'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

G-20: When 'Seven' just isn't enough

Pres. G.W. Bush may, as two NYT reporters wrote today, have been the first to insist that this weekend's economic summit in Washington should include the leaders of all the...

Differential effects of the financial crisis

I've been arguing for a while now that the present crisis of the western world's "casino capitalism" will have much less of a total impact on China, India, and other...

China to the rescue?

This is something to read alongside the post I put up here a couple of hours ago. It's an op-ed in yesterday's Financial Times by Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow,...

Financial crisis and world power shifts, pt.2

In this recent (introductory) post on this topic I wrote, "The US financial system's current woes have accelerated the decline in American power in the world that has already been...

And that $25 billion for Detroit...

In all the publicity around the $700 billion bailout for wall Street that became law last Friday, the fact that Congress last Tuesday also appropriated $25 billion to prop up...

The financial crisis and world power shifts

The US financial system's current woes have accelerated the decline in American power in the world that has already been underway for several years now. This is so for a...

America as others see us, Pt. 1: Der Spiegel

This week's lengthy cover article in Germany's Der Spiegel is definitely worth reading. Non-German readers can even read it in English there. By the way, Bernhard of Moon of Alabama...

China and Japan's stakes in the US financial crisis

Did you know that China has over $900 billion of exposure/investment in US Treasury bills and in debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-- and that the Chinese government...

Rest-of-world saving US from recession?

Time was, the US economy dominated the world economy to such a degree that economists would quip that if the US economy sneezed the rest of the world would catch...

Milanovic: From Global Trade to Global War

Editorial note from HC: In the piece I had in the CSM last Friday about the current, Georgia-revealed shifts in global power balances, I argued that the many economic interdependencies...

Ethanol and the discourse of the US "National interest"

Yesterday, Pres. Bush referred to the huge subsidies the US government gives to farmers to grow corn for conversion into ethanol, a car fuel, by saying: "the truth of the...

U.S. speculators took multi-billion dollar incomes from sub-prime crash

Obscene! Read the whole of this article on how some male US speculators pulled in multi-billion-dollar takings from their activities in so-called hedge funds in 2007, and weep. The top...