Economics & Business Archive

SKOPJE, Macedonia — On May 1, the European Union celebrated the fifth anniversary of its “big bang,” the massive wave of enlargement in 2004 that saw it accept 10 new members — eight former communist countries from Eastern Europe, plus Malta and Cyprus. When Romania and Bulgaria joined two and a half years later, in 2007, the EU counted 27 member states, almost half a billion people and 30 percent of the world’s GDP. In the years since, the EU’s enlargement policy has been considered an unequivocal success. It has brought jobs and growth to the new member states, and […]

BARCELONA, Spain — As the once-vibrant Spanish economy plunges deeper into recession, the government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is struggling to staunch the country’s skyrocketing jobless rate. And among the first casualties is Spain’s famously lenient immigration policy. With employers shedding jobs at a record pace, Spain’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled over the past year to 17.4 percent, the highest in the European Union. More than 4 million Spanish workers are now unemployed, and that number is expected to reach 5 million by 2010 (.pdf). One million Spanish families now have no source of income, […]

At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration’s Middle East policies. Yet in shunning the Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a regime they deem inimical to their interests, the Saudis — along with other Sunni Arab regimes — appear to have internalized the core foreign policy impulse of the Bush administration. This myopic approach has had the perverse effect of amplifying Iran’s already outsized influence in Iraq and throughout the region. It has also fueled Iraqi suspicions about the intentions of its Sunni Arab neighbors, […]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s political legacy is inextricably linked to that of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, in ways that go beyond mere political lineage. After then-President Putin endorsed Medvedev to succeed him in December 2007, Medvedev announced his intention, if elected, to name Putin as prime minister. With their slogan, “Together we will win,” the two reassured voters that they would continue the popular policies of Putin’s presidency. With the backing of Putin and his allies, and with the government restricting the activities of opposition candidates, Medvedev easily won the March 2008 presidential elections with more than 70 percent of […]

The world continues to hold its breath over a swine flu that, while perhaps slowing, is still likely to kill in the low hundreds and remains balanced on the edge of a true pandemic. Although only a mere 2-3,000 cases have — so far — been recorded worldwide (80 percent of them in co-sources Mexico and America), this variant of H1N1 influenza penetrated dozens of nations and all mass-populated regions of the globe in a matter of days — a truly humbling reminder of how globalization enhances mankind’s epidemiological interdependency. Has the media overreacted? It’s possible that round-the-clock coverage in […]

TORREÓN, Mexico — Just as love persisted in García Márquez’s masterpiece set during the 19th century cholera outbreaks, politics has not gone on hiatus during the swine flu epidemic that continues to threaten Mexico. While the political consequences of the outbreak have yet to fully crystallize, it’s clear that the episode has the potential to scramble the electoral calculus ahead of this summer’s elections. The entire lower house of Congress as well as a handful of governorships and state legislatures will be chosen on July 5. President Felipe Calderón’s allies and adversaries are competing to define his government’s reaction to […]

A newly issued U.S. Army field manual has put people on notice: Video games are serious training tools. In its first revision since 9/11, the U.S. Army field manual for Training and Full Spectrum Operations mentions gaming 32 times, describing it as as a key ingredient in replicating “an actual operational environment.” Released in December 2008, the new doctrine is another reminder of how gaming is rapidly redefining military recruitment and training. The push to use games as a recruiting tool dates back to 2002, when the Army released “America’s Army” — a free, downloadable video game that gave people […]

Have we really reached the end of American hegemony? For those who think so, the signs of America’s decline and the rise of emerging powers are everywhere. According to this line of argument, the world’s sole superpower succumbed to overstretch. U.S. failures in the “war on terror” revealed the limitations of American military power, while its role in provoking the global economic crisis revealed the shortcomings of American economic leadership. As a result, rising powers around the world feel suddenly emboldened by America’s visible weakness. Brazil’s president blames the worldwide recession on “white-skinned people with blue eyes,” and Russia and […]

Dambisa Moyo’s new book, “Dead Aid,” is a prime example of an old idea wrapped up in new packaging. As a Harvard-educated child of Africa (Zambia), with stints at Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, Moyo makes for an appealing messenger. However, the idea on which her book is based — that foreign assistance for Africa hasn’t worked — is hardly an original one to most aid practitioners. But instead of offering ideas to improve aid Moyo takes the opposite approach, asserting that aid is altogether bad for Africa and should be gradually replaced with foreign investment. Moyo’s solutions may […]

President Barack Obama didn’t look into Dimitry Medvedev’s eyes and claim that he saw the Russian president’s soul at the G-20 summit in early April. But the meeting between the two leaders has potentially set the stage for a more pragmatic relationship between Washington and Moscow. Substantial policy differences still separate the two powers, but the dynamics of the U.S.-Russia relationship have shifted away from the mutual bitterness that arose out of the August 2008 war in the Caucasus. However, although energy is not a major part of the public discourse on U.S.-Russian relations, it is a latent factor that […]

For years, analysts have argued that the Nabucco natural gas pipeline — a U.S.-backed effort to transport gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe via Turkey, thus bypassing Russia — needed to accept gas from Iran if it was to be economically viable. But Iranian involvement in the project, which is intended to reduce European energy dependence on Russian gas exports, has been anathema for U.S. policymakers: Washington’s efforts to thwart Iran’s ambitions have so far overridden its desire to thwart Russia’s. That may be changing. The White House has appointed a new envoy for Eurasian Energy, Richard Morningstar, who […]

‘Tis the season of snap judgments on President Obama’s first 100 days in office, replete with scorecards, grading sheets, and cartoon thumbs pointing up or down. The temptation with such analyses is simply to generate a laundry list of accomplishments, as if a crowded agenda or a flurry of decisions connotes successful leadership. Under normal circumstances, the key measure tends to be “traction,” as in, Did the new administration hit the ground running on issues A through Z? But these aren’t normal times. America and the world are experiencing the sort of once-in-a-lifetime restructuring of international affairs that only a […]

MOSCOW — The Russian government has stepped up its efforts to keep social unrest in check as the financial crisis rages on across the country. Russia’s economy has been among the hardest hit globally, with the unemployment rate reaching the 10 percent threshold in March, its highest rate in the last nine years. Both government officials and critics in Russia and abroad have expressed public doubts about the economy’s ability to bounce back in such an adverse economic climate. The International Monetary Fund forecasts a 6 percent contraction in 2009. With the confidence of the oil-boom years a casualty of […]