January 29, 2009, 3:11 pm
Economists and others weigh in on the government’s economic stimulus package. Comments collected over the past few weeks as the package has continued to evolve.
Compiled by Phil Izzo
Permalink | Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/29/economists-debate-diverse-perspectives-on-stimulus/trackback/
CEOs say overhaul of bank bonuses on the cards
For CEOs, thirst for perks may be in their DNA
Compensation firm sees 15-20 percent bonus drop
Cuomo eyes return of $4 billion in early Merrill bonuses: report
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington moved to crack down on Wall Street bonuses on Friday as a Democratic senator proposed capping employee salaries at companies receiving government aid and the White House pledged action from President Barack Obama as well.
Sen. Claire McCaskill proposed a law that would prevent executives from making more money than the U.S. president — $400,000 a year — until their companies no longer rely on government aid such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bails out banks.
McCaskill, a close ally of Obama who represents Missouri, announced her legislation a day after the president said he was outraged by a report of some $18 billion in Wall Street bonuses being paid while taxpayer money was being used to shore up the crumbling financial system.
At the White House, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president’s upcoming plan for financial stability also would address executive compensation and bonuses.
“I think you will see the president and his economic team outline a plan to deal with what he found irresponsible yesterday,” Gibbs told reporters. “Stay tuned, because something on that is coming soon.” He declined to say more.
Obama on Thursday said recent Wall Street bonuses in the current situation were “shameful.” His administration is working on options to help stabilize the U.S. banking industry after various experts have said the $700 billion already allocated to the bank rescue program in recent months will not be enough.
HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS MORE
The head of the Congressional Budget Office told Congress this week he thought U.S. banks would need hundreds of billions of dollars more.
Public outcry has grown over reports of corporate excess by companies getting bailout funds, including Citigroup Inc, which intended to purchase a private jet, and bonuses paid by Merrill Lynch & Co, now owned by Bank of America Corp.
Citigroup later canceled the plane order. Bank of America’s Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis ousted former Merrill chief John Thain this month after Merrill awarded large bonuses just days before the merger closed, and following huge losses that led Bank of America to obtain $20 billion of government aid to absorb Merrill.
McCaskill, an early endorser of Obama’s presidential candidacy, gave an angry speech on the Senate floor Friday in which she said an average of $2.6 million dollars had been paid in bonuses to executives from the first 116 banks that got money from the TARP rescue plan.
“I am mad,” she said. “We have bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. … They don’t get it!”
Her office said the $400,000 compensation cap she was proposing would include salary, bonuses and stock options.
“We should have done it in the first place,” McCaskill said of the proposed salary cap, “but I don’t think any of us thought these guys were this stupid.”
Obama is also working with Congress to pass a stimulus plan of over $800 billion in tax relief and government spending to try to revive the moribund economy.
(Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Brian Moss)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSTRE50T5JN20090130
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13036802
Hedge funds
Jan 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition
MIGHT two-and-twenty become one-and-ten? Since 1990 the number of hedge funds has grown by 14 times to over 7,000, but abundance has not lowered prices. Funds typically still charge clients a management fee of 2% of assets and 20% of any profits above a given hurdle. Rough calculations suggest that in the boom year of 2007, hedge funds globally received $33 billion in management fees alone—roughly equivalent to the bonus pool paid by Wall Street’s securities industry.That may now be changing. The average hedge fund lost 18% during 2008, according to Hedge Fund Research, an analysis firm. Assets fell by a quarter, reflecting both losses and client redemptions, which are expected to accelerate. To prevent fire sales, perhaps a third of funds have restricted client withdrawals. Giving clients temporary fee cuts has helped sweeten this pill.
Are permanent price cuts likely? Certainly for funds-of-funds, which act as aggregators for hedge funds and which have been tainted by their role in the Madoff scandal. One pension-scheme manager says he demanded, and quickly secured, a halving of his fee rate from a fund-of-funds. For hedge funds themselves the debacle of 2008 will mean clients start getting far tougher.
Those funds with excellent records will manage to maintain their fee rates. Big diversified managers with mediocre performance will have to cut fees to hold on to their assets. Given the “high watermarks” in place, which require that losses be recouped before performance fees can be charged, they may struggle to retain top staff, although they should at least be able to stay in business. The real threat is to smaller operators—half of all hedge funds manage less than $100m. Lower management fees may not cover their fixed costs, such as salaries, accommodation and IT. The era of hedge-fund managers being unable to pay the rent may soon be dawning.
