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OTHER REPORTS
Other reports include Working Papers, Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandums, and Policy Options Papers, as well as reports that have been published in cooperation with other organizations. These various reports are posted at the discretion of CFR's president or director of Studies.
October 2009
This Squam Lake Working Group Paper endorses legislation that would give authorities the necessary powers to effect an orderly resolution of large complex financial institutions. As part of this authority, every such institution should be required to create “living wills” that would help authorities address the difficulties that might arise in a resolution.
See more in Financial Crises, Geoeconomics
October 2009
In this CGS/IIGG Working Paper, Jeffry A. Frieden reviews the historical record on the political fallout from the unraveling of macroeconomic imbalances. He warns that the coming adjustments may test the capacity of national governments and international institutions to maintain an open international economic order.
See more in Financial Crises, International Finance
September 2009
In this Center for Geoeconomic Studies Working Paper, Steven Dunaway argues that the world economy faces the prospect of a prolonged period of slower growth. Other sources of demand need to be found to take up the slack left by slower U.S. growth. However, the prospects for this do not look good, as none of the other major economies appear inclined to make the necessary changes in policies to deal with their imbalances and raise their demand.
See more in Financial Crises, International Finance
September 2009
Nigeria's underdeveloped but oil-rich Niger Delta region currently is the site of a crippling insurgency. Fueled by a complex mixture of protest, crime, and political corruption, the network of armed groups that create this instability pose serious problems both for Abuja and for oil-importing countries across the globe. This Working Paper provides insights into these militias' origins, characteristics, and interactions with one another.
See more in Nigeria
August 2009
Egypt is now entering a period of political transition with the expectation that President Hosni Mubarak's almost twenty-eight-year tenure will shortly come to an end. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum assesses the possibility of a troubled leadership succession or an Islamist push for political power, the implications for the United States, and policy steps the U.S. government might take depending on what it determines as its broader policy objectives in Egypt.
See more in Egypt
July 2009
Retirement saving is undergoing a fundamental change as employers shift from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans, such as 401(k) accounts. This Working Paper, the sixth in the Squam Lake Working Group series distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, analyzes the pros and cons of defined contribution plans and recommends measures that will improve the performance of the nation's retirement saving system.
See more in Financial Crises
July 2009
Credit default swaps (CDS) are contracts that provide protection against the risk of default by borrowers. The failure of one important participant in the CDS market can destabilize the financial system by inflicting significant losses on many trading partners simultaneously. A clearinghouse could in theory reduce counterparty risk by standing between the buyer and seller of protection, insulating the counterparties’ exposure to each other’s default. This Working Paper, the fifth in the Squam Lake Working Group series distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, analyzes the market for credit default swaps and makes specific recommendations about appropriate roles for clearinghouses and about how they should be organized.
See more in Financial Crises, Geoeconomics
July 2009
In this Center for Geoeconomic Studies Working Paper, Karen H. Johnson argues that gross financial flows, not net external imbalances, reveal which countries are most critical for global financial stability.
See more in Financial Crises, International Finance
July 2009
This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum examines how crisis scenarios between Ukraine and Russia could unfold, the implications for the United States, and the steps the U.S. government might take both to reduce the prospects of a crisis and manage it should it occur.
See more in Russian Fed., Ukraine
May 2009
In this Center for Geoeconomic Studies Working Paper (an update of their January 2009 paper), Brad W. Setser and Arpana Pandey estimate the true scale of China’s U.S. portfolio and examine how the pace of growth and composition of China’s portfolio have evolved over time.
See more in China, Geoeconomics
May 2009
Iraq is currently in the early stages of a negotiated end to an intense ethnosectarian war. As such, there are several contingencies in which recent, mostly positive trends in Iraq could be reversed, threatening U.S. national interests. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Stephen Biddle assesses four interrelated scenarios in Iraq that could derail the prospects for peace and stability in the short to medium term and posits concrete policy options to limit U.S. vulnerability to the possibility of such reversals.
See more in Iraq, U.S. Strategy and Politics
May 2009
Financial regulations in almost all countries are designed to ensure the soundness of individual institutions, principally commercial banks, against the risk of loss on their assets. This focus on individual firms ignores critical interactions between institutions and can also cause regulators to overlook important changes in the overall financial system. The solution: One regulatory organization in each country should be responsible for overseeing the health and stability of the overall financial system. This Working Paper, the fourth in the Squam Lake Working Group series distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, argues that the central bank should be charged with this important new responsibility.
See more in Financial Crises, Geoeconomics
April 2009
The scale of financing needed to support the U.S. fiscal deficit—together with the Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping U.S. interest rates low to ward off deflation—has revived concerns about a sudden and sharp depreciation of the U.S. dollar. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Brad W. Setser examines potential triggers and indicators of such a crisis and posits concrete policy options to limit U.S. vulnerability to the possibility of a plummeting dollar.
See more in United States, Geoeconomics
April 2009
This Working Paper, a contribution to the aids2031 project, focuses on the future of donor financing for HIV prevention and treatment programs and makes recommendations for what the donor community and national governments can do now to build a foundation that ensures steady, long-term funding for HIV/AIDS and alleviates the impact of future challenges.
See more in Global Health, Foreign Aid
April 2009
In this Policy Options Paper, CFR Senior Fellow Daniel Markey argues that a narrow focus on counterterrorism is insufficient to protect U.S. interests in South Asia and advocates a long-term approach that prioritizes engagement with Pakistan.
See more in Afghanistan, Pakistan
April 2009
This Working Paper, the third in the Squam Lake Working Group series distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, recommends support for a new regulatory hybrid security that will expedite the recapitalization of distressed financial companies. The new instrument resembles long-term debt in normal times, but converts to equity when the financial system and the issuing bank are both under financial stress. The regulatory hybrid security the authors envision would be transparent, less costly to taxpayers, and more effective than the ad hoc measures taken in the current crisis.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises
April 2009
This Working Paper, the second in a series from the Squam Lake Working Group distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, argues that regulators consider systemic effects when setting bank capital requirements. Everything else the same, capital requirements should be proportionately higher for larger banks, banks that hold more illiquid assets, and banks that finance more of their operations with short-term debt. But capital requirements are not free. When designing capital requirements that address systemic concerns, regulators must weigh the costs such requirements impose on banks during good times against the benefit of having more capital in the financial system when a crisis strikes.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises
February 2009
Information about prices and quantities of assets lies at the heart of well-functioning capital markets. In the current financial crisis, it has become clear that many important actors—both firms and regulatory agencies—have not had sufficient information. Distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, this Working Paper proposes a new regulatory regime for gathering and disseminating financial market information. The authors argue that government regulators need a new infrastructure to collect and analyze adequate information from large (systemically important) financial institutions. This new information framework would bolster the government’s ability to foresee, contain, and, ideally, prevent disruptions to the overall financial services industry.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, International Finance
February 2009
Seven years after 9/11, there is still no durable framework for effectively securing the United States against terrorism while also upholding its values. This Working Paper by Daniel B. Prieto calls on President Obama and Congress to engage these issues in a bipartisan fashion and craft comprehensive long-term counterterrorism policies that reaffirm the U.S. commitment to core values; only then will the United States be able to develop the kind of foreign policy necessary to meet the modern terrorist threat.
See more in United States, Terrorism and the Law
January 2009
Though the United States of America faces its toughest budgetary and economic challenges since the Great Depression, it cannot afford to eliminate, or even reduce, its foreign assistance spending. For clear reasons of political influence, national security, global stability, and humanitarian concern the United States must, at a minimum, stay the course in its commitments to global health and development, as well as basic humanitarian relief. In this report, Laurie A. Garrett makes recommendations for the future of foreign aid under a new presidential administration and Congress.
See more in Global Governance, Global Health
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Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
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The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
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Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
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