History

In preparing this paper I have decided not to embark upon the decades-old issue of optimal-currency areas and governance as such. I assume that one of my colleagues on the panel will do that. Instead I will present an historical case of over-indebtedness of parts of a common-currency area somewhat similar to the present challenge of Europe, or rather of the Euro area with its common currency.

At a time when China is the favored investment destination in the global market, it seems unlikely that it would ever face capital flight.

This is a small paper on a big subject: the polarization of American politics since the mid-1970s. In its early stages this process bore more than a passing resemblance to the opening scenes of a Grade B disaster movie: With almost everyone’s attention focused elsewhere, a series of tiny, seemingly insignificant departures from long standing routines took place.

The theme of this session is very timely and controversial, on the ability of sovereign governments to supervise Large Complex Financial Institutions (LCFIs), now officially described as G-SIFIs, global systemically important financial institutions.

After the inception and, hopefully, the passing of the most dangerous phase of the international financial crisis, economists have returned to the long favoured subject of global imbalances.

The Bretton Woods conference has a protean character.Talk in the corridors asks “what is it?” Some in the press (lots of press here) believe that deals are being made, the attendance of heavy hitters leads some to believe that consultations and strategies are being outlined for world government (Summers, Stiglitz, Brown, and yesterday Volcker arrived to close the event).

We have been talking and video interviewing people at the conference, and we’ve narrowed down a small list of questions which we try to build on and have so far talked to Kenneth Rogoff, Brad DeLong, Ha-Joon Chang, Stephen Ziliak, Philippe Aghion, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Barry Eichengreen and tomorrow we start with James Galbraith.

For one and a half days we had Anglo-Saxons talking finance and financial crisis: Keynesian stimuli, surplus countries bashing, drawing China in, and bullying of the Euro area and in particular Germany’s role in it.

The presentation explains that Indian Economy is basically a market-oriented economy with constant rebalancing between state andmarket.

Many companies around the world have discovered they can benefit financially from integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets in their daily operations and strategy.

Simon Johnson at the Institute’s 2011 Annual Conference.