Unfair trade practices and poor working conditions in the developing world, issues that dominated the WEF agenda a decade ago, haven’t been raised at all. Instead, the conversation is acutely focused on the plight of the Western worker.
Here in snowy Davos, the topic of job creation has been about as popular as the passed canapés and free champagne. Not surprisingly, President Obama’s latest jobs proposals — a combination of taxing outsourcing corporations and reviving U.S. manufacturing — haven’t been as popular. It’s not hard to see why.
During this year’s TIME at Davos debate, our international editor Jim Frederick posed some colossal questions: Is 20th century capitalism failing 21st century society? And if so, who’s responsible and what should we do to fix it? I’d love to say the panelists squared away all the answers with a succinct five-point plan. But neither they [...]
The Bundesbank managed to auction 3.9 billion euros worth of six-month debt at a negative interest rate yesterday. That means investors, for the first time in history, were so eager to finance Germany’s debt that they paid the country to do it.
David Cameron’s decision to wield his cherished veto in Brussels last week added more high drama to the endless euro saga
Standard and Poor’s decision to threaten eurozone countries with ratings downgrades may seem like bad timing. But if it keeps markets on edge, European leaders might be scared enough to crank out some real solutions, rather than the half-baked measures already on tap.
The latest act in the debt drama unfolding in Europe right now can only be described as operatic. Italian bond yields have risen to euro era highs, markets around the world are roiled (US equities suffered their worst one day drop in three months yesterday), and the infamous Silvio Berlusconi has agreed—finally—to step down as [...]
The lines being drawn between the ultra-right Tea Party and its nearest complement in the realm of public furor, Occupy Wall Street, are curious. My colleague Michael Scherer over at Swampland describes the parallels as follows: In its broadest outlines, this new outpouring of protest is driven by the same fuel that gave fire to [...]
News of this year’s Nobel prize winners in economics came in today, against the backdrop of a possible second global economic crisis. Two American macro-economists, Thomas Sargent of New York University and Christopher Sims at Princeton, claimed victory for their work on how our expectations and policies actually impact the economy. So what can these economic [...]
There’s been a lot of talk this week in China about whether it should swoop in to save the eurozone. Loading up on Italian debt is one possibility, which could keep Europe’s overall bailout tab in check and boost market confidence. Another idea is to create an EU-China bond. Unlike an EU-only bond (a concept [...]
