Asia Falling

This up-to-the minute critique is packed with solid recommendations for investors, providing policy-level political analyses on the actions and reactions that have led to Asia's currency crisis.

Veteran Asia-watcher Callum Henderson - Standard & Poor's senior authority on the Asian currency market and one of the few insiders to counsel caution during the heady boom days - delivers a first-hand examination of the political and economic events that led to Asia's currency crisis. Written with clarity and objectivity, and supported by fact-filled case studies of Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, this book goes beyond the hyperbole and the punditry to give investors an in-depth, country-by-country analysis of the crisis, and forecast the economic effects on the region; provide policy-level political analysis on governmental actions and reactions that led to Asia's ongoing currency crisis; and outline specific opportunities resulting from the Asian currency crisis and its consequent economic impact.

A structural growth slowdown is under way across the world: at current trends, the global rate of potential growth is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s. Nearly all the forces that have powered growth and prosperity since the early 1990s have weakened. In addition, a series of shocks has affected the global economy over the past three years. A persistent and broad-based decline in long-term growth prospects imperils the ability of emerging market and developing economies to combat poverty, tackle climate change, and meet other key development objectives. The challenges presented by this potential inability call for an ambitious policy response at the national and global levels. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the growth slowdown and a rich menu of policy options to deliver better growth outcomes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This book presents a sobering analysis of the secular growth slowdown based on the most comprehensive database of potential growth estimates available to date. With nearly all the forces that have driven growth and prosperity in recent decades now weakened, the book argues that a prolonged period of weakness is under way, with serious implications for emerging market and developing economies. The authors call for bold policy actions at both the national and global levels to lift growth prospects. The book is essential reading for policy makers, economists, and anyone concerned about the future of the global economy. Beatrice Weder di Mauro Professor of International Economics, Geneva Graduate Institute, and President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Economic policy making is becoming increasingly complicated in the 2020s. In addition to tackling traditional trade-offs in aggregate demand management and improving efficiency on the supply side, policy makers need to address new priorities and challenges, from addressing climate change and its impacts to improving income distribution, all in the context of lower growth rates, waning productivity growth, and flattening of the globalization process that has brought unprecedented prosperity across the globe and lifted more than a billion people out of poverty. In Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects, the authors do a phenomenal job of assessing these trends at the global and regional levels, identifying and unpacking salient twenty-first-century policy challenges, and providing thoughtful and evidence-based policy prescriptions for leaders in advanced, emerging market, and developing economies. Importantly, the book underscores that these challenges tend to be global and, hence, global cooperation at all levels is necessary to achieve optimal results. Alas, we seem to be going in the opposite direction; this book offers a road map to put us back on the path to creating a more integrated, prosperous, and equitable global community. Michael G. Plummer Director, SAIS Europe and ENI Professor of International Economics, The Johns Hopkins University

The Taliban's fall and the massive American military and political presence in South and West Asia have created grounds for a polarization into two camps: India, Iran and Russia, to which China is affiliated, and the United States and Pakistan. In Peimani's analysis, their incompatible interests will push them towards confrontations with regional and international implications. Contrary to expectations, the fall of the Taliban did not bring peace and stability to Afghanistan. The Afghan interim government is simply too weak to act as a central government; this results in the re-emergence of warlords, turf wars, and the expansion of drug trafficking. This unstable situation may well result in the emergence of Taliban-like groups. Added to this, the threat of the spillover of instability from Afghanistan into neighboring regions, on the one hand, and the rapid expansion of American military and political power in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, on the other, have created fear among the regional powers. The stated indefinite stay of American forces well after the end of the anti-terrorist war in Afghanistan has worsened that fear as it reflected the American government's plan to pursue certain strategic interests unrelated to that war. Consequently, as Peimani shows, the regional anti-terrorist coalition has disintegrated in the absence of a common objective to help focus the region. Fear of the long-term American objectives and those of its Pakistani ally in South and West Asia incompatible with those of the regional powers have facilitated the creation of two camps consisting of Iran, India, and Russia, to which China is affiliated, and Pakistan and the United States. Respectively, these implicit and explicit camps are likely to collide over their regional interests especially in the strategically important energy-producing Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions.

This reader is intended for the serious observer of Asian affairs. Essays are written by the likes of Paul Krugman, W.W. Rosrow, Steven Radelet, Robert A. Manning, Fareed Zakaria and Chalmers Johnson.

Annotation In 1700, Latin America and British North America were roughly equal in economic terms. Yet over the next three centuries, the United States gradually pulled away. In 'Falling Behind', Francis Fukuyama gathers together some of the world's leading scholars on the subject to explain the nature of the gap and how it came to be.

In 1700, Latin America and British North America were roughly equal in economic terms. Yet over the next three centuries, the United States gradually pulled away from Latin America, and today the gap between the two is huge. Why did this happen? Was it culture? Geography? Economic policies? Natural resources? Differences in political development? The question has occupied scholars for decades, and the debate remains a hot one. In Falling Behind, Francis Fukuyama gathers together some of the world's leading scholars on the subject to explain the nature of the gap and how it came to be. Tracing the histories of development over the past four hundred years and focusing in particular on the policies of the last fifty years, the contributors conclude that while many factors are important, economic policies and political systems are at the root of the divide. While the gap is deeply rooted in history, there have been times when it closed a bit as a consequence of policies chosen in places ranging from Chile to Argentina. Bringing to light these policy success stories, Fukuyama and the contributors offer a way forward for Latin American nations and improve their prospects for economic growth and stable political development. Given that so many attribute the gap to either vast cultural differences or the consequences of U.S. economic domination, Falling Behind is sure to stir debate. And, given the pressing importance of the subject in light of economic globalization and the immigration debate, its expansive, in-depth portrait of the hemisphere's development will be a welcome intervention in the conversation.