With less than a month until British citizens vote on whether the U.K. should stay in or leave the European Union, Americans could be forgiven for being preoccupied with their own political dramas. Still, President Obama conspicuously weighed in on the British debate in April, writing in The Daily Telegraph “with the candour of a […]
For Russia’s battered economy, 2016 already looks miserable. The ruble has slumped to record lows as oil prices have fallen 11 percent since Jan. 1, to around $30 a barrel. The government, which gets nearly half its revenue from oil and gas, is scrambling to plug a 1.5 trillion-ruble ($19.2 billion) hole in its budget. Read Here – Bloomberg
Of course, it is hard to compare anywhere else to China given the sheer scale of the People’s Republic and its transformation. And yet, much like Mexico in the 1990s, China has long been ruled by a one-party dictatorship that has outgrown its ideological purity (all lip service aside) in favor of a widely acclaimed […]
An oft-overlooked aspect of Pakistan’s debt situation is the political economy. There is an inherent asymmetry between the ‘benefits’ derived from new debt undertaken, and the burden of its repayment. There are two facets worth considering. First, those segments who tend to ‘benefit’ from the debt contracted (the elite) are usually different from those who […]
This weekend’s annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which brought together finance ministers and central bank governors from almost 200 countries, seem to have yielded no material changes in policy formulation at either the national or multilateral levels, and offered little to alter views on global economic prospects. Read Here – BloombergView
Increasingly reliant on each other for sustainable economic growth, the United States and China have fallen into a classic codependency trap, bristling at changes in the rules of engagement. The symptoms of this insidious pathology were on clear display during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to America. Little was accomplished, and the path ahead […]
Premier Li Keqiang says that China’s economy remains a source of the world’s growth thanks to people’s zest for innovation, entrepreneurship and stronger international cooperation. China’s confidence is well-grounded and not “blind optimism,” the premier said in a speech at the World Economic Forum’s event in northeast China’s Dalian, known as Summer Davos. Read Here – […]
During the last U.S. presidential election, an editorial in a Chinese state-run newspaper declared that if Washington insisted on flouting Chinese interests (by selling arms to Taiwan, for example), Beijing should “use its financial weapon to teach the U.S. a lesson.” Three years later, America owes even more to China than the $1.16 trillion it owed then. […]
World stock markets plunged on Monday, after a near 9 percent dive in China shares and a sharp drop in the dollar and major commodities sent investors rushing for the exits. After dropping more than 1,000 points, or almost 7 percent, at Wall Street’s open, the Dow Jones industrial average eased losses but was still off […]
Forty-three years after Richard Nixon made his famous visit to China, that country has seemingly decided to take a page from the former U.S. president’s Treasury Department. As China lowers the value of the yuan, the country’s economic policy makers are mimicking the blasé attitude of Nixon-era Treasury chief John Connally, who dismissed international complaints […]
looking beyond borders 