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October 28, 2009
CFR's Marc Levinson says further international coordination on financial regulation may do more harm than good and expresses doubts about federal restrictions on executive pay.
See more in Business & Foreign Policy, Financial Crises
October 22, 2009
Morgan Stanley executive Stephen Roach says China's undervalued currency is a "red herring" in the debate over global imbalances and that policymakers should instead focus on China's social safety net and boosting U.S. savings.
See more in United States, China, Economics
October 19, 2009
CFR's Benn Steil says the dollar's continuing decline could result in higher prices for major imports like energy and, in a worst-case scenario, might lead to higher inflation and interest rates.
See more in Financial Crises, Trade
October 6, 2009
Analyst Edwin Truman says the IMF is gaining power but its influence will depend on its assertiveness with countries like the United States and China, as well as the pace of its own reforms.
See more in Financial Crises, International Organizations
October 5, 2009
CFR's Michael Levi says the Obama administration faces tough negotiations on a global climate change agreement at the December Copenhagen meeting without clear support from Congress. But he says Obama has other legislative options.
See more in Energy/Environment, Climate Change
September 24, 2009
CFR's Roger M. Kubarych says the G-20 summit will find leaders relieved that the worst of the global economic crisis is over but divided over substantive changes to the world's financial architecture.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, International Organizations
September 10, 2009
Despite early signs of a global economic recovery, CFR Steven Dunaway says it's too early to determine how lasting the rebound might be. "The world economy is not out of the woods yet," he says.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, International Organizations
August 12, 2009
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says U.S. domestic climate legislation might pass in 2010, after Congress deals with health care reform. But a global climate agreement, set to be discussed in Copenhagen in December 2009, is dependent on U.S. policy, she says.
See more in United States, Energy/Environment, Climate Change
July 8, 2009
Jeb Bush says action by Congress on immigration reform faces more favorable conditions than previous attempts, but the complexity of the reforms needed remain a challenge.
See more in Immigration, Congress
May 20, 2009
Gillian Tett of the Financial Times assesses the new U.S. plan for regulating derivatives markets and says regulators must balance the need to create transparency against the risk of stifling financial innovation.
See more in Financial Crises, International Finance
May 8, 2009
CFR's Roger Kubarych gauges what the results of much anticipated stress tests will mean for the future of the U.S. banking industry.
See more in United States, Financial Crises
April 3, 2009
CFR's Sebastian Mallaby says the G-20 summit could mark the beginnings of a profound shift in global financial regulation. But he says challenges lurk in the way the IMF is funded and how it monitors economic governance.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, International Organizations
April 1, 2009
Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese businessman who promotes good governance and entrepreneurship in Africa, says foreign investors, whether they are corporations, funds, or donor nations, must take the lead in bringing transparency and accountability to Africa's government and business sectors.
February 25, 2009
CFR economic expert Sebastian Mallaby credits President Obama with highlighting the long-term structural reforms needed to repair the U.S. economy and competitiveness, but says the scope of reforms may be too ambitious.
See more in United States, Financial Crises
February 3, 2009
Award-winning historian Walter Russell Mead says, "The key political question of the twenty-first century is, 'How does the U.S.-China relationship develop?'"
See more in United States, China, Financial Crises, Industrial Policy, International Organizations
December 12, 2008
Elizabeth Economy, CFR's director of Asian Studies, says that China's economy is now "losing steam very quickly" and that the "global economic crisis is going to make it much harder for China to address its own domestic economic problems."
See more in China, Economics, Financial Crises
November 11, 2008
CFR's Peter Kenen discusses the current financial crisis and what will come of the upcoming international financial summit.
See more in United States, EU, Economics, International Finance
November 5, 2008
CFR President Richard N. Haass, who worked on previous presidential transitions, says that given the current world situation, he believes the first priority for President-elect Barack Obama lies in "the financial and economic side," and that "the near-term foreign policy challenges are probably Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, [and] a little bit of Iraq."
See more in United States, U.S. Election 2008
October 24, 2008
Daniel Markey, a former State Department specialist on South Asia, says Pakistan "is going through another series of really tough times" brought on by the economic downturn that has hit the country, and by the continuing problems fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
See more in Pakistan, Economics
October 21, 2008
The Financial Times' Martin Wolf argues that massive accumulations of currency reserves enabled housing bubbles in developed economies and sparked the current financial crisis. The shakeout, Wolf says, could take years.
See more in United States, China, Economics, International Finance, International Organizations
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In Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, the authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization.
In The Closing of the American Border, Edward Alden goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the Bush administration’s struggle to balance security and openness in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
In Regional Monetary Integration, Peter B. Kenen poses an important question: Should various country groups follow the lead of the European Monetary Union and form similar full-fledged monetary unions?
In contrast to conventional wisdom, the growth in government spending and heightened regulation during the Great Depression may have done much to slow economic recovery.
In this report, Benn Steil shows that the financial crisis is the inevitable bust of a classic credit boom, and explains how monetary, taxation, and home ownership promotion policy combined with other feaures of the financial system to fuel an unsustainable buildup in debt. He recommends significant reforms to reverse the debt financing bias and make the system more resilient to falls in asset prices.
In order for policymakers to tackle today’s global economic crisis, this report argues, they must go beyond bailouts and stimulus packages and focus on one of the crisis's root causes: imbalances between savings and investment in major countries.
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