Markets

18 August 2011.  Time is running out for the eurozone. Unless a euro-bond regime of one kind or another can be reached, the euro will break down. As the EU’s largest and best-rated economy, Germany has a critical role to...

17 August 2011. Politics and economics are intrinsically linked. For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. Accordingly, the current global economic crisis can also be best understood as a crisis of political...

16 August 2011.There has been much concern about financial contagion between Europe and America. But the real problem stems from another form of contagion: bad ideas move easily across borders, and misguided economic notions on both sides of the Atlantic...

15 August 2011. Once more, famine stalks the Horn of Africa, where more than ten million people are fighting for survival, mainly pastoralist communities in the hyper-arid regions of Somalia, Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. But the current crisis could yet...

Last week, credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgraded U.S. debt from a stellar AAA rating by a notch to AA+. The move sent financial markets in panic mode as investors grappled and tried to comprehend the severity and...

10 August 2011. 10 August 2011.During the 1970s, Former Citibank Chief Executive Walter Wriston famously declared that countries would never go bust or bankrupt. Governments also started to borrow large sums of money in order to fuel their spending, while...

The US media are full of ordinary Americans venting their rage these days at the incompetence and immaturity of their politicians. But the last-minute agreement to raise the debt ceiling is proof that the politicians did what they were sent...

A recurrent characteristic of Europe’s debt-crisis debate is a Latin American precedent. But, while many highly indebted Latin American countries conducted debt buybacks in the late 1980’s the most relevant experience with debt buybacks is a more recent and far...

5 August 2011. The painfully negotiated US budget legislation that Barack Obama signed on August 2 has three major flaws. One offsets the other, and the third threatens what America needs most in the coming years: economic growth. 5 August...

4 August 2011.The Chinese admire America’s economic dynamism, but they have lost confidence in the US government and its dysfunctional economic stewardship. The debate over the debt ceiling and the budget deficit is the last straw, and China's own shift...

1 August 2011. One out of 6 people in the world live in India. But just how big is India? And how can we think about the country and its economy when its population and GDP varies so vastly from...

28 July 2011.On paper at least, few would consider Greece to be a systemically significant economy. Yet today, the country is at the centre of a crisis that threatens to engulf the entire European Union. But the case of Greece...

27 July 2011. The fate of the eurozone is ominous. As the debt crisis in Greece continues to spread and infect other eurozone nations such as Italy and Portugal, the euro-zone appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse....

20 July 2011. 20 July 2011. The 2008 global financial crisis was meant to be a wakeup call for policymakers around the world. Yet, in the aftermath of one of the worst financial crises ever, policymakers continue to adopt failed...

18 July 2011.On 1 November 1993, the European Union was formally established with the Maastricht Treaty – a culmination of a vision that began over 50 years ago when a small group of European politicians recognised the need for greater...