Triple Crisis blogger Gerald Epstein was interview by the Real News Network on the decision by the S&P to downgrade US debt.
40th Anniversary of the end of Bretton Woods
Forty years ago today the United States ended the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. This video shows then US President Richard Nixon making the announcement to the world:
No longer were fixed exchange rates the norm for the global economy. Floating rates prevailed, and it was hoped that financial and currency markets would become more stable. That has not been the case. As we move into the fourth year of the global financial crisis a number of scholars and policy-makers have called for a new international monetary system. Some call for a new global reserve system based on Special Drawing Rights, others call for a global GDP-linked bond, and others such as Ron Paul and Robert Zoellick long for those days of the gold standard.
What are your thoughts on this 40th anniversary of such a transformative event? Where do we go now?
The Tyranny of Bond Holders
Triple Crisis blogger and GDAE Senior Researcher Kevin P. Gallagher recently sat down for an interview with the Real News Network. The interview covered his recent report, The New Vulture Culture: Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Trade and Investment Treaties, as well as his research on the Greek crisis and the debt ceiling.
Interview with Jayati Ghosh: Speculation Drove Wheat Prices up While Supply Expanded
Triple Crisis blogger Jayati Ghosh was recently interviewed by the Real News Network on how the lack of regulation of speculation in commodities trading has increased food prices. You can read more of her work on commodities markets in her post, Riding the Commodities Roller Coaster, and on the food crisis, Frenzy in Food Markets.
Read more Triple Crisis blog posts on financial speculation in commodities markets.
The Age of Greed: Interview with Jeff Madrick
Triple Crisis Blogger Jeff Madrick recently sat down for an interview with The Real News Network on his new book, The Age of Greed. Watch the full interview below, and read more about this book in his recent post, The Squandered Wealth of Nations: The Age of Greed.
Click here to watch more interviews with Triple Crisis bloggers.
Doha Demands May Kill WTO Agreement: Wise interview on The Real News Network
Triple Crisis Blogger Timothy A Wise was interviewed by The Real News Network on his work on the Doha trade negotiations and his Triple Crisis posts, Doha Goes on Life Support and The Hypocrisy Clause. In this interview, Wise explains how the US is making excessive demands on developing nations to open their markets to US products, which has brought negotiations to a standstill. Watch the full interview:
More on the Doha negotiations from other Triple Crisis Bloggers:
Jayati Ghosh, Food insecurity means few would mourn the death of Doha
Martin Khor, Crunch time arrives for WTO talks
Watch more interviews at the GDAE Globalization Multimedia page.
Wise interviewed by The Real News Network on High Farm Prices: Do family farmers benefit?
Timothy A Wise recently sat down for an interview with The Real News Network to talk about his recent work on the “Farm Boom,” including a policy brief, Still Waiting for the Farm Boom: Family Farmers Worse off Despite High Crop Prices, and from a previous post on the Triple Crisis Blog, High Food Prices: Do Family Farmers Benefit?
According to USDA officials, boom times continue for US farmers. The USDA’s chief economist claimed that in the last decade, farmers have “seen the highest net cash farm income numbers since the nineteen-seventies.” Yet a recent GDAE Policy Brief by Timothy A Wise examines this “farm boom” and asks the question: who is really benefitting? Among Wise’s findings is the fact that small-to-mid scale family farmers are not benefitting from the boom, and they have actually seen a decline in net farm income with high prices. Watch the interview:
Watch more interviews with The Real News Network on GDAE’s Globalization Multimedia page.
Why Development Should be on the G20 Agenda
The G20 – first at the Finance Minister’s level and more recently at the leaders level – was born in times of financial crisis. But its very perceived success as a ‘crisis management syndicate’ has brought calls for the G20 to become a possible successor to the G8. With the last G20 summit in Korea, the next one in France and the following one in Mexico, the G20 Summits are in the process of becoming substantively formalized and routinized. But this formalization also raises many new question – importantly, about the future agendas for the G20. An eminent set of experts, diplomats and political leaders gathered at a conference to discuss these very question.
In this video, Triple Crisis blogger Prof. Adil Najam of Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and one of the participants at the conference discusses what role the G20 can play in enabling a new global architecture for climate change governance and why development should be at the core of G20’s concerns. (More details of the conference here).
Lord Nicholas Stern on the new economics of climate change
Triple Crisis blogger Frank Ackerman interviewed Lord Nicholas Stern for the Global Development And Environment Institute (GDAE) on the changes in economics needed to understand climate change issues and consequences. Last week, GDAE presented Stern and Dr. Martin Weitzman with the 2011 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought for their pioneering analysis of the economics of global climate change. Read a transcript of Stern’s remarks and full event coverage at GDAE.
Speculation and the Frenzy in Food Markets
Triple Crisis blogger Jayati Ghosh was interviewed by the Real News Network, along with colleague Robert Pollin, about food prices and financial speculation. The interview is based on Ghosh’s Triple Crisis post, and follows on recent posts by Martin Khor and Timothy A. Wise (here and here), part of the blog’s ongoing coverage of the food crisis.