In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a host of major US corporations described their efforts to exit the country. With the war about to enter its sixth month, the Moral Rating Agency has released new data surveying 114 of the largest companies in the world involved with Russia at the time of its…
President Joe Biden’s recent statement that the United States would intervene militarily if China tried to take Taiwan by force was hardly a gaffe. The US policy of strategic ambiguity has outlived its usefulness. Since President Richard Nixon went to China and put the two nations on the path to normalized diplomatic and trade relations,…
Read More “Opinion: Defending Taiwan starts with standing up to Putin” »
Emotionally, the slog of the second year of COVID-19 proved as distressing as the shock of the first. As 2021 served up a steady diet of uncertainty, including from the pandemic, the world became a slightly sadder, more worried and more stressed-out place than it was the year before. That pushed the annual Gallup’s Negative…
Read More “The world was unhappier and more stressed than ever — then war, inflation hit” »
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) – The United States appears to have entered a new cold war with both China and Russia. And US leaders’ portrayal of the confrontation as one between democracy and authoritarianism fails the smell test, especially at a time when the same leaders are actively courting a systematic human-rights abuser like Saudi…
Read More “Opinion: How an arrogant and pathological America could lose the new cold war” »
CAMBRIDGE, England (Project Syndicate) – Starting in the 1980s, transnational production enabled the expansion of global trade and low prices for goods, contributing significantly to economic growth. But the shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war have shown firms that the efficiency gains implied by the global division of labor — and…
Driving my daughter to her first day of summer camp today, I sat at a red light with the radio talking about today’s Congressional hearings into the attack on our Capitol. It was an insurrection, a coup, an attempt to stop the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral votes after a free and fair election. News…
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will be challenged to get inflation down to 2% and keep it there. For the decade between the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID pandemic, inflation averaged less than the Fed’s target, but all the stars were aligned. That is hardly likely to happen again. Coming out of a severe…
Read More “Opinion: Inflation above 4% may become a fact of life” »
The almost 1,000 companies that have opted to pull out of Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine are not just benefiting from a reputational boost. They are also being rewarded by financial markets, while those who remain behind are being punished. “We find that equity markets are actually rewarding companies for leaving Russia while…
