Global Paradigms

Business Times - 09 Oct 2010 Currency war looms? US and Beijing politicians will need a lot of political courage to take economic steps that could prevent a new currency and trade war By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AS finance ministers and central bankers from around the world gathered in Washington for the annual IMF and World Bank meetings, everyone was talking about the same topic - and it is not the weather. To paraphrase Karl Marx: a spectre is haunting the global economy - the spectre of brewing currency wars. Unlike the talk over weather, when it comes to the exchange rate problem, economic officials suggest that they actually know what to do about it. Unfortunately, they seem to want the other guys to walk the walk, while they continue talking the talk. The 'central existential challenge facing the world economy', is the way US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described the currency issue last Wednesday. 'We believe it's very important to see more pro...

Dump All Those Paradigms: It's Nationalism, Stupid! Since the end of geostrategic competition between the U.S. and the (former) U.S.S.R and with the ideological struggle between Democratic Capitalism and Communism over, pundits have been proposing new conceptual frameworks for understanding the evolving global political and economic balance - or imbalance -- of power. Indeed, for close to two decades, scholars have been debating the direction that the "paradigm shift" in international relations would take. What would replace the obsolete bipolar international system and the strategic and ideological forces that had driven it? From Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" assuming a stable unipolar system under which the process of economic globalization and the spread of democratic and liberal values would widen to Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" forecasting a challenge to American power and values from the Muslim World and other civil...

Business Times - 05 Oct 2010 US bill on China's yuan is just smoke and mirrors By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT JUST as US lawmakers were getting ready to leave Washington and return to their districts where they would be bashing each other as part of the heated midterm election campaigns, they found the necessary political will to provide a rare display of, yes! bipartisan cooperation. Indeed, the members of one of the most polarised House of Representatives in American history - Democrats, Republicans and Independents, liberals and conservatives, progressives and tea partiers - seem to all come together last Wednesday evening. After all, it was China-Bashing time, which happens to be the most effective way to bring the nation together. By a vote of 348-79 and wide bipartisan margin, the House passed a bill aimed at penalising China for manipulating its currency, something that China has denied doing. If passed into law - a big 'if' indeed - the legislation would all...

Business Times - 01 Oct 2010 Back to the future in Washington 2010 is beginning to look like a replay of 1994 - with Obama reprising Bill Clinton's role, and Boehner doing a Gingrich By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT UNLESS you believe in miracles and/or don't trust American pollsters, you have no other choice but to assume that the Republican Party is going to take control of the US House of Representatives after the midterm elections in November and that the current House Minority Leader, Republican Representative John Boehner of Ohio, is going to be elected the next Speaker of the House. Indeed, the results of the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll suggest that a mix of a public sense of gloom about the economy and rising discontent with President Barack Obama's management of the economy, coupled with Republican enthusiasm and Democratic despair, make it likely that the Republicans are going to make big gains in the midterm elections. Moreover, with Repub...

Business Times - 25 Sep 2010 A recovery that doesn't feel like one The US recession is over. In fact, the economy has been growing since June 2009. That's according to the US National Bureau of Economic Research. But for many Americans it is difficult to talk about a recovery when unemployment remains high, when incomes are not rising and may even be falling and when the housing market is not getting any better. By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT MOST Americans may not have noticed, but the Great Recession ended over a year ago. Say what? Yep. The most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression is over. It was brought to an end in June 2009, 18 months after it began. Says who? The US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced this week that, based on its calculation of the broadest measures of economic activity, such as gross domestic product (GDP), hirings and layoffs, and personal income, the US economy has done plunging. The recession is over, la...

Business Times - 22 Sep 2010 Going way beyond the Palin Is the radical right taking over the Republican Party - and making things easier for the Democrats in November? By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT KARL Rove, the legendary political strategist who helped George W Bush get elected president twice - he is AKA Bush's Brain - is one of the leading 'talking heads' of FOX-News where he has been bashing President Barack Obama and the Democrats, predicting huge Republican electoral gains in the coming midterm Congressional elections. And he is regarded by Democratic activists and liberal pundits as a symbol of the efforts by conservative Republicans to dominate the American political agenda and its public discourse through a web of media outlets and front organisations - including the Tea Party movement. Mr Rove is a conservative that liberals love to hate. So it was quite astonishing to watch him during an interview on FOX-News questioning the credentials of Christine O...

on The Huffington Posr Israeli-Palestinian talks recently convened by President Barack Obama may or may not lead to a peace agreement. But the negotiations could mark the last serious attempt by a U.S. president to invest his (or her) own political capital and American diplomatic prestige in resolving the conflict based on a two-state solution. An international consensus has emerged in support of a formula setting an end to the 100-year-old clash along the lines of the 2000 "Clinton Parameters." This consensus includes the members of the Middle East"Quartet," the Arab League, and mainstream Israeli and Palestinian leadership. Thus, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are under pressure to conclude within the year negotiations over a final status agreement along the following lines: A Palestinian State that would be established on most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Approximately 80 percent of the settler blocks in the West Bank would remain under Israeli sover...

Business Times - 21 Sep 2010 No relief for Sino-US trade tensions With midterm elections approaching, the Obama administration may be torn between taking a more populist rhetoric and a harder stance on China By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE Obama administration seems to be embracing a harder hitting rhetoric on the issue of China's exchange rate policies. Or at least that was the message US Treasury Timothy Geithner was trying to convey to the US Congress during testimonies before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday and Friday. While emphasising that China's management of its currency did not pose a 'systemic risk to the American financial system', he agreed with the lawmakers that the yuan was 'undervalued' and the Chinese were 'moving to let it rise, but not very quickly'. Mr Geithner told angry US lawmakers who accuse China of keeping its currency artificially low and gaining an unfair trade advant...

Are Obama and Sarkozy the 'shrinking presidents'? - September 16, 2010

Trade policies emerge as political issues in US - September 14, 2010

Small stimulus for the big recession - September 8, 2010

Obama's Mideast Policy: An Unpromising Drive towards a Cost-Effective Pax Americana

Bernanke makes it clear he isn't another Maestro - September 1, 2010

Economy heats up politics - August 28, 2010

Book review in Middle East Policy

Can Mr Nice Guy get nasty now? - August 25, 2010

It's New York, Not Jerusalem! How About Ending This Crazy Religious War

Debate over quantitative easing doesn't help the jobless - August 20, 2010

The politics of identity - August 18, 2010

Climate change bill likely to be put on ice - July 30, 2010