In The News

Trading Ritual and Reality

Alan Beattie September 25, 2007
Trade agreements are often contentious, raising heated protests from those fearing job loss and eagerness from businesspeople anticipating record profits. Yet since major reductions in manufacturing tariffs were instituted following World War II, trade agreements have been more about style than substance. The decline in the importance of bilateral and regional treaties can be attributed to the...

Global Risk of US Credit Crisis – Part II

David Crane September 24, 2007
The globalization of finance has made vast amounts of capital available to many across the world, allowing select leading firms and individuals to become fabulously wealthy. But a lack of effective regulation and opaqueness of many financial instruments also exposed many firms and individuals to enormous risk. Globally connected financial markets and high-speed technology mean that one nation’s...

Still Hanging On

Satoshi Kambayashi September 24, 2007
American foreign policy may have an independent streak, but the US depends on huge amounts of foreign capital. Despite some recent dire reports, the dollar’s recent decline has been small, considering recent volatility in the markets and tightening of credit worldwide, reports Satoshi Kambayashi. America’s tendency to accumulate debt contributes to the dollar’s dropping value. Kambayashi points...

Global Risk of US Credit Crisis – Part I

David Dapice September 21, 2007
Uncertainty swirling in the US financial markets and the Federal Reserve's rate cut leave world players, along with US homeowners and investors, in a quandary. In the first part of this series, economist David Dapice analyzes the global implications as the uncertainty and lack of confidence associated with the credit crunch spread beyond US borders, hurting banks in Europe and investors in...

Google Urges UN to Set Global Internet Privacy Rules

Bobbie Johnson September 21, 2007
The introduction of Google Street View – photographic images of street-level landmarks and people – sparked concern from consumers about loss of privacy and abuse of the internet. Internet users around the world are already alarmed by poor security displayed by some internet banking and other online services, so technology companies, including Google, prod international organizations such as the...

Managing Globalization

Daniel Altman September 21, 2007
The global impact of the US subprime mortgage crisis prompts some commentators to question if globalization is a stabilizing or destabilizing force on world markets. Increased interconnectedness has certainly improved the flow of money and credit, contributing to the creation of great wealth, but also magnifies the effects when investors overuse a risky tool, like bundles of high-risk, high-...

Disowned by Mentor, Bin Laden Seeks New Pastures

Fawaz A. Gerges September 19, 2007
Just before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden released a new videotape, in which he adopts a neo-Marxist posture, suggesting that mortgage debt, global warming, growing wage inequality and other ills are a result of greed from multinational corporations and politics of the West. “The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations...