NewsTrust - Global Economy - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

What Makes Countries Rich or Poor?

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Jared Diamond - May. 24 (Review) - Norway, the world’s richest country, is 496 times richer than Burundi, the world’s poorest country (average per capita incomes $84,290 and $170 respectively, according to the World Bank). Why? That’s a central question of economics.

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What the Chinese Want

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Tom Doctoroff - May. 19 (Opinion) - Consumers in China are increasingly modern in their tastes, but they are not becoming 'Western.' How the selling of coffee, cars and pizza sheds light on a nation racing toward superpower status.

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Europe’s rush to austerity will have severe consequences.

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - May. 13 (Opinion) - This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: The crisis countries have to get their houses in order,...

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Bernanke Gets 75% Approval From Investors in Global Poll

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:36:00 -0700

Bloomberg - May. 10 - Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual monetary policy report to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 2012. Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual

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Those Revolting Europeans

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - May. 06 (Opinion) - The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time.

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A third industrial revolution

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Paul Markillie - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries. Outside the sprawling Frankfurt Messe, home of innumerable German trade fairs, stands the “Hammering Man”, a 21-metre kinetic statue that steadily raises and lowers its arm to bash a piece of metal with a hammer. Jonathan Borofsky, the artist who built it, says it is a celebration of the worker using his mind and hands to create the world we live in. That is a familiar story. But now the tools are changing in a number of remarkable ways that will transform the future of manufacturing.

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Hey, Not So Fast on European Austerity

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Christina Romer - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The core of a sensible approach to Europe’s is to pass needed budget measures now, but to phase in actual tax increases and spending cuts gradually — as economies recover.

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With unemployment still high, H1-B visa requests rise again

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Jon Talton - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - Nearly every week, I get an email from a skilled American worker who can't find work in the technology industries. Now comes a report, via the Wall Street Journal, that the government has received 25,600 petitions for H-1B skilled-worker visas since April 2. That's a rate twice as high as that for all of April last year.

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Financiers and Sex Trafficking

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas Kristoff - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - This emporium for girls and women — some under age or forced into prostitution — is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are. That mystery is solved.

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Fair Game: W.T.O. and Barriers to Financial Change

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gretchen Morgenson - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - The battle to remake the financial markets faces new obstacles in — of all places — the World Trade Organization. Even now, after all we’ve been through, something is still wrong with Wall Street. That’s the takeaway from the extraordinary — and extraordinarily public — resignation of Greg Smith from Goldman Sachs last week. His criticism of Goldman, made in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, suggested that some of the business practices and inherent conflicts in the financial industry are as troubling today as they were before all of those taxpayer bailouts.

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Pass the Books. Hold the Oil.

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - Education is a better economic driver than a country’s natural resources.

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Op-Ed Columnist: In Athens, Austerity’s Ugliness

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - The effects of slashed budgets in Greece, without much in the way other reforms, are leaving a sense of doom.

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Op-Ed Columnist: What Ails Europe?

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - The two common explanations — call it the Republican narrative and the German narrative — are just wrong.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Chinese Labor, Cheap No More

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Michelle Loyalka, New York Times - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - The cheap labor that has made China’s factories nearly unbeatable is not so cheap anymore.

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Vintage ketch sets sail to launch slow cargo movement - The Guardian

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 13 - Vintage ketch sets sail to launch slow cargo movement The Guardian The hope is that, with this symbolic journey, Irene – a lovely wooden ketch built in Somerset in 1907 to transport bricks and tiles – will blaze a trail for wind-powered cargo ships. The project, New Dawn Traders, was hatched by Jamie Pike, ... and ...

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The Austerity Debacle

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 30 (Opinion) - Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.

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The economic illiteracy of economists | Mark Weisbrot

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Mark Weisbrot - Jan. 10 - The American Economic Association's annual meeting is red-letter day for 'the dismal science'. And dismal it proved The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change" , when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits". The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn. But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to ...

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Factory data offer glimmer of hope - Financial Times

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:18:12 -0800

Financial Times - Jan. 02 - Factory data offer glimmer of hopeFinancial TimesFranz Fehrenbach, chief executive of Germany's Bosch, the world's biggest supplier of car parts, said: “We are bracing ourselves for further weakening in economic growth but so far we don't foresee a global recession. ...and more »

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Our leadership is dire, but we mustn't despise government | Jeffrey Sachs

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jeffrey Sachs, The Guardian - Dec. 17 - Our leaderships, in thrall to big business, are failing in so many places all at the same time. But we can't give up on them The year 2011 will be remembered as the year of failed summits. Governments proved themselves time and again to be failures at addressing the growing crises engulfing the world, whether the eurozone debacle, climate change, or budget politics in the US and Europe. Next year is likely to be worse, as electoral politics will further impede decision-making in the US, France and several other countries. Why should governance be so poor in so many places at the same time? There are several factors at play. Globalisation has undermined the manufacturing base of most of the high-income economies, costing millions of jobs and leading to stagnant or falling living standards for a large part of the workforce, especially those with basic skills and modest education attainment. The US has lost around 8-9 million manufacturing jobs since the peak in that sector in 1979, just as ...

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Time of reckoning for the euro zone

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:27:07 -0800

Reuters - Dec. 04 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Failure by European leaders at their summit this week to fix the fatal flaw in the euro zone, its lack of political union, would risk tremendous market upheaval, a rupture of the

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How Can Europe Possibly Save Itself?

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - Well, things are getting a little gnarly in Europe. When you're down to the point of celebrating that Italy managed to place some debt at the low, low price of 7.6% . . . well, it's two for one drinks specials at the first class bar on the Titanic!

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Op-Ed Columnist: Legends of the Fail

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - With Italy following Greece off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive. Now that the euro project is on the rocks, what lessons should we draw?

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The euro crisis: Eurodoom

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Nov. 02 (Editorial) - I suppose it's worth mentioning that Europe is back to crumbling before our very eyes. Late yesterday, the prime minister of Greece announced a plan to hold a referendum on the newly negotiated rescue deal. I'll let Roberto Perli, from the International Strategy and Investment Group, explain the political dynamics: Papandreou’s motives are understandable: So far the opposition has provided no support for the measures that he has been forced to push through, and he and his party have been left alone facing the public anger.

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America's Pacific Century

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Hillary Clinton - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - We cannot and do not aspire to impose our system on other countries, but we do believe that certain values are universal -- that people in every nation in the world, including in Asia, cherish them -- and that they are intrinsic to stable, peaceful, and prosperous countries.

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An entire system of global trade is at risk

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - Oct. 08 (Editorial) - Little more than two years ago, global leaders were happily congratulating themselves on having avoided the mistakes of the 1930s, thereby averting a depression. But now it appears that the difficulties of 2008 were but a foretaste of what was to come. With the European banking system again on the verge of collapse, there is a sense that politicians and economists are out of options, that governments and central banks are powerless before events.

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