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A website forum in which senior fellows of the Peterson Institute for International Economics discuss and debate their responses to global economic and financial developments as they occur each day and offer insights that others might overlook.
The draft G-20 communiqué, as published on the Financial Times’s website, is not encouraging. To be sure, there are humorous moments, such as:
Each of us commits to candid, even-handed, and independent IMF surveillance of our economies and financial sectors, of the impact of our policies on others, and of risks facing the global economy.
Major countries [...]
I hope it works. The financial stability plan presented on March 23 by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner could be a part of the solution because it would remove some of the bad assets from the banks’ balance sheets and put some capital into the banks. The Treasury is clearly trying [...]
Here is Ben Bernanke’s problem:
1. The financial sector is busy setting up arrangements in which employees are guaranteed high levels of compensation if they stay on through the difficult days ahead. These retention-type payments allow firms to survive in their existing form, pursue business-as-usual, and gamble for resurrection, i.e., make further risky investments.
2. But these [...]
Are multinational corporations in the United States relocating their manufacturing sites overseas, abandoning workers and communities at home? And are their investments abroad “hollowing out” America’s productive capacity?
At a time of global economic and financial turmoil, these questions are as controversial as ever. The 2008 election rekindled the debate over [...]
I’m continually amazed by how easy it is for government officials to hoodwink most of the news media. All it takes is for a couple of leading finance ministers to get on roughly the same page, and we’re reading/hearing about “substantial progress” or “major steps forward.” If someone provides an articulate background briefing to a [...]