Economics & Business Archive

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda met with outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, outside Moscow this past weekend. The talks addressed preparations for this July’s Group of Eight summit, which Japan is hosting, as well as such perennial issues as how to improve the often strained security and economic relations between the two countries. Tokyo-Moscow ties have remained troubled for decades. This weekend’s Moscow summit failed to change the underlying causes of these difficulties. Despite the end of the Cold War, the two countries have been unable to resolve their territorial dispute over what the Russians […]

Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, just completed his first official visit to Kazakhstan since September 2006. In a joint media appearance following talks with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Karimov noted that the two countries are the most influential states in Central Asia. He correctly observed that, “Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may play a crucial role in solution of a number of principal matters, connected with the stability in the Central Asian region and prospects of its sustainable development.” Unfortunately, Uzbek-Kazakh relations have been characterized more by conflict than cooperation. Although Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have signed approximately 100 bilateral agreements since […]

Though international policy analysts — past and present — have lavished attention on arms races, oil wars, blood diamonds, and other such sources of insecurity, few have spilled ink on an issue that now threatens global stability: the rising cost of grain. No surprise. Arms races have been the subject of Star Wars and James Bond movies, and conflict over diamonds carried the story in “Blood Diamond,” with the dashing Leonardo DiCaprio and the luscious Jennifer Connelly. Writing about rice and wheat is just not as sexy. But average food prices have risen 45 percent in the past nine months. […]

Energy independence has emerged as a popular rallying cry in this U.S. election year. Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls all at some stage have advocated energy independence, which they define as freeing the American oil consumer from the tyranny of importing petroleum from foreign countries, especially the Middle East. While convenient to advocate in an age of sound bite politics, energy independence is in fact not possible to secure in the United States in the foreseeable future, and is of doubtful utility in any country that might be in a position to achieve it. A combination of rising oil prices […]

It doesn’t take an economist to notice the rumblings of historic change pushing close to the surface. Demand for oil is growing faster than supplies, so oil prices are moving to dizzying new highs every few days, threatening to transform the world. If this trend continues, much will have to change, not just in America, but everywhere. Americans use far more oil than anyone else, but China and India and the rest of the planet need fuel to pull their populations out of poverty. Every day that demand increases without a corresponding increase in supply. Economic pressure builds, making the […]

RACH GIA, Vietnam — It’s not hard to imagine the Mekong Delta under water. Much of the region lies barely three feet above sea level. According to some projections, nearly half of the delta’s farmland could be destroyed from rising sea levels due to global warming. Yet most locals here know nothing of what’s coming. While many of the planet’s well-off calculate their “food miles” and “carbon footprints,” many of the world’s poor have never heard of climate change or global warming. Even though many can sense that their climate is changing, they are largely ignorant about why it’s happening […]

As the value of the dollar continues to decline relative to other currencies, some of those most affected don’t even live in the United States. Instead, they are citizens of developing countries who receive remitted dollars from family and friends working abroad. For them, the weakening dollar is particularly crippling because it either converts into less local currency or, for those in countries with pegged currencies, can’t keep up with local inflation. It’s a situation roughly similar to American travelers in Europe discovering that it now costs $4.77 for a Big Mac, whereas a year and a half ago the […]

On April 8, Egyptians will go to the polls for the first time in three years. Millions will vote to fill 52,000 seats in 4,500 municipal councils at the village, district, and provincial level. This election season, however, most Egyptians are focused less on political issues and more on matters of daily survival. In Egypt, a country where the president has ruled for more than a quarter of a century, free and fair elections are a rarity. The country held its first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005. The following year, a stronger than anticipated performance by the Muslim Brotherhood in […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Brazil’s culture minister recently triggered an upheaval in his country’s blogosphere with remarks that reeked to many of Internet utopianism. Speaking at a debate on new technologies in Rio, Gilberto Gil said he “absolutely” believes expanded Internet access could reduce crime in Brazil’s violence-ridden slums, or favelas. He went on to tell a story about a young man and woman from favelas controlled by rival drug gangs who were able to meet and fall in love thanks to the Internet, despite ongoing violence that otherwise would have kept them isolated. In the favelas, Gil said, young […]

“We have to underline NATO’s enduring commitment to finishing Europe’s unfinished business — but also its relevance to emerging challenges, such as proliferation threats and vulnerabilities in our energy supply.” Thus remarked NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at a conference sponsored by the Center for International Relations in Warsaw on March 13. Leaders of the 26 member countries are meeting in Bucharest this week to increase NATO’s collective defense capabilities and deepen transatlantic ties. While the alliance has adopted a basic approach to guarding energy infrastructure, plans to widen the scope of a NATO energy security policy will […]

From the TV footage coming out of Nepal these days, it is easy to forget that the Himalayan nation is struggling to build a viable democracy. Almost every day since mid-March, when anti-Chinese protests erupted in Tibet and other countries, images of Nepali police beating Tibetan demonstrators have been beamed around the world. Nepal’s major political parties and former Maoist rebels have promised to build an open and inclusive state after years of turmoil. The people are preparing to vote April 10 for a new assembly that would write a new constitution embodying a federal democratic republic. Yet barely two […]