The Economist developed a multimedia feature about the rich world’s rapidly aging population and the anticipated economic consequences. “At present, the developed countries on average have about four people of working age for every person over 65. But by 2050 this will have come down to only two workers for every pensioner.” With people living […]
Today the American Dollar was met with both encouraging and potentially disheartening news. First, the Dollar rose against the Australian Dollar, Swiss Franc and Yen as China announced that the USD will continue to remain the world’s leading trade currency. In addition, Beijing said it will not make changes to its foreign-exchange reserves. This comes […]
Despite the disputed election results and events of the last two weeks, diplomacy remains America’s best option with Iran. In some of his strongest words about Iran’s government, President Obama said on Friday that “there is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of […]
Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, argues in his latest op-ed that Russia has wasted the financial crisis. “Oil prices rebounded from $30 to $70 a barrel too quickly, so the pressure for Russia to really reform and diversify its economy is off,” writes Mr. Friedman. “The struggle for Russia’s post-Communist economic […]
Whether or not Russia is a rising power (and it’s been suffering on the economic front lately), it certainly does have a national drinking problem. The British medical journal The Lancet produced a study on worldwide use of alcohol and its relationship to cause of death. It discovered a sobering statistic: that 1 in every […]
Why should we trust them? Economists in think tanks the world over got it wrong before this crisis. Now, many of them point to the “Black Swan” event, the large-impact, hard-to-predict rare event, to explain away their flawed work and keep their jobs. Yet the data were there – reversion of U.S. households to […]
The Great Recession was supposed to be the death of the decoupling debate. The theory that emerging markets were no longer dependent on developed countries for growth – and in some way insulated from the financial troubles in the West – was discredited as no one was left untouched by the economic crisis. Arvind Subramanian, […]
Who should be included in the group of the world’s biggest emerging markets? Sure, the grouping could be the BRIC, BIC or even IC, but maybe it should be the iBRIC. According to a report in Bloomberg News, Morgan Stanley believes Indonesia should be included in the so-called BRIC countries along with Brazil, Russia, India […]
Is the global balance of power shifting from West to East? Minxin Pei, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues in the latest issue of Foreign Policy that the hype about America’s decline and Asia’s rise is premature. Think Again: Asia’s Rise challenges the basic assumptions made about Asia’s emergence as a […]
China-Russia relations have markedly improved since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but potential problems between the neighboring giants loom on the horizon. David Shambaugh, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, published an opinion piece this week in The New York Times saying that […]
In an op-ed published in papers in Brazil, Russia, India and China, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva argued that the BRIC Summit demonstrated a “commitment to help provide fresh answers to old problems and to offer bold leadership in the face of inertia and indecision.” “BRIC is more than just a grouping of […]
I applaud his hands-off approach, really quite unique for an American president, ensuring that conservatives in Iran have the least possible evidence of American interference in Iran’s affairs as possible. Yet the president should be careful in holding forth on foreign policy analytics, as he is not some snarky blogger seeking to impress readers, but rather the President of the United States…[…]
Sadjadpour: We have to get inside the head of Ayatollah Khamenei…his world view is very clear. When you’re under siege, never compromise. Because if you compromise it’s going to project weakness. If he orders a mayor clampdown, I think we may start to see fissures within the regime’s shock troops. […]
It seems all the news is buzzing about it. BRIC is suddenly real. Its first-ever summit, coinciding with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Yekaterinburg (see my last post) has launched the 4-nation bloc onto the world stage and has elevated the acronym BRIC into the realm of common diplomatic parlance. Some news sources are […]
My colleague David Kampf pointed out that the BRIC leaders are meeting tomorrow in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Before the BRIC meeting, however, an equally important and significant meeting took place today in the same location. The six heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met for a small summit. The summit will continue tomorrow […]