When forcing him to resign under American pressure, the Egyptian Army did not exactly arbitrate between Mubarak and the protesters but rather between Mubarak and themselves.
When forcing him to resign under American pressure, the Egyptian Army did not exactly arbitrate between Mubarak and the protesters but rather between Mubarak and themselves.
Technical economists, for all their credentials ,tend to be viewed by the political classes as annoying carpers, overeducated intellectuals without a clue of the real world.
Debate has been raging as to whether the Greek economy can avoid bankruptcy. Just how big is the problem, what are the options and how is this impacting financial markets?
When it comes to power, words don't matter. What matters is military might, resources, or, as in this case, the percentage of votes you control. The rest is noise and rhetoric.
It is no surprise that the leading candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF is another French citizen, Christine Lagarde. Yet, beyond northwestern Europe there has emerged an exceptional leader from an unlikely place: Kazakhstan.
It won't be much longer that the IMF can select its leadership like it's still the 1940s -- in back room conversations between the Americans and Europeans.
There's an inane debate in the press about who should be the next head of the IMF. If we took the idea of human equality seriously, we would be discussing how to disband the IMF entirely and start again.
France considers the IMF top job as "theirs," and has provided a succession of quite remarkable leaders of the IMF. Whether that means the next one should be French was "beyond reasonable doubt" for the Elysée Palace.
The European Central Bank is acting as if it can dictate terms to Greece, but Greece is a sovereign country. As U.S. banks found out, when someone owes you money and they can't pay it back, you are in as much trouble -- sometimes more -- as they are.
Nemat Shafik, who took over as IMF Deputy Managing Director in April, says she has been surprised by the vigor of internal policy debate at the IMF. "...
"Greed always exists. It rises and falls with the times. But when it's unchecked by government, self-interest rises to a level of greed that overwhelms the economic invisible hand."
It is clear to see why investors place so much emphasis on the oil price as a dictator of Russia's financial health. Supplying some 11.4% of the world's oil supply last year, Russia is the "biggest single source outside the OPEC cartel."
Since the President of the World Bank has always been American, and the IMF, European, it's fair to persuade the IMF to now elect a candidate from a developing country that is increasingly influential in the global economy.
We need look no further than the example of Lehman Brothers to understand how one financial institution's failure can threaten the global financial system and create devastating effects to economies around the world.
I recently sat down with one of my comedy idols: Albert Brooks. We talked about what goes on behind closed doors in New York Hotel Rooms, and why people keep raping maids.
In too many scenarios involving the powerful and the powerless, the powerful prevail, with the powerless person dissuaded from even thinking of their own rights, much less pressing for them.
A real man can control himself and a real woman knows her own power does not come from being seductive. But until adults start acting like adults and the Machiavellian nonsense behind the scenes stops, we are going to keep heading in the wrong direction.
What makes the sex scandal that broke open last week so resonant is the way the alleged assailant and victim model larger relationships around the world, starting with the IMF's assault on the poor.
We are outraged by your lack of empathy for your victims! We're not talking about the targets of your sexual advances, of course. We mean us.
Now all Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief because the Centers for Disease Control just posted instructions so we can all adequately prepare for "Zombie Armageddon."
Historically the IMF Managing Director has been European and the World Bank President American but nowhere in the "Articles of Agreement' is this mentioned. So where did this bias come from?