COMMENTARIES
COMMENTARIES
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Can Russia Be Great?
Joseph S. Nye Series: Of Might and Right 
2010-09-08Is Russia an industrialized banana republic whose corrupt institutions and insurmountable demographic and health problems make decline inevitable, or will reform and modernization enable Russia to surmount its problems? Either outcome is possible, but there are few good reasons to be optimistic.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 1469
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The Cracks in the G-20
Javier Solana Series: The World in Words 2010-09-08
The world financial crisis has acted as a quick and efficient catalyst to the G-20. But, despite its recent achievements in advancing multilateralism and coordinated global action, the G-20 remains very much a work in progress – and one that needs much work to succeed, as its most recent summit in Toronto showed.... read Comments: 2 Recommended: 1 Read: 1091
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Fixing America’s Broken Housing Market
Joseph E. Stiglitz Series: Unconventional Economic Wisdom
2010-09-08There is no "market" in the US housing market anymore, with a broad consensus emerging that the government will have to continue propping up the sector for the foreseeable future. This stance is perplexing and possibly dangerous, for it prolongs the deleveraging process and creates the conditions for Japanese-style malaise.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 2558
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How to Sell Global Re-Balancing
Raghuram Rajan Series: In Search of Dynamism
2010-09-07
We keep hoping that somehow meetings of heads of state will magically produce the policies that will rebalance world trade. Unfortunately, the macroeconomic changes that countries must make involve actions to which even heads of state cannot commit, because there is virtually no domestic constituency to support and promote them.... read Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 2166
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Japan As Number Three
Heizo Takenaka Series: The Asian Century 2010-09-07China has now officially supplanted Japan as the world’s second largest economy. The question for Japan is whether or not the country will continue to tumble down the list of the world’s great economies, or whether its politicians will return to a path of reform that can revive growth.... read Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 2132
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Recession Geopolitics
Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now
2010-09-06
The news that China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy did not come as a surprise. This is the major geo-political outcome of the Great Recession of the early twenty-first century – one that carries both economic hope and political fear.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 3515
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Colombia’s New Dawn
Shlomo Ben-Ami Series: War and Peace
2010-09-03Trapped since the 1960’s in armed conflict with unscrupulous militias, and hostage to drug lords who turned the country’s vast rural areas into fiefdoms of crime and untold atrocities, Colombia long appeared to be addicted to violence. But that is no longer true, and President Juan Manuel Santos is poised to build on the country's recent successes.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 1 Read: 2532
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The Skills Deficit
Daniel Gros Series: Euronomics
2010-09-03
The slowdown in the pace of economic recovery, particularly in the US, has predictably led to calls for further fiscal and monetary stimulus. But economic policy can do little more than ease the social pain of the long and difficult structural adjustment that countries like the US face as they try to re-establish the skills needed to strengthen exports.... read Comments: 1 Recommended: 2 Read: 6031
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Central Asia’s Perfect Storm
Kenneth Weisbrode Series: The Asian Century 2010-09-03Dean Acheson, US President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, once said that being in government made him scared, but that being out of it made him worried. To anyone not privy to the hidden complexities of NATO’s military intervention in Afghanistan, the situation there is extremely worrisome.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 2866
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Killing the Cures
Eric Chivian, Aaron Bernstein and Achim Steiner Series: Health and Medicine 2010-09-02
Biodiversity is essential for the functioning of the ecosystems that sustain all life on Earth, and its ongoing and escalating disappearance will harm society in myriad ways. But one way that is overlooked is the damaging impact on medical science.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 2 Read: 2165
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The New Pharmaceutical Frontier
Sumi Dhanarajan Series: Science and Society 2010-09-02With patents expiring in high numbers, new-product pipelines drying up, and intensifying competition from generics, the multinational pharmaceutical companies faced a challenging decade. Emerging markets offer an obvious opportunity to boost sales, but seizing it will require putting affordability at the core of the business model.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 2637
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The Battle for Turkey’s Constitution
Haldun Gulalp Series: Islam 2010-09-02
On September 12, Turks will vote on a set of constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for eight years. With the campaign dragging on for months, the referendum has thoroughly polarized Turkish politics, and that is unlikely to change, whatever the outcome.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 3006
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Too Much “Too Big to Fail”?
Adair Turner Series: Frontiers of Growth 2010-09-02Excessive focus since the financial crisis on institutions that are “too big to fail” may reflect a belief that, by identifying and correcting some crucial market failure, we could, at last, achieve a stable and self-equilibrating system. But many of the problems that led to the crisis – and that could do so again if left unaddressed – originated elsewhere.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 3613
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The Great American Tea Party
Ian Buruma Series: Crossing Cultures 2010-09-01
The latest surge of American populism is being financed by some extremely wealthy men who favor cutting taxes for the super-rich and abolishing government subsidies for the poor. They have married their agenda to many white Americans' fear and resentment stemming from their loss of economic power and social status.... read Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 3660
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The Mosque and Its Enemies
Kevin Casas-Zamora Series: The Worldly Philosophers 2010-09-01Opposition to plans to build an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan near “Ground Zero” comes in various shades. But even moderate critics of the project betray in their arguments assumptions – deeply ingrained in prevailing US public discourse – that are highly questionable.... read Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 2532
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Millennium Development Miles
Philippe Douste-Blazy Series: Human Rights 2010-09-01
Nowhere have the repercussions of the global economic crisis been as devastating as in the developing world, and now development aid is falling far short of donors' commitments. But innovative financing mechanisms - including a small tax on air tickets - offer real hope for sustaining progress in poor countries.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 1927
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Why America Isn’t Working
Kenneth Rogoff Series: The Unbound Economy
2010-09-01As the US economy limps toward the second anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, anemic growth has left unemployment mired near 10%, with little prospect of significant improvement anytime soon. The bottom line is that, as with financial crises in the past, it will take many years for the US economy to climb out of its hole. ... read Comments: 6 Recommended: 1 Read: 22232
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