The House Rules Committee advanced three proposals Wednesday that may help curb a growing problem for the nation’s economy: stagnant job growth in the technology sector. The three pending free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and Korea are up for full House approval next week. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also said that the Senate will vote on the agreements next week as well. 115, 800 U.S. hi-tech industry jobs were lost in 2010-the second straight year of decline for the industry- according to a report released by …
The United States spent $28.7 billion dollars in 2009 on official development assistance, more than any other country in the world. There is no denying that many people in poor nations live in desperate conditions and Americans rightly want to help them improve their lives. In an effort to measure progress toward this end, the United Nations created a set of goals to be attained by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include objectives such as lowering child mortality rates and providing universal access to education.
The economic world for good reason is focused intently on Greece and the potential for financial contagion in Europe. But there’s been another interesting development on America’s Pacific-side. One of the of most talented public servants in Indonesia, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati – by some accounts, the world’s best finance minister – has resigned her cabinet post to take a position with the World Bank. It’s always necessary to put Indonesia in some context. For the record, it is the fourth largest country in the world by population. It is …
Yesterday President Barack Obama asked his cabinet to make a total of $100 million in cuts among their departments. That was “fiscally responsible” President Obama. We like him. We just wish we got to see him more often. Today, “reckless spending” President Obama is back at work, following through on his G20 summit pledge to loan $100 billion for world wide stimulus. Heritage fellow Terry Miller explains why such stimulus is a bad bet: It is a spectacularly bad and high risk idea to pour vast new sums through failed …
News reports indicate that the G-20 pledged an additional $1.1 trillion in financing for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other global institutions so that they can help countries cope with the global economic crisis. The details of the proposal are virtually non-existent, i.e. exactly who will be responsible for what portion of the pledge, what exactly the money is supposed to be used for, and when it will be delivered. It’s clear that much of the money was already in the pipeline in one form or another. …
Just when you thought that you had seen everything, here come the World Bank and the United Nations to claim their slice of the government bailout pie. According to the Times Online, “The UN and the World Bank are lobbying for a portion of the billions of dollars allocated to bailing out the West’s banking systems to be diverted to prevent 400 million people sinking into poverty across Asia in the wake of the global economic crisis.” All the world has to do is allocate some 1 percent of their …
This past weekend President Bush announced plans to host an “emergency” summit of world leaders to “overhaul the regulatory framework for global finance.” Bush offered few details on what actual policy fixes would be addressed, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown penned an op-ed in for The Washington Post calling for unprecedented levels of “global governance,” including global standards for accounting and regulation and a “renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.” Specifically, Brown wants to enhance the power and authority of …
