In The News

Banks Cash In on Inversion Deals Intended to Elude Taxes

Andrew Ross Sorkin August 6, 2014
Big investment banks are financing merger deals that encourage US corporations to relocate headquarters overseas to dodge US taxes. The banks anticipate “nearly $1 billion in fees over the last three years advising and persuading American companies to move the address of their headquarters abroad (without actually moving),” reports Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor of DealBook for the New York Times....

Beijing Invites US to Link Up Over Africa

Geoff Dyer August 6, 2014
As the United States hosts the first ever summit of nearly 50 African heads of states and governments in a bid to regain influence in the continent China has invited the United States to cooperate in developing Africa with more finance and infrastructure, writes Geoff Dyer for the Financial Times. Both countries have shown a desire in recent years to invest in the poor continent that is one of...

Wakeup Call for Europe

Philippe Legrain August 5, 2014
Europe has squandered its potential with crushing debt, declining living standards, high unemployment and little innovation. “Europe isn’t just falling further behind the United States; it also faces ever-greater competition from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Korea and other emerging economies – not just in lower-end manufacturing but also in higher-tech sectors,” writes economist...

The Tale of Two Middle Classes

Branko Milanovic July 31, 2014
Thanks to globalization and trade, middle-class incomes have more than doubled in countries like China and Indonesia, but still remain a fraction of those earned by the middle class in Europe or the United States . Meanwhile, in Europe, the United States and Japan, incomes for the middle class have stagnated even as their richest citizens accrue more wealth, profiting by investing in...

China Plays a Big Role as US Treasury Yields Fall

Min Zeng July 18, 2014
China has stepped up its purchases in the U.S. treasury market – that despite tensions and expectations that the country would pull back. “The Chinese government has increased its buying of U.S. Treasury this year at the fastest pace since records began more than three decades ago, data released Wednesday show,” reports Min Zeng for the Wall Street Journal. “The buying has been fueled by China...

Theorist Eric Maskin: Globalization Is Increasing Inequality

July 15, 2014
Waves of trade and globalization can lift average incomes and reduce inequality, but that requires intervention to prevent rewards landing in only a few hands. Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin of Harvard University points to two types of inequality for World Bank News: In the more tolerable case, only select industries and their workers benefit from increased demand, and “In the ‘worse’ version, the...

Telangana Illegal Immigrants in Iraq in No Man’s Land

TNN July 14, 2014
Around 15,000 illegal migrants from India, according to Gulf Returnees' Welfare Association, GRWA, are trapped in Iraq, and their families are scrambling for official help with their safe return, gathering documents to establish their nationality at the Indian embassy. Many workers were illegally sent with “dummy” visas into Iraq to work for US soldiers as the Indian government had imposed...