Economics focus
Jan 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition
CRISES feed uncertainty. And uncertainty affects behaviour, which feeds the crisis. Were a magic wand to remove uncertainty, the next few quarters would still be tough (some of the damage cannot be undone), but the crisis would largely go away.
From the Vix index of stockmarket volatility (see chart), to the dispersion of growth forecasts, even to the frequency of the word “uncertain” in the press, all the indicators of uncertainty are at or near all-time highs. What is at work is not only objective, but also subjective uncertainty, or what economists, following Chicago economist Frank Knight’s early 20th-century work, call “Knightian uncertainty”. Objective uncertainty is about what Donald Rumsfeld (in a different context) referred to as the “known unknowns”. Subjective uncertainty is about the “unknown unknowns”. When, as today, the unknown unknowns dominate, and the economic environment is so complex as to appear nearly incomprehensible, the result is extreme prudence, if not outright paralysis, on the part of investors, consumers and firms. And this behaviour, in turn, feeds the crisis.
It affects portfolio decisions. It has led to a dramatic shift away from risky assets to riskless assets, or at least assets perceived as riskless. It sometimes looks as if investors around the world only want to hold American Treasury bills. Why? At the start was the realisation that many of the new complex assets were in fact much riskier than they had seemed. This realisation has now morphed into a general worry about nearly all risky assets, and about the balance-sheets of the institutions that hold them. “Better safe than sorry” is the motto. Unfortunately, while the motto may make sense for individual investors, it is having catastrophic macroeconomic consequences for the world. It is triggering enormous spreads on risky assets, a credit crunch in advanced economies, and major capital outflows from emerging countries.
It affects consumption and investment decisions, and is largely behind the dramatic collapse in demand we have observed over the last three months. Sure, consumers have lost a good part of their wealth, and this is reason enough for them to retrench. But there is more at work. If you think that another Depression might be around the corner, better to be careful and save more. Better to wait and see how things turn out. Buying a new house, a new car or a new laptop can surely be delayed a few months. The same goes for firms: given the uncertainty, why build a new plant or introduce a new product now? Better to pause until the smoke clears. This is perfectly understandable behaviour on the part of consumers and firms—but behaviour which has led to a collapse of demand, a collapse of output and the deep recession we are now in.
Bloomberg News
Olivier Blanchard is the IMF’s chief economist
So what are policymakers to do? First and foremost, reduce uncertainty. Do so by removing tail risks, and the perception of tail risks. On the portfolio side, establish a price, or at least a floor on the price, of the troubled assets. Ring-fence them or take them off bank balance-sheets. On the consumption side, commit to do whatever it will take to avoid a Depression, from fiscal stimulus to quantitative easing. Commit to do more in the future if necessary. Above all, adopt clear policies and act decisively. Do too much rather than too little. Delays in financial packages have cost a lot already. Further rounds of debate will stoke uncertainty and make things worse.
Second, undo the effects of uncertainty on the portfolio side, and help recycle the funds towards risky assets. The standard advice here is to return the private financial sector to health through recapitalisation. That is absolutely right, but easier said than done. And, while damage is slowly repaired, it makes sense for states to recycle part of the funds themselves. To caricature: if the world loves American Treasury bills but the funds would be more useful elsewhere, then the government should issue the bills, and use the proceeds to channel the funds where they are needed. It should buy some of the riskier assets, and return some of these funds back to emerging-market countries to offset capital outflows. This is indeed close to what America’s Federal Reserve is now doing with quantitative easing at home and swap lines to foreign central banks. The only difference is that the Fed issues money rather than treasury bills in exchange for its purchases. It would make more sense for the Treasury to be involved, and to separate more clearly the role of fiscal and monetary policy, but, in the current state of play, this is a minor wrinkle. Either will do.
Third, undo the effects of the wait-and-see attitudes of consumers and firms on the demand side. Get them to spend more, and have the state do some of the spending itself. Offer incentives to buy now rather than later; for example, temporary subsidies to consumers who turn in a clunker and buy a new car, a measure adopted in France. Increase spending on public infrastructure, a central component of President Barack Obama’s programme. Both types of measures are indeed present in the fiscal programmes more and more countries are putting in place. If tailored and communicated well, these programmes cannot only stimulate and replace private demand, but also convince consumers and firms that they are not in for another Depression. This will ensure that they stop waiting and start spending again.
