This week’s summit has revived a 20-year-old idea of the ‘Group of Two’ superpowers working together with global benefits. But we’re now living in a different world.
- Professor of International Relations, Australian National University
The market remains deeply uncertain about the future direction of China’s economic policies and what they might mean for the world. But we should still watch closely.
The Fed faces a tough choice on how fast to raise rates in 2017, and Donald Trump may find that it may spoil some of his plans.
Trump wouldn’t be the first occupant of the Oval Office to try to bend companies to his will to achieve an objective, be it economic or merely political. JFK tried it with U.S. Steel in 1962.
Looking back over past US elections you can see how the terms of the economic debate have varied – as the solutions to past crises have set the groundwork for renewed instability.
The people wanted reform but they got excuses, and now populism is winning.
The mixed picture of the US economy makes for caution on interest rates, but Janet Yellen the economist is likely to win over Yellen the politician.
In the shadow of a history-repeating Black Monday, it’s useful to step back and ask how we got here again.
Greece’s membership of the eurozone has been problematic from the beginning.
Conflating economic policy with morality is what could ultimately bring the EU unstuck.
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week was important for both policy and political reasons. In it, Obama argued for a more egalitarian “middle-class economics”. In the process, he prepared…
To understand this week’s G20 Summit being held in Brisbane, Australia, and measure its success, requires a sense of the history of economic crisis and change. Recurring crises have shaped global institutions…
Perhaps the most interesting type of reform to have emerged from the global financial crisis is the call for “macroprudential” regulation. Macroprudential regulation, in broadest terms, seeks to manage…
As debate about the economic versus political role of the G20 takes hold, it’s worth looking back at how successfully member countries cooperated in promoting economic recovery after the global financial…
The US debt crisis is over for now, but legislators have just kicked the can down the road. In this series on the US debt ceiling, academics from Australia, the UK and the US assess the lingering global…
Recent years have demonstrated the enduring strength of a core Keynesian insight: deficit spending may result in higher growth and enable states to move more quickly into surplus. In this light, Australian…
Is it 2013 or 1999? Barack Obama’s evolution into a more successful Bill Clinton may be complete with the issuance of his recent budget. On the one hand, Obama’s budget cuts entitlement spending by adopting…
In his State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama reignited a perennial debate in his proposal to increase the minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour. Advocating…
When I taught foreign policy in the United States, my students would often answer one question incorrectly, albeit in a way that speaks to a larger truth about US foreign policy. In lecturing on President…
Music fans may have noticed something odd when their favourite artists release new “best-of” compilations or remaster back catalogues for CD or iTunes. Over successive reissues, the same songs sound worse…
A few years back, mock-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert famously introduced the notion of “truthiness” into the political lexicon. As Colbert put it, truthiness pertains not to whether beliefs are…
Much ink has been spilled over the budget proposals advanced by Mitt Romney’s choice as Vice Presidential running mate, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan. Acting as Chair of the House Budget Committee, Ryan…
Yesterday the Federal Reserve announced limited measures to boost the economy. Whatever effect they will have on the economy, they are unlikely to be of any benefit to Obama. Indeed, history shows that…
The G8 leaders’ cautious embrace of “growth and jobs” on the weekend has momentarily buoyed international markets, but significantly, altered a 30-year focus on inflation. For more than three decades…
Are the tragedies of the 1920s repeating themselves in the twenty-first century? In the 1920s, an irrational attachment to the gold standard helped cause the Great Depression, as European fears of inflation…
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