WASHINGTON – High on the agenda at this week’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund will be capital controls–limits on the free flow of money in and out of a country.  Worried about credit bubbles and currency appreciation, Asian and Latin American governments have taken to shielding their economies against “hot money” from abroad [...]

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NEW YORK — Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have been rather well behaved over the past few years. They have avoided, to a significant degree, blatant forms of protectionism in the face of one of the worst financial crises in modern history. In the dark days of early 2009, following the collapse in [...]

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WASHINGTON — News of its immediate demise is premature: the euro is here to stay, for two very simple reasons. First, no member country can be forced out of the eurozone, and none will choose to leave voluntarily. The consequences would be disastrous — for that country itself, but also for others across the globe. [...]

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NEW YORK – The current eurozone crisis does not stop at the old continent’s edge. Corporations on these shores are paying close attention to what happens in Greece, Ireland, and the rest of the struggling European economies. And if they aren’t paying attention, they should be. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, Europe remains hugely important to [...]

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HAMBURG, Germany — In the spring it was Greece. Now it is Ireland. Last Sunday, Ireland received 85 billion euros ($112 billion) in financial aid. Soon Portugal and Spain will follow, and maybe even Italy. Debtor states are losing borrowing power in financial markets. Higher interest rates—effectively a risk premium–are the consequence. Refinancing is becoming [...]

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WASHINGTON – In preparing to host the November 11-12 G20 Summit in Seoul, the South Korean government has worked to win support for a “global financial safety net,” a rapid response to future global economic crises. Part of Seoul’s vision is greater cooperation in the face of crises between the International Monetary Fund, regional pools [...]

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Besides resolving to clamp down on bankers’ bonuses, the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh produced two major results. The first was a pledge to expand emerging markets’ say and sway in the IMF by increasing their quota by five percentage points to 43 percent of the total. The U.S.-sponsored idea will go some ways to addressing [...]

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Russia has never been easy. Will the present global financial and economical crisis nonetheless pave the path to a new period of thaw or even to some change of the”System Putin”? Last week, in discussions with a group of Americans and Germans in Moscow organized by GMF, representatives of the declining number of still active [...]

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This weekend, GMF is hosting with its partners the third annual Brussels Forum, a gathering of political, academic, and business leaders to debate the countless items on the transatlantic agenda. Public sessions will be streamed live in  video and audio from Brussels, and transcripts and video for download will be available shortly after each session. [...]

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GMF’s Economic Policy Program recently hosted Professor Dan Drezner of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, for a presentation of his new book, €˜All Politics is Global’ (Princeton University Press). You can read more about Drezner’s arguments here, and listen to a podcast interview here. I highly recommend the book for [...]

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