Psst, will this really work? The Fed’s Ben Bernanke and Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa (Yuriko Nakao/REUTERS)
The Federal Reserve has finally announced what everyone expected – a giant program of quantitative easing aimed at restarting the stalled economic recovery. The idea is to push more money into the economy to …
With all of this incessant talk about the decline of American global influence, we tend to forget that the U.S. is still by far the world’s largest economy, and what happens in the U.S. matters to everyone, everywhere. That’s why people from Beijing to Brasilia are watching the midterms with heightened interest. Shifts in U.S. …
China is the Michael Jordan of emerging markets (Wilson Chu/REUTERS)
China is the Michael Jordan of emerging economies. Just as every up-and-coming basketball hopeful wanted to “be like Mike,” every up-and-coming poor nation wants to “be like China.” And why not? China has boasted an incredible record of alleviating poverty, …
Who Me? America’s efforts to restart the US economy is one of the reasons other countries are contemplating more capital controls (Nicky Loh/REUTERS)
I remember well when Malaysia’s renegade Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad imposed capital controls in 1998 to protect his emerging nation from the ravages of the Asian financial crisis. …
Next to Mao, Ben looks sad (Petar Kujundzic/REUTERS)
The chorus of voices criticizing China’s stubborn resistance to reforming its controversial currency regime and allowing the yuan to appreciate keeps getting louder. Outrage in Washington has been growing, the European Union recently called on China to let the yuan rise, and even …
Tim Geithner could reveal today whether or not his Treasury Department will formally label China a “currency manipulator.” There is mounting political pressure for the U.S. to take stronger action against China’s currency policy. Being perceived as “soft” on China won’t help the Democrats in upcoming November elections. And a …
I was walking about in a quite-hot Barcelona this summer and badly needed a cold drink. In Asia, you never have to worry about finding a bottle of water or Coca-Cola. Small convenience stores sit practically on every corner, either hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop shops, or the bright, boxy chain store variety. Large sections of Tokyo and …
More than two years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and we’re still waiting for the true end to the financial crisis. Sure, officially, the numbers tell us that the Great Recession is over. But the recovery that we find ourselves in isn’t deserving of the name. Unemployment in the developed world remains …
I’m in Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, and everyone here is all worked up over the fate of the local train station. The government plans on demolishing the building, one of the few in this prosperous industrial town to have survived the devastation of World War II, and moving the station underground. An entire new neighborhood would …
A few days ago, I became a permanent resident of Hong Kong. That means I can reside in the city without an employment visa. You need to live in Hong Kong at least seven years to qualify – I’ve been here more than eight. When I first arrived I expected to be here for two or three years, but Hong Kong is that kind of place, where …
In an attempt to reverse a recent, rapid deterioration of investor confidence, the government of Ireland today released new estimates of the costs of rescuing its sickened banking sector. You might want to sit down because the numbers are pretty ugly. Nationalized Anglo Irish Bank, the biggest source of investor concern, will require, in …
Protectionism has been the worst nightmare of policymakers since the earliest days of the financial crisis. It has become an article of faith among economists that protectionist policies during the 1930s exacerbated the Great Depression, and everyone knows full well that adopting similar practices today would have the same disastrous …
