China’s $3.8 trillion of currency reserves are the largest stockpile ever amassed. Economists have long seen that money as a strength — the ultimate rainy-day fund should China’s shadow-banking system blow up. Trouble is, the value of those holdings depends on China’s $1.3 trillion of U.S. Treasuries. If they plunge in value, all hell breaks loose […]
Faced with growing expectations, China’s foreign policy is actually becoming more insecure. Read Here – The Diplomat
The coming months will see no end of obituaries written for the emerging world, and of the perils they face. There is nothing new about these prognostications, and they all miss the glaring realities of democratic transformation and its sometimes tumultuous consequences. They miss as well the degree to which hundreds of millions have seen […]
In 2007, at the start of Obama’s Presidential campaign, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard Goodwin, who worked in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, visited him in his Senate office. “I have no desire to be one of those Presidents who are just on the list—you see their pictures lined up on […]
One luxury sector in China that hasn’t taken a hit under President Xi Jinping’s austerity and anti-graft campaign is overseas travel. Last year, Chinese tourists made 97 million overseas trips—up from just 10 million in 2000 and 83 million in 2012. And their spending on overseas travel increased 28 percent in the first nine months of 2013, as compared with the same period […]
Central banking isn’t a contact sport like football, or even cricket. But the head of India’s central bank, who until recently was living and working in the U.S., is throwing some sharp elbows at his counterparts at the Federal Reserve. This is as close to a brawl as you’re likely to see in the genteel […]
At the turn of the century Afghanistan was economically comatose. The arrival of international forces in 2001 also marked the start of unprecedented international support. After 12 years of conflict, Afghanistan remains a burden for the international community. Read Here – The Diplomat
A new and different kind of global power is on the rise – one that is informal and citizen-based. Attitude surveys indicate that citizens in rich as well as poor countries – aided by dramatically falling costs of communication, participation, and coordination – are aware of the risks a hyper-connected global market system creates, and […]
Late this spring, India will hold its 16th general election. The vote will pit the forces of progressivism, which celebrate cultural and social pluralism and promote equity and good governance but appears singularly incapable of policy implementation, against the forces of cultural and religious nationalism, which promote rapid economic growth and political order but show […]
Estonia may not show up on Americans’ radar too often. It is a tiny country in northeastern Europe, just next to Finland. It has the territory of the Netherlands, but 13 times less people—its 1.3 million inhabitants is comparable to Hawaii’s population. As a friend from India recently quipped, “What is there to govern? Read Here […]
