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November 2, 2009
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by CFR Senior Fellow Michael A. Levi, author of Deterring State Sponsorship of Nuclear Terrorism, along with other resources to supplement the text. In this Council Special Report, Dr. Levi assesses the state of nuclear security in several vulnerable countries and examines how different deterrent threats would affect the dynamics of cooperation and competition to improve nuclear security.
August 12, 2009
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by CFR Senior Fellow Edward Alden, author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11, along with other resources to supplement the text. In this book, Mr. Alden examines the complicated interplay between the United States' need for homeland security and economic openness in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
See more in United States, Immigration
March 13, 2009
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by CFR Senior Fellow Michael A. Levi, author of On Nuclear Terrorism, along with other resources to supplement the text. In this CFR book, Dr. Levi examines one of the greatest national security threats of our time: terrorist groups armed with nuclear weapons, and argues that only a broad-based and multi-layered defense can be effective in confronting it.
March 9, 2009
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by Michael A. Levi, director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report, Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Policy, along with other resources to supplement the text. This report lays out a U.S. negotiating proposal for a global climate accord, including what the United States should be willing to offer and what it should expect others to do in order to confront climate change.
See more in Climate Change, Energy, U.S. Strategy and Politics
November 20, 2008
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, along with other resources to supplement the text. In her book, Miss Shlaes asserts that the real question about the Depression is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II, but why the Depression lasted so long. She argues that federal intervention between 1929 and 1940 unnecessarily deepened and prolonged the Depression.
See more in United States, Financial Crises
Updated: September 2007
Academic Module
This module features teaching notes by CFR senior fellow Jagdish N. Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization, along with other resources to supplement the text. In this new edition of his popular book, Bhagwati argues that, when properly regulated, globalization can be the most powerful force for social good in the world today.
See more in Economics
February 2006
Academic Module
As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governments—most notably the United States—increasingly came to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries. But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders.
See more in Emerging Markets, International Finance, U.S. Strategy and Politics
October 18, 2009
Article
Washington Post
Edward Alden writes that the Department of Homeland Security "has yet to become a whole that adds up to more than its parts," reviewing books by its first two secretaries, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff.
See more in Defense/Homeland Security, Terrorism, Organization of Government
June 19, 2009
Article
Slate
Michael A. Levi argues that a price on carbon would provide the United States energy security and prod the Canadian oil sands industry to clean up its emissions act.
See more in North America, Energy Security
Spring 2009
Article
Issues in Science and Technology
Michael A. Levi reviews Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? by Brian Michael Jenkins.
See more in Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Terrorism
Winter 2009
Article
Harvard International Review
Benn Steil argues that the world has no attractive alternatives to the current dollar-based international monetary system, but that the dollar's days of coasting on the accomplishments of the Volcker Fed are over. The Fed must demonstrate to the world anew that the dollar is a reliable long-term store of value.
See more in Financial Crises, International Finance
March 2, 2009
Article
WirtschaftsWunder
Jagdish Bhagwati weighs in on global economic conditions in an interview with Financial Times Deutschland.
January 8, 2009
Article
The Vancouver Sun
In this excerpt from The Closing of the American Border, Edward Alden writes that George Bush came to office as the most pro-immigrant president in modern U.S. history. Yet he presided over a war on terrorism that has been waged through anti-immigrant measures.
See more in Homeland Security, Immigration, Counterterrorism
January 8, 2009
Article
China Security
Brad W. Setser writes about the United States' dependency on China as its largest creditor. He argues that the U.S. government should look to transition to a world in which more U.S. investment is financed by the United States' own savings.
See more in China, Geoeconomics, International Finance
October 2008
Article
Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Daniel S. Hall, Michael A. Levi, William A. Pizer, and Takahiro Ueno look at policy options for encouraging cooperation between the developed and developing world on combating climate change.
See more in Climate Change, Treaties
August 19, 2008
Article
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is in some ways an anti-Wikipedia. In this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, Amity Shlaes writes that when it comes to ideas, and the election, NBER remains a significant source of value creation in the hunt for a philosophy of content.
March 26, 2008
Article
YaleGlobal
In this YaleGlobal piece, Amity Shlaes and Gaurav Tiwari examine entrepreneurship and oil wealth in various countries and how these factors relate to a country’s policy towards the U.S. They find that there is indeed a significant positive relationship between the pro-US votes and the level of enterprise in a country, and that countries with oil tend to be less entrepreneurial as well as less friendly to the US. It seems clear that the US would benefit not only from helping countries strengthen education, the rule of law and free trade, but also from supporting the entrepreneurial culture of any country where the US has an interest.
See more in Business & Foreign Policy, Energy, U.S. Strategy and Politics
January 18, 2008
Article
RGE Monitor
The China Investment Corporation’s $5 billion investment in Morgan Stanley, its $3 billion investment in Blackstone and the China Development Bank’s likely $2b investment in Citigroup have attracted an enormous amount of attention. In this paper for RGE Monitor, Brad Setser examines the unprecedented growth in China ’s foreign assets, the key institutions managing these assets, and the composition of China's aggregate external portfolio.
See more in China, Geoeconomics
December 2007
Article
RGE Monitor
With oil at $100, what do we know about how the big oil exporters are managing their petrodollars? In this paper for RGE Monitor, Brad Setser and Rachel Ziemba examine the different GCC funds and estimate that total Gulf investment abroad exceeded $2 trillion in 2007. One surprising conclusion that emerges from their analysis is that the Gulf as a whole has not diversified away from the dollar.
See more in Middle East, Gulf States, Economics
November 29 2007
Article
Peterson Institute
Brad Setser makes the case for oil-exporting Gulf states to stop pegging to the dollar in this Peterson Institute policy brief.
See more in Economics
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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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