In The News

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

Tim Berners-Lee November 26, 2010
In just 20 years, the world has come to take the instant connections of the worldwide web for granted. The web’s creator – Tim Berners-Lee – lists emerging threats to the vast store of linked data in an essay for Scientific American, including fragmentation, exclusivity by social networking sites like Facebook, slowing traffic to non-customers and monitoring individual online habits. The essay is...

Can China Afford to Confront the World? – Part I

Jonathan Fenby November 25, 2010
China’s emersion into free-market capitalism, starting in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping, was gradual and cautious. Now the world’s second largest economy, China often clashes with its largest trade partner, the United States, most recently over currency revaluation measures at the G20 meeting in Seoul. This two-part YaleGlobal series analyzes China’s new assertiveness, both regionally and with the US...

The World Is Adrift as Nations Skirmish

Kishore Mahbubani November 23, 2010
As the world becomes totally integrated, organizing principles and institutional structures have not kept up. Members of the G-20, the global group of powerful economies, continue to jockey, avoiding the tough assessments and sacrifices required to resolve pressing global issues from climate change and terrorism to economic crises. Former Singapore diplomat and author Kishore Mahbubani relies on...

Cholera, Fear Spread Beyond the Border

Fred Tasker, Frances Robles November 19, 2010
Soon after the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, world public health officials predicted that poor sanitation and disrupted services could lead to an outbreak of disease. Cholera now spread rapidly throughout the country, killing more than 1000 Haitians and crossing borders into the Dominican Republic and the United States. Thousands more are sickened and violent riots have broken out in...

If You Thought the Bank Bailout Was Bad, Wait Until the Mortgage Defaults Hit Home

Morgan Kelly November 16, 2010
Ireland’s decision in September to borrow from the European Central Bank to repay €55 billion in bonds of bankrupt Irish banks calmed markets for the time being. The outcome satisfied large European banks that held the bonds, but left the Irish government with an open-ended commitment to cover losses amounting to more than 20 percent of GDP. Writing for the Irish Times, economist Morgan Kelly...

Debt Plan Ideas Draw Scorn of Liberals and Tea Party

Jackie Calmes November 15, 2010
A debt commission appointed by US President Barack Obama released a deficit-reduction draft plan with a long list of cuts in the federal workforce, defense and entitlement programs – along with simplifying the tax code, lowering tax rates for individuals and corporations while eliminating many tax breaks. The US budget ballooned under Obama's watch: Rescuing the economy from global crisis...

The G20: Captive in the Prison of Mercantilism

Ernesto Zedillo November 13, 2010
The G20 meeting of the world’s major economies concluded in Seoul without a serious plan for coordinating macroeconomic policies. Since the first G20 meeting in November 2008, global leaders have recognized that inconsistent, poorly coordinated policies spurred the global economic crisis along. But behaving like the mercantilists of old rather than world powers in the 21st century – delivering a...