2015
Global leaders are pledging to crack down on tax evasion and also work on sustainable growth. The group of the world’s 20 largest economies, including the European Union and 19 countries, “committed to the implementation of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project (BEPS) which closes gaps that allow corporate profits to ‘disappear’ or to be artificially shifted to low or no tax environments...

Goldman Fund Walks Away From BRICS Era

Ben McLannahan November 10, 2015
The economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, with 42 percent of the world’s population, totaled about 22 percent of global gross domestic product in 2015, as projected by the International Monetary Fund. The US economy represents the same share of global GDP with about one-tenth of the BRICS’s population. A former chief economist of the investment bank Goldman Sachs coined the...

China’s New Economic Plan Tackles the Rebalancing Puzzle

Stephen S. Roach November 10, 2015
Early reports on China’s Five-Year Plan outlining the government’s strategic priorities for 2016 to 2020 indicate preparations for slowed yet more sustainable economic growth. The plan involves ongoing transition toward an economy that promotes service industries, private consumption, innovation and entrepreneurship. The plan endorses a diversified economy, emphasizing quality rather than...

What to Do About Debt

Richard Kozul-Wright November 9, 2015
The world must prepare for higher interest rates. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates 2014 global debt at $199 trillion, more than 2.5 times global GDP. “Servicing these debts will most likely become increasingly difficult over the coming years, especially if growth continues to stagnate, interest rates begin to rise, export opportunities remain subdued, and the collapse in commodity prices...

Is China the Next Mexico?

Jorge Guajardo November 5, 2015
China’s political and economic transformations should be compared with that of Mexico, suggests Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, in an essay for Zócalo Public Square. In the 1990s, during the negotiations for the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, analysts cheered Mexico’s economic expertise and openness to free trade by the ruling party with its lock on power. “Lost in all...