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December 3, 2008
Bloomberg.com
After the National Bureau of Economic Research issued a routine report on our recent troubles, the Dow dropped 7.7 percent. In this Bloomberg op-ed, Amity Shlaes suggests that one reason markets reacted so negatively to a backward looking meter is the high standard set by our success in taming the business cycle since World War II.
November 29, 2008
Newsweek
In this Newsweek article, David Victor writes that in all the bad economic news, a new face of green is emerging. The green view based on small sources and market power will give way to one based on scale and subsidies.
See more in Economics, Energy/Environment
November 29, 2008
Wall Street Journal
In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Amity Shlaes responds to the claim that the trouble with the New Deal was that it didn't spend enough. Instead, she argues that massive government spending takes away jobs in the private sector.
See more in Economics, U.S. Election 2008
November 24, 2008
Washington Post
Sebastian Mallaby says that desperate times demand creative remedies. Fortunately, Obama has chosen to surround himself with experienced technocrats-pragmatists who excel at imaginative improvisation.
See more in Economics, U.S. Election 2008
November 21, 2008
Financial Times
In this Financial Times op-ed, Benn Steil argues that we need a "safe-fail" approach to preventing financial crises, aimed at limiting systemic damage after financial institutions fail.
See more in Economics
November 20, 2008
Nikkei Financial Daily
In this Nikkei article, Roger Kubarych says that the major threat facing the global economy and financial markets is an enormous decrease in the capacity for risk taking.
See more in Economics
November 20, 2008
Wall Street Journal
In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Matthew Slaughter argues that a bailout for America's Big Three automobile companies could come with substantial costs, including decreased foreign direct investment into the U.S. and diminished access to foreign markets.
See more in Financial Crises, Congress
November 13, 2008
Washington Post
The financial insurance scheme known as the IMF has not kept up with the volume of capital flooding through the world's system. Sebastian Mallaby argues that it is time to radically update this insurance scheme and that government commitments to the IMF should be tripled.
See more in International Organizations
November 10, 2008
New York Post
Many of the economic reforms under discussion now, including the fiscal stimulus and infrastructure spending, were central in the original New Deal package. But as Amity Shlaes argues in this New York Post op-ed, many of these reforms didn't work well then, and some failed outright.
See more in Financial Crises, U.S. Strategy and Politics
November 8, 2008
Wall Street Journal
Richard Haass writes that "what happens in the economic realm will spill over into the political and strategic ones."
See more in Financial Crises, U.S. Strategy and Politics
October 26, 2008
Washington Post
Sebastian Mallaby discusses how the financial crisis has shifted from scene to scene with terrifying speed. The crisis has now migrated into parts of the financial system which are hard to rescue-emerging markets and unregulated hedge funds.
See more in Financial Crises
October 25, 2008
Wall Street Journal
In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Sebastian Mallaby writes that persuading China to change its currency policy would be a worthy goal for a 21st-Century Bretton Woods. It will be up to the two great powers -- the U.S. and China -- to fashion a deal that brings China into the heart of the multilateral system.
See more in China, Economics, Financial Crises, International Organizations
October 20, 2008
The Washington Post
The Europeans have pressed successfully for a new Bretton Woods summit in response to the global financial crisis, but the Bretton Woods analogy is contrived. Sebastian Mallaby argues that while there is a role for global cooperation, it is worth remembering that after the last global crisis in 1997-98, the only important reforms were national ones.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, Global Governance, International Organizations
October 10, 2008
The Washington Post
Sebastian Mallaby says that federal policy needs to pay more attention to ordinary families now that Wall Street has gotten its bailout. The fastest and fairest way to help ordinary people is via a budget stimulus package.
See more in Financial Crises
October 6, 2008
The Washington Post
In this Washington Post op-ed, Sebastian Mallaby argues that blaming deregulation for the financial mess is both misguided and dangerous. One of the big challenges for the next president will be to defend markets against the inevitable backlash that follows this crisis.
See more in Economics, Financial Crises, U.S. Election 2008
October 1, 2008
Bloomberg.com
The Treasury bail-out plan threatens to shift financial jobs from New York to Washington. In this Bloomberg op-ed, Amity Shlaes warns critics of New York that taking down Wall Street also weakens them by leaving Washington with no opposition.
See more in Financial Crises, U.S. Strategy and Politics
October 1, 2008
Washington Post
Michael Gerson discusses how the government has shown a lack of ability to handle the current financial crisis.
See more in Financial Crises
September 26, 2008
Washington Post
After the nationalization of Fannie, Freddie, and AIG, it is too late to worry about the government owning chunks of the financial system, says Sebastian Mallaby. Paulson must use the $700 billion fund to tackle the problem directly by recapitalizing the banking system.
See more in United States, Financial Crises
September 24, 2008
Bloomberg
The financial crisis could lead the United States to turn inward and ignore challengers such as Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez. However, in this Bloomberg op-ed, Amity Shlaes warns against this temptation and points out that foreign issues have a way of becoming immediate as well.
See more in Venezuela, Russian Fed., Economics, Financial Crises, Global Governance
September, 2008
Nikkei Financial Daily
In this Nikkei article, Roger Kubarych discusses the potential effects of the financial meltdown on the 'real' economy. He argues that there are powerful forces already at work that will suppress business activity.
See more in United States, Financial Crises
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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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