As the U.S. Congress debates the George W. Bush administration's proposed massive bailout of the nation's precarious financial system, the astringent analysis of economist Dean Baker has enjoyed a high profile in the news, the opinion pages and the blogosphere.
A new international financial architecture, based on different rules, is a reform that has long been demanded by different sectors and is now "inevitable" in the face of the "universal and systemic crisis" originating in the United States, says Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.
The George W. Bush administration's plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue giant Wall Street firms from their current financial meltdown has unleashed a spontaneous wave of protests across the United States.
While the White House and U.S. lawmakers hash out final terms of a proposed 700-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout, foreign policy analysts are warning that the current financial crisis could very well hasten the decline of U.S. power and influence overseas.
The turmoil in the financial markets and the resulting slump in the global economy has highlighted the stark inequality in the European Union.
The international turmoil and economic slowdown triggered by the U.S. financial crisis are having a major impact on global investment, which will drop 10 percent this year from last year’s record level of 1.8 trillion dollars.
The blood flowing this week from Wall Street, spilling over into the homes of most citizens and the economies of other countries, raised urgent calls for stricter regulation of major players in the U.S. economy.