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82. The Japan Fallacy: Today's U.S. Financial Crisis Is Not Like Tokyo's "Lost Decade"
- Author:
- Richard Katz
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The financial crisis of 2008 need not usher in a replay of Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s. The current crisis is the result of correctable policy mistakes rather than deep structural flaws in the economy.
- Topic:
- Economics and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States and Japan
83. How Development Leads to Democracy: What We Know About Modernization
- Author:
- Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Democratic institutions cannot be set up easily; they are likely to emerge only when certain social and cultural conditions exist. But economic development and modernization push those conditions in the right direction and make democracy increasingly likely.
- Topic:
- Development and Economics
84. The Missing Peaces
- Author:
- Michael D. Bell, Daniel C. Kurtzer, and Prem G. Kumar
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- To resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, policymakers will have to develop a new regime for Jerusalem's Old City. Striking an Israeli-Syrian deal that draws Damascus away from Tehran is also essential, but it will be harder than it appears.
- Topic:
- Economics and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, and Syria
85. Global Imbalances and the Financial Crisis
- Author:
- Steven Dunaway
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The current economic and financial crisis has brought about a significant change in global economic governance as the international forum for discussions on the crisis has shifted from the small group of advanced countries in the Group of Seven (G7) to the Group of Twenty (G20), a broader group including important emerging market countries. The G20 summit held in Washington, DC, on November 15, 2008, dealt with the immediate concerns fostered by the crisis and focused on both macroeconomic policy actions needed to support global growth and ideas for implementing financial market reforms. Follow-up G20 summits are expected, starting with a gathering in the United Kingdom in April 2009. However, for these discussions to have a substantial impact, the agenda will have to be broadened beyond economic stimulus and financial market regulation. If not, global policymakers will miss a critical chance to make the world economy and financial markets more stable, as then U.S. treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. pointed out: If we only address particular regulatory issues—as critical as they are—without addressing the global imbalances that fueled recent excesses, we will have missed an opportunity to dramatically improve the foundation for global markets and economic vitality going forward. The pressure from global imbalances will simply build up again until it finds another outlet.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States and China
86. A New Information Infrastructure for Financial Markets
- Publication Date:
- 02-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Information about prices and quantities of assets lies at the heart of well-functioning capital markets. In the current financial crisis, it has become clear that many important actors-both firms and regulatory agencies-have not had sufficient information. Distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, this Working Paper proposes a new regulatory regime for gathering and disseminating financial market information. The authors argue that government regulators need a new infrastructure to collect and analyze adequate information from large (systemically important) financial institutions. This new information framework would bolster the government's ability to foresee, contain, and, ideally, prevent disruptions to the overall financial services industry.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States
87. The Future of Foreign Assistance Amid Global Economic and Financial Crisis
- Author:
- Laurie A. Garrett
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Though the United States of America faces its toughest budgetary and economic challenges since the Great Depression, it cannot afford to eliminate, or even reduce, its foreign assistance spending. For clear reasons of political influence, national security, global stability, and humanitarian concern the United States must, at a minimum, stay the course in its commitments to global health and development, as well as basic humanitarian relief. The Bush administration sought not only to increase some aspects of foreign assistance, targeting key countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) and specific health targets, such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the President's Malaria Initiative, but also executed an array of programmatic and structural changes in U.S. aid efforts. By 2008, it was obvious to most participants and observers that too many agencies were engaged in foreign assistance, and that programs lacked coherence and strategy. Well before the financial crisis of fall 20 08, there was a strong bipartisan call for foreign assistance reform, allowing greater efficiency and credibility to U.S. efforts, enhancing engagement in multilateral institutions and programs, and improving institutional relations between U.S. agencies and their partners, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), recipient governments, corporate and business sector stakeholders, faith-based organizations (FBOs), academic-based implementers and researchers, foundations and private donors, United Nations (UN) agencies, and other donor nations.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Debt, Development, Economics, Health, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- United States
88. China's $1.7 Trillion Bet: China's External Portfolio and Dollar Reserves
- Author:
- Brad W. Setser and Arpana Pandey
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- China reported $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves at the end of 2008. This is by far the largest stockpile of foreign exchange in the world: China holds roughly two times more reserves than Japan, and four times more than either Russia or Saudi Arabia. Moreover, China's true foreign port- folio exceeds its disclosed foreign exchange reserves. At the end of December, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE)—part of the People's Bank of China (PBoC) managed close to $2.1 trillion: $1.95 trillion in formal reserves and between $108 and $158 billion in “other foreign assets.” China's state banks and the China Investment Corporation (CIC), China's sovereign wealth fund, together manage another $250 billion or so. This puts China's total holdings of foreign assets at over $2.3 trillion. That is over 50 percent of China's gross domestic product (GDP), or roughly $2,000 per Chinese inhabitant.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Debt, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, China, Israel, Asia, and Saudi Arabia
89. Lessons of the Financial Crisis
- Author:
- Benn Steil
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The story of the financial crisis will be retold endlessly as one of widespread greed, corruption, and incompetence, enabled by a policy agenda dominated by an ideology of deregulation. Yet even if the marketplace had been populated by more ethical and intelligent individuals, and even if their activities had been more carefully scrutinized by more diligent regulators, there would almost surely still have been a major financial boom and bust—such is the power, as history attests, of cheap money.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Political Economy
90. The Gloomy Prospects for World Growth
- Author:
- Steven Dunaway
- Publication Date:
- 09-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The seeds of the current economic and financial crisis were sown by economic policies of the major countries that fostered the growth of global imbalances during the 2000s. Consequently, an essential element in any assessment of prospects for world economic recovery and the pace of future growth has to factor in exactly how these imbalances are likely to unwind—or fail to be resolved—in the period immediately ahead.
- Topic:
- Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States