Before COVID-19 shut down entire sectors of the US economy, the US workforce was becoming increasingly polarised along educational, racial, and geographic lines. Now, those trends have been accelerating, underscoring the need for a smart, worker-focused policy response. Read Here – Project Syndicate
Sri Lanka’s powerful Rajapaksa brothers have secured a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary election, according to final results. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) won 145 seats and can also count on the support of at least five allies in the 225-member legislature, according to the results released on Friday. Read […]
For the Middle East’s oil exporters, COVID-19 has been a triple whammy. Fuel prices have cratered, compounding the agonies of a global shutdown and a deadly viral outbreak. According to the International Monetary Fund, the crisis is the worst the Middle East has faced in the modern era. But for Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old crown prince and de facto […]
The pandemic has created a massive economic contraction that will be followed by a financial crisis in many parts of the globe, as nonperforming corporate loans accumulate alongside bankruptcies. Sovereign defaults in the developing world are also poised to spike. This crisis will follow a path similar to the one the last crisis took, except […]
The strategy of “infrastructure-led growth” (growth, not economic and social development) seems to be showing its limits in Africa, where China has largely been instrumental in promoting it. This strategy is based on the Keynesian multiplier theory whereby any increase in aggregate demand would result in a more than proportional increase in GDP. Read Here […]
To date, there is little reason to think that global demand for dollars is drying up. But there is another way the United States could lose its status as issuer of the world’s dominant reserve currency: it could voluntarily abandon dollar hegemony because the domestic economic and political costs have grown too high. Read Here […]
As the United States awakens to its supply-chain vulnerabilities amid heightened pressure on companies to “reshore” from China, it is grappling with an uncomfortable truth: most will not end up relocating to the US. And, business experts say, the relatively few that do probably should not have left in the first place. Read Here – […]
The Chinese government is likely to face a tricky economic policy choice in the second half of this year. If it loosens its fiscal stance, public finances will worsen significantly. But if it cuts expenditure to offset the pandemic-related revenue shortfall, growth will be lower, with dire consequences. Read Here – Project Syndicate
Every month of this year has brought new evidence that voting in 2020 hasn’t been going very well. And with perhaps the most consequential election in generations—when the nation ratifies or rejects President Donald Trump’s divisive agenda—experts are starting to believe that the general election will be much, much worse. Read Here – Politico
A deep determination to battle against great odds may explain why East Asia has so far responded much better to the COVID-19 pandemic than most Western countries. And if the region’s economies also recover faster, they may well offer a glimmer of hope to a world currently drowning in pessimism. Read Here – Project Syndicate
looking beyond borders 