The first hints that extremely low oil prices could plunge many petro-states into crisis came at the beginning of March, when the price of Ecuador’s sovereign bonds fell to record lows. Oil accounts for about a third of Ecuador’s export earnings and a similar portion of its public-sector revenue. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for a global ceasefire, urging all parties to conflict to lay down arms and allow war-torn nations to combat the coronavirus pandemic. “The worst is yet to come,” Guterres said, referring to countries with fighting like Syria, Libya and Yemen…The COVID-19 storm is now coming to all these […]
The delivery of the first batch of European aid to Iran this week does not only represent a lifeline to the regime in Tehran as it attempts to tackle the deadly impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It also presents Iran with the opportunity to begin the painful process of rebuilding relations with the outside world. […]
The fog of war obscures much about the novel coronavirus pandemic. But two facts seem absolutely certain. First, China’s Communist authorities have lied, concealed and misled about the origins of the epidemic and the toll of the virus in China. Second, the World Health Organization has acted as Beijing’s handmaid. The result: The global toll of […]
The coronavirus outbreak has thrown 10 million Americans out of work in just two weeks in the swiftest, most stunning collapse the U.S. job market has ever witnessed, even as the public health crisis deepens in New York City, where a funeral home in a hard-hit neighbourhood had 185 bodies stacked up — more than […]
India will pull out of a three-week lockdown in phases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, as officials battle to contain the country’s biggest cluster of coronavirus infections in the capital, New Delhi. The shutdown, which has brought Asia’s third-largest economy to a shuddering halt, had been due to end on April 14. Read Here – […]
Watching the Trump carnival from afar, the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt summed up the week’s events, and those of the many painful weeks to come: “This is the first great crisis of the post-American world,” he wrote on Twitter. “The UN Security Council is nowhere to be seen, G20 is in the hands of the […]
For more than a century, countries have wrestled with how to improve international cooperation in the face of major outbreaks of infectious diseases. A pandemic of a new coronavirus that originated in China in 2019 underscores the urgency. Read Here – CFR
The Trump administration is far more likely to continue to soldier on, pushing back wherever China impinges on U.S interests and responsibilities in the economic, political, military and diplomatic spheres, until China stops and respects the equities of America and its allies. But that doesn’t mean just business as usual. Expect the U.S. to double down […]
The United States is the battle-tested survivor of 12 recessions and a Great Depression over the last century. China has not suffered a recession since its economic boom began four decades ago, and its leaders now respond to any hint of a downturn by pumping more debt into the economy. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
