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By Mark Weisbrot
The IMF and World Bank are holding their annual Spring Meetings this weekend. As usual, finance ministers, bankers, business lobbyists, and government representatives from around the world will flock to Washington – not so much for the official meetings, where little of interest usually happens, but for the networking opportunities that the meetings provide.
By Mark Weisbrot
The elections in France demonstrate the power of faulty economic analysis, and more generalized problems with arithmetic, to shape ideas and possibly the future of not only a nation, but a continent.
By Mark Weisbrot
A May 22 news report in The Washington Post summed up Colombia's ever-widening scandal: "Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: some of Colombia's most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to U.S. cities."
The Current Discussion: In the future, global prosperity will present more of a threat than poverty, according to a recent Post op-ed. Is this just rich-American rhetoric, or is the world really getting too prosperous for its own good?
By Max Singer
Michael Gerson describes only part of the problem of prosperity. To understand the issue, you need to think of the whole world going down the same road, but starting at different times. Some are further ahead, and we can use their experience to see what those who are coming later can expect.
There is a supreme sense of irony in Gordon Brown turning up to the meeting of Eurozone leaders on Sunday to convince them to intervene in their banking systems and save the world from financial collapse. Britain's prime minister has spent almost 10 years lecturing the Europeans on the benefits of markets and the need to de-regulate their economies. He has constantly harangued skeptical politicians from continental Europe that the U.S. Anglo-Saxon model of liberalized markets was the right one to follow.
This piece is a response to the PostGlobal discussion, which asks, "If the current global recession gets worse, which countries or regions will it destabilize? Is there a way out?"
"Current" global recession? It really depends to whom you're talking. Certainly not the three billion people in the world, living on less than $2.50 a day. For them, there's nothing current about the global recession. For them, it's always been ongoing; it's almost a way of life.
That the lifestyles of the world's wealthy have been hit does not mean that the world at large is experiencing a current global recession. You have only to ask the really poor.
It's just like that "luxury connection" to the Bombay terror attacks. And it goes well beyond the lush interiors of the Taj Mahal Hotel still standing majestically, despite the senseless tragedy it had to endure last week.
It also goes beyond the possibly fake Versace T-shirt worn by the young gunman pausing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, before he continued his indiscriminate killing spree.
By Diana Fu
Paul Collier, "savior" of the so-called "bottom billion states," has concocted a new and extended game plan to wrest the failing states in Africa and Asia out of their misery. The answer, he argues in Wars, Guns, and Votes, which was released today, is security. He argues that the bottom billion states -- those that are at the bottom of the world economy and are home to a billion people--direly need security more than they need hurriedly-installed democratic elections. Once long-term security is in place, the bottom billion economies are expected to grow, furbishing the conditions for the birth of true democracy. He is half right. A façade of democracy does no good aside from allowing donors to tick off the "mission accomplished" box. As Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has shown, warped elections can be bedfellows of autocracy and violence.
But installing long-term peacekeepers in the bottom billion countries as an "incentive" for good governance is not necessarily a viable path towards economic and political salvation. Reason number one: China, a goliath hungry for resources, offers African dictators no-strings-attached aid in exchange for oil and mineral contracts. Reason number two: Western countries' political will to rescue the bottom billion is about as scant as bank credit at the moment. These two reasons combined are enough to spoil Collier's recipe for bottom billion growth.
The Current Discussion: Today is "Genocide Remembrance Day "in the Armenian community, a particularly strained time of year for Turkey and Armenia. What's a realistic first step forward toward reconciliation for each of these countries?
By Soner Cagaptay
Turkey and Armenia are getting closer, and that's great news. Washington has long wanted the two countries to get over their differences, open their closed border, and establish diplomatic ties. If all that happened, it would be wonderful news. But euphoria over Turkish-Armenian rapprochement should not, however, obfuscate the big, strategic picture in the Caucasian energy circle. The thaw in Turkish-Armenian relations should not come at the expense of the East-West energy corridor, i.e. cooperation over pipelines running from Azerbaijan to Turkey, a crucial strategic tool for Washington to decrease the West's dependence on Middle East oil and gas.
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