Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Follow Carnegie
- Search
- Global Resources
Global Centers
Languages
After more than 50 years in power, Fidel Castro, the longest-serving leader in the world, finally announced last week that he would step down. Mr. Castro's decision was hardly a surprise, as he'd officially given caretaker power to his brother two years ago, when Mr. Castro first revealed his serious intestinal illness.
The Carnegie Endowment hosted a discussion with Edward Gresser on his new book, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, on February 15, 2008. In this book, Gresser argues that American trade policies of the last sixty years have achieved many of the goals envisioned by their liberal founders. But he also points out that those trade policies bear embarrasing gaps.
France has recently proposed a Mediterranean Union. To ensure this initiative’s effectiveness and avoid the pitfalls of the Euro-Mediterranean process, the EU must seriously review its linked aid and agricultural and immigration policies toward the region.
India would be six times better off under a multilateral trade agreement in the WTO’s Doha Round than from individual free trade agreements with the EU, United States, or China.
The biggest economic threat from China isn't its dominance of manufacturing or its artificially pegged currency. It's that the world's soon-to-be third-largest economy is being fueled by financial markets that remain essentially--and dangerously--lawless.
Since communism failed as an economic system, Russia and China have had to embrace free markets. But hopes that reform of communist economies would produce western-style democracies have been shaken.
The spectacular run-up in equity prices in China in the past two years has created a classic asset bubble. The likelihood that the stock market will crash in the not-too-distant future has recently increased because of rising inflation at home and a global economic slow-down. The Chinese stock market has already begun to correct – the main stock indexes have fallen 15 per cent from their highs. However, with Chinese equity price levels disturbingly close to those of Japan’s Nikkei in 1989 prior to its meltdown, the Chinese market will have to fall much further to reach reasonable valuations.
Since global change accelerated a decade or so ago, mentioning globalisation has tended to upset many people in the Arab world. Was 2007 the year that the region moved closer -- and more comfortably -- to the rest of the globe?
Carnegie Senior Associate Michael McFaul takes on the conventional wisdom that Vladimir Putin's tight-fisted rule has been behind the economic growth and stability over the past seven years. "The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either," McFaul writes.
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri spoke at the Carnegie Endowment on December 5, 2007 to present India's menu of energy options.
Stay connected to the Global Think Tank with Carnegie's smartphone app for Android and iOS devices