In The News

How to Make Sense of Plummeting Global Markets

Neil Irwin January 21, 2016
The globe economy is in “reasonably solid state,” according to most leading forecasts as reported by the New York Times. Yet market “volatility and direction are consistent with the prospect of a new crisis or global recession, explains Neil Irwin. The evidence does not yet indicate whether such levels of market turbulence are rational or irrational, he explains, with the S&P 500 falling 9...

The World Is Hemorrhaging Methane, and Now We Can See Where

Christina Nunez January 19, 2016
Since late October, a natural gas storage well in California has been leaking 100,000 pounds of methane per hour. The colorless and odorless gas is hazardous to health and the environment. The Aliso Canyon leak is accidental but many companies deliberately burn off excess natural gas at energy sites, explains Christina Nunez for National Geographic. Researchers with the US National Oceanic and...

A Towering Chinese Debt Mountain Looms Over Markets

Enda Curran January 15, 2016
Slowed growth in the world’s second largest economy, combined with heavy debt and currency volatility, is dragging down global markets. Since 2007, China and other countries responded to the global financial crisis with loose monetary policy. China’s “government is constrained by a credit bubble that has ballooned to $28 trillion in an economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years,” reports...

Warming World Promises More Refugees

Richard D. Lamm January 14, 2016
Climate change combined with war and a growing population could pose challenges of unimaginable magnitude. “Last summer’s Mediterranean crisis, a migration of Biblical proportions from Syria to Europe, is likely merely a preview of the dislocation to come,” writes Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado. “It is not too apocalyptic to consider the possibility that ultimately a warming world...

In Final State of the Union, Obama Lays Out “4 Big Questions” for Future

Gregory Korte January 13, 2016
US President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union addressed trends in globalization long analyzed by YaleGlobal Online: growing global concern and support for policies to stem climate change, the threat of terrorism lurking among civilian populations, increasing reliance on technology and changing nature of work, the need for global cooperation to combat disease, the dangers and distraction of...

The US Faces Rival Powers Waging Hybrid Warfare

Richard Weitz January 12, 2016
Overall, global military spending decreased in 2014 from the previous year, reports the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States spends more than other countries on defense, yet struggles against the skillful use of hybrid tactics by China and Russia, explains Richard Weitz. The senior fellow and director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute...

The New Geo-Economics

Joseph E. Stiglitz January 11, 2016
Global economic growth, offering connections and solutions that have enriched many and lifted more out of poverty, has slowed in recent months. Economist Joseph Stiglitz compares the processes in negotiating two agreements – the global climate agreement approved in Paris and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, yet to be ratified, a trade agreement among 12 nations including the United States, but not...