Over 20 years ago, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was founded to address highly sensitive and contentious political and security issues in Asia. Its objective was to develop confidence-building measures and, in time, preventive diplomacy with an ultimate goal of resolving conflicts in the region.
While the overall financial performance of the world’s economy is not as poor as it was in 2008, the World Bank’s rate of lending is almost as high as it was in those darker days. As a result, finance ministers and central bankers from around the globe will meet in Washington this week for the spring World Bank / International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring conference.
Many features of the US–Soviet cold war are present in contemporary US–China relations: ideological competition, struggles over the control of natural resources, and old-fashioned rivalry for leadership of the global community.
To many, the word “inflation” causes a knee-jerk reaction and a cringe. Most associate inflation with a negative trend for economies and buying power. Some inflation, however, can actually be a good thing, and that is why the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is calling on world leaders to use demand-side models to actually spur on inflation.
When a coal-fired plant in India destroyed the health, livelihoods, and property of farmers and fishermen in the region, they turned to international interest groups for help. Those interest groups, in turn, devised the strategy of taking the matter to court.
Of course, the plant itself had no real assets, but the institutions that provided their financing might. Therefore, they decided to take the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a private lending arm of the World Bank Group, to court in the US District Court in Washington D.C.
Bankruptcy is the procedure in the United States (and many other nations) that allows a debtor who is no longer able to pay back a debt to come to some form of resolution with his or her creditors, typically allowing for a different repayment term or the discharge (or erasure) of some or all of the debt. In fact, every country has some similar process. When addressing international debts between nations, however, no such procedures exist.
South Asia’s economic potential has long been constrained by low levels of economic integration. Despite being closely linked geographically, culturally and historically, intra-regional trade is very low. A major problem has of course, been political difficulties within and between South Asian countries. However, an important, and overlooked, barrier to greater economic integration is the poor quality and inadequate investment in infrastructure in the region. The newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) can play a pivotal role in fixing this problem.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has begun warning the largest economies in the world that a global economic catastrophe could occur if concerted action is not taken; however, many economists fear that the Group of 20 (G20) economies are unwilling or unable to do anything about the IMF’s dire predictions.
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has expressed deep approval for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) plan to allow all countries to participate in its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan.
The President of the World Bank made headlines this week with comments about the institution’s position on the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals. Specifically, he noted that the bank would no longer provide funding to developing nations with laws that endanger the rights and lives of their LGBT communities.