Coherent financial, fiscal and monetary measures are all needed. All three will have direct effects on demand. But, as importantly, they will help reduce uncertainty, lower risk spreads, and get consumers and firms spending again. If policymakers act decisively, private demand will recover sooner rather than later. And, within a year or less, we can be on the path to recovery.
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13021961
Economics focus
Jan 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition
CRISES feed uncertainty. And uncertainty affects behaviour, which feeds the crisis. Were a magic wand to remove uncertainty, the next few quarters would still be tough (some of the damage cannot be undone), but the crisis would largely go away.
From the Vix index of stockmarket volatility (see chart), to the dispersion of growth forecasts, even to the frequency of the word “uncertain” in the press, all the indicators of uncertainty are at or near all-time highs. What is at work is not only objective, but also subjective uncertainty, or what economists, following Chicago economist Frank Knight’s early 20th-century work, call “Knightian uncertainty”. Objective uncertainty is about what Donald Rumsfeld (in a different context) referred to as the “known unknowns”. Subjective uncertainty is about the “unknown unknowns”. When, as today, the unknown unknowns dominate, and the economic environment is so complex as to appear nearly incomprehensible, the result is extreme prudence, if not outright paralysis, on the part of investors, consumers and firms. And this behaviour, in turn, feeds the crisis.
It affects portfolio decisions. It has led to a dramatic shift away from risky assets to riskless assets, or at least assets perceived as riskless. It sometimes looks as if investors around the world only want to hold American Treasury bills. Why? At the start was the realisation that many of the new complex assets were in fact much riskier than they had seemed. This realisation has now morphed into a general worry about nearly all risky assets, and about the balance-sheets of the institutions that hold them. “Better safe than sorry” is the motto. Unfortunately, while the motto may make sense for individual investors, it is having catastrophic macroeconomic consequences for the world. It is triggering enormous spreads on risky assets, a credit crunch in advanced economies, and major capital outflows from emerging countries.
It affects consumption and investment decisions, and is largely behind the dramatic collapse in demand we have observed over the last three months. Sure, consumers have lost a good part of their wealth, and this is reason enough for them to retrench. But there is more at work. If you think that another Depression might be around the corner, better to be careful and save more. Better to wait and see how things turn out. Buying a new house, a new car or a new laptop can surely be delayed a few months. The same goes for firms: given the uncertainty, why build a new plant or introduce a new product now? Better to pause until the smoke clears. This is perfectly understandable behaviour on the part of consumers and firms—but behaviour which has led to a collapse of demand, a collapse of output and the deep recession we are now in.
Bloomberg NewsOlivier Blanchard is the IMF’s chief economist
So what are policymakers to do? First and foremost, reduce uncertainty. Do so by removing tail risks, and the perception of tail risks. On the portfolio side, establish a price, or at least a floor on the price, of the troubled assets. Ring-fence them or take them off bank balance-sheets. On the consumption side, commit to do whatever it will take to avoid a Depression, from fiscal stimulus to quantitative easing. Commit to do more in the future if necessary. Above all, adopt clear policies and act decisively. Do too much rather than too little. Delays in financial packages have cost a lot already. Further rounds of debate will stoke uncertainty and make things worse.
Second, undo the effects of uncertainty on the portfolio side, and help recycle the funds towards risky assets. The standard advice here is to return the private financial sector to health through recapitalisation. That is absolutely right, but easier said than done. And, while damage is slowly repaired, it makes sense for states to recycle part of the funds themselves. To caricature: if the world loves American Treasury bills but the funds would be more useful elsewhere, then the government should issue the bills, and use the proceeds to channel the funds where they are needed. It should buy some of the riskier assets, and return some of these funds back to emerging-market countries to offset capital outflows. This is indeed close to what America’s Federal Reserve is now doing with quantitative easing at home and swap lines to foreign central banks. The only difference is that the Fed issues money rather than treasury bills in exchange for its purchases. It would make more sense for the Treasury to be involved, and to separate more clearly the role of fiscal and monetary policy, but, in the current state of play, this is a minor wrinkle. Either will do.
Third, undo the effects of the wait-and-see attitudes of consumers and firms on the demand side. Get them to spend more, and have the state do some of the spending itself. Offer incentives to buy now rather than later; for example, temporary subsidies to consumers who turn in a clunker and buy a new car, a measure adopted in France. Increase spending on public infrastructure, a central component of President Barack Obama’s programme. Both types of measures are indeed present in the fiscal programmes more and more countries are putting in place. If tailored and communicated well, these programmes cannot only stimulate and replace private demand, but also convince consumers and firms that they are not in for another Depression. This will ensure that they stop waiting and start spending again.
