As cranes dotted skylines across Nairobi, Colombo, and Karachi in 2013, China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) had sprung into full velocity. Pouring over $1 trillion into developing countries symbolized their promise to rewrite the global economic map. However, today, those exact cranes remain inactive. The dozens of lower-middle-income nations that had once received […]
Tag: debt
China-West Conflict Making a Move to Africa?
From censoring Winnie the Pooh to attacking ships in the South China Sea with water cannons, China’s anti-Western international agenda has long been centered around political posturing and aggressive ploys for greater regional influence. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent actions suggest a new, rather unique, international strategy: spinning a globe and speaking with leaders […]
A Case Against Higher Education
It is no secret that attainment of a four-year college degree is associated with an increase in earnings over the course of a lifetime; recent college graduates earn, on average, about $52,000, while high school degree holders have average earnings of $30,000 in the United States. This discrepancy is the cause of massive economic inequality […]
The Paradox Between Pension and Promise
This last year has resurfaced issues leading to greater action towards change and exposed new crises that have left Americans feeling fearful of change. The Black Lives Matter movement protested the murder of George Floyd and advocated for the defunding of the police. At the same time, the high-risk environment that healthcare professionals and teachers […]
Fix Medicare-for-Some Before Creating Medicare-for-All
In 2016, Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary with a long-shot bid from the far-left flank. Now, many of his ideas that were once considered radical are becoming mainstream, with 70 percent of Democratic presidential candidates supporting his Medicare-for-all platform. In this year’s primary, the near total proliferation of public healthcare platforms […]
Fiscal Education: The Case for Increased German Spending
If Germany, the largest economy in the Eurozone by more than $1 trillion, is the engine of European growth, then it seems that the engine is now beginning to sputter. Similar to much of the rest of the developed world, German economic growth has been negatively affected as tumultuous political and economic events, like Brexit […]
China’s Debt Conundrum
President Xi Jinping and the standing committee. Analyzing China’s perilous macroeconomic position. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times recently wrote, to understand the Chinese economy Stein’s law must be kept in mind. The economic law, named after Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic advisors under President Nixon simply states that if something […]
We Need to Talk About Sovereign Debt
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, a key figure in sovereign debt restructuring. Featured image source: World Economic Forum. A brief summary of sovereign debt crises. Sovereign debt crises occur regularly and often violently. Take the example of the latest prominent debt crisis in Greece. Major markets in the US and in Europe were […]
The Brave Reformer
BY GIACOMO TOGNINI Facing -2.1% GDP quarterly growth rate and 12.5% unemployment, Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s problems continue. His government recently passed a new budget that reduced fiscal austerity and increased state spending. His next target is Italy’s constitution, a document that established Italy’s bloated bureaucratic public sector which continues to drain resources from the […]