In The News

China Property Developers Seek US Growth

Pan Kwan Yuk May 8, 2013
Chinese property developers are taking a lead from wealthy Chinese investors and state-owned Chinese banks by investing in US properties. Xinyuan Real Estate is planning a condominium development in a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood. “With Beijing redoubling its efforts to rein in housing prices – most recently unveiling plans for a tougher real estate capital gains tax in March – the pressure is...

Rescuing the European Model

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller May 2, 2013
Europe has suffered through a debt crisis, but governments are trimming, not abandoning, social welfare programs. Such modifications could become a model for economic globalization around the globe, suggests Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, a senior research fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. Europe is reducing budgets while preserving social protections for the future...

OECD Sounds Fresh Warning on Japan

Ben McLannahan April 23, 2013
Controlling debt should be a top challenge for Japan, the world’s third largest economy, suggests the OECD. Stimulus spending offers potential for economic growth but “should be accompanied by a detailed ‘blueprint’ to put the country’s finances on a more stable footing,” reports Ben McLannahan for the Financial Times. Japan’s debt is predicted to be well more than double its gross domestic...

China Targets Greenland for Mining

Will Hickey April 18, 2013
Tight profit margins in the mining industry – along with consolidation among large multinationals, huge capital investments, high-tech automation and rigid equipment maintenance contracts – have reduced job creation for nations with natural resources. Greenland, with 57,000 citizens, mostly indigenous, has vast deposits of minerals. A logical move would be for Greenlanders to rely on Danish...

How Globalization Went Pop, What It Means for Workers

Charles Davi April 16, 2013
Concepts of entropy may assist in understanding globalization’s ways and its rate of speed, suggests attorney Charles Davi in the Atlantic. Entropy, as law of physics, suggests that nature and energy are in flux – orderly concentrations spread into disorder. Information entropy is a method for measuring diffusion. By analyzing global GDP among nations in 1990 – and nations’ specific contributions...

US Could Be World’s Most Populous Country

Joseph Chamie April 15, 2013
Nations that manage to satisfy a large population politically, economically, socially can become beacons of hope for the rest of the world. The US is the world’s third most populated country, trailing China and India, but could aim to become most populated by the end of the century: An eightfold increase in annual immigration would lead to a fivefold increase in the US population, explains...

Abenomics and the Japanese Economy

Beina Xu April 9, 2013
While Japan prospered throughout the 1980s, it’s since become mired in deflation, with weak consumer spending and low growth. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to implement new economic policies and jolt his recession-riddled country out of the deflationary malaise. Beina Xu of the Council on Foreign Relations analyzes the history of Japan’s economy and examines Abe’s grand Keynesian-...