Coherent financial, fiscal and monetary measures are all needed. All three will have direct effects on demand. But, as importantly, they will help reduce uncertainty, lower risk spreads, and get consumers and firms spending again. If policymakers act decisively, private demand will recover sooner rather than later. And, within a year or less, we can be on the path to recovery.
For a discussion of this article, see www.economist.com/freeexchange
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13021961
Human capital and the crisis
Jan 29th 2009 | DAVOS
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
THE headlines screamed that January 26th was “Black Monday” for jobs, after firms such as Caterpillar, Corus, Home Depot, ING, Pfizer and Sprint Nextel announced cuts of several thousand jobs each, due mostly to the rapidly deteriorating global economy. Alas, the consensus among the corporate bigwigs gathered this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos was that this marked only the beginning of the axe-swinging, and that there are blacker days to come.
This proved to be one of the big points of difference between the company bosses and the politicians brainstorming in the mountains. The politicians are primarily concerned with restoring demand enough to reverse the rising trend in unemployment; for many of the corporate leaders, ensuring the survival of their firms takes precedence over saving jobs. The difficult decision they face is not whether to cut, but how to do so in a way that strengthens their competitive position in the medium term rather than seriously damaging it.
The gloomy mood among bosses in Davos makes the worst-case scenario outlined in a new forecast from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) seem the most plausible of its possible outcomes. This supposes that if every economy in the developed world performs as it did in its worst year for unemployment since 1991, and every other economy performs half as badly as in its worst year, then the global jobless rate will rise to 7.1% this year—some 230m people, up from 179m in 2007.
The ILO’s most optimistic prediction is that global unemployment will rise only to 6.1% (from 6% in 2008). But that assumes that the world economy performs as the IMF forecast in November: global GDP growth of 2.2% in 2009, with a slight recession in the developed economies. The IMF has since become much glummer: this week it forecast growth of just 0.5%.
Already, firms are starting to find that their first round of cuts after the onset of the crisis is not enough. Caterpillar’s latest cut of 5,000 jobs is in addition to 15,000 already announced. Such is the frenzy of cutting that Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a recruitment firm that tracks employment trends in America, sought a crumb of comfort in its finding that over 50% of firms have cut jobs: it proclaimed in its latest report that “nearly half of employers avoid lay-offs.” But it pointed out that things would be even worse without the various innovative schemes adopted by companies to reduce labour costs without shedding jobs. These include salary cuts, reduced hours and “forced vacations”.
As Challenger suggests, this seems in keeping with the suggestion by Barack Obama in his inauguration speech that people should “cut their hours [rather] than see a friend lose a job.” Already, by way of example, White House staff earning $100,000 or more have had their salaries frozen. Companies including Avis, Starbucks and Yahoo! have announced pay freezes for 2009.
Yet these creative job-saving schemes are unlikely to go anywhere near as far as Mr Obama would like. They may appeal as a way to buy some time as companies try to get a clearer picture of where the economy is heading, or to retain talented workers who are likely to be needed in the future, if not now. But they have little appeal once a firm has decided that it needs to scale back its operations. As the boss of a big American retailer put it privately at Davos, “We have to decide who we want on the bus and to motivate them as much as possible.” Clever ways to share the pain can demotivate everyone, especially if they are seen as merely postponing the inevitable job cuts, making everyone fearful.
Equally candidly, many bosses admit that the crisis is giving them a chance to restructure their firms in ways that they should have done before, but found a hard sell when things were going well. As a rule of thumb, a careful cull of the 10% of lowest performers can make a firm leaner by removing fat without damaging muscle. It is going beyond the 10%, as many firms are now starting to do, that poses the real risks to a firm’s competitiveness.
During the relatively modest downturn at the start of this decade, for example, many professional-services firms cut too deeply, especially in their lower ranks, and found they were poorly positioned when strong growth resumed sooner than expected, says Heidi Gardner of Harvard Business School. Firms built on pyramid structures in which senior managers mentored larger numbers of employees below them suddenly found that, in a growing economy, they lacked the mentors needed to manage the army of new recruits. Instead, they had to re-hire ex-staffers at higher salaries and, in some cases, abandon proven policies of hiring senior managers only from within, says Ms Gardner, who worked for McKinsey at the time.
This crisis is revealing how few firms have really thought through their talent strategies, says Mark Spelman of Accenture. Claims that “our workers are our most valuable assets” are too often platitudes, the emptiness of which is now being revealed. But those firms that have thought seriously about their talent needs have the opportunity to get ahead of those that haven’t, says Mr Spelman, not just by shedding poor performers but also hiring scarce talent from outside, in what is now a buyer’s market. Other tips from Mr Spelman include avoiding voluntary redundancy programmes, which encourage the most employable people to quit, and not firing the newest recruits on a crude “last in, first out” basis, as this cuts off the supply of future talent. Instead, firms should identify which workers they need to keep, and do what they must to retain them.
Governments can play a useful role or a harmful one, depending upon their attitude to companies, says David Arkless of Manpower, an employment-services firm. If they focus on working with firms to smooth the movement of labour to where the future work will be, for example by providing skills training and financial incentives to workers in transition, then the economic downturn could be less painful than now seems likely. (A quick recovery in lending to small businesses, the main drivers of job creation in most countries, would also help.) But if governments try to prevent firms from making the changes to their workforces that they want, the result is likely to be prolonged gloom.
Although Mr Obama’s support for strengthening the ability of unions to enter workplaces is arguably a worrying sign, the American economy is far more accommodating of flexibility in employment than many European countries. Mr Arkless, for one, says that without a dramatic change of attitudes to job-cutting in Europe, “there is no doubt that American firms will come out of this downturn better than anywhere else in the world, due to their flexible employment model.” This will provide no comfort to anyone facing the prospect of unemployment, but it is a message that politicians would do well to take to heart.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13022157
New York Daily News - 1 hour ago
By ADAM LISBERG Mayor Bloomberg’s bad-news budget tries to plug a $4 billion hole with less than $2 billion worth of spending cuts and new sales taxes - and counts on unions, Albany and the federal govermment to come up with the rest.
Bloomberg Proposes $1 Billion in NYC Budget Cuts Bloomberg
NYC mayor: 2008 Wall St. losses could top $47B USA Today
Reuters - Newsday - NY1 - Village Voice
Updated Friday, January 30th 2009, 1:19 PM
Mayor Bloomberg’s bad-news budget tries to plug a $4 billion hole with less than $2 billion worth of spending cuts and new sales taxes - and counts on unions, Albany and the federal govermment to come up with the rest.
He proposed a $43.4 billion budget Friday for the fiscal year starting July 1, up $123 million from the year before - one that slices deep into the pockets of city residents and the ranks of city workers.
“Are we going to go through some difficult times? I don’t think there’s any question about that. But we have a plan to balance our budget,” Bloomberg said. “It is serious, but I think it is manageable.”
The new cuts and taxes come on top of $1 billion in cuts and $1.5 billion in tax hikes he already pushed through, as administration economists predict the national economy and Wall Street will continue to pummel the city’s revenues.
The mayor’s budget counts on city workers paying 10% toward the cost of their health benefits, raising $350 million, as well as $200 million more from reining in health costs.
While municipal unions have begun discussions with Bloomberg’s labor team, it is unclear whether any such agreement can be reached.
Bloomberg also wants to cut services: 30 ambulance tours, one firefighter from each of 64 engine companies, homeless prevention and child care.
He wants to raise taxes and fees: charging 5 cents per plastic bag to raise $84 million, raising parking meter rates, issuing more fines to unsanitary restaurants, repealing the sales tax exemption on clothes and raising the sales tax another 1/4 of a percent.
And he wants to cut more jobs: 1,000 cops, 1,440 school employees, 167 seasonal Parks Department aides, 549 child welfare workers, and more than 14,000 teachers and classroom employees.
His plan calls for 22,919 fewer city jobs, of which only 7,686 would come from attrition. The other 15,233 employees would be simply laid off - including 13,930 Education Department employees.
“When you talk about reducing city expenditures, you are really talking about reducing headcount,” Bloomberg said. “You can only get so much blood out of a stone.”
In a bit of brinksmanship, Bloomberg laid the blame for those 14,000 teacher layoffs on Gov. Paterson’s proposed budget, which cuts $771 million from city school spending.
While Bloomberg’s budget counts on more than $1 billion in new Medicaid money from the federal stimulus bill, it does not count on more than $1 billion included for education.
Administration officials say they left that figure out because it will be routed through Albany, which may siphon some of the cash for itself.
Bloomberg’s budget assumes that property tax revenues will rise 7.2%, as tax rates catch up with property values that have shot higher in recent years.
But taxes that depend on the economy - like income, sales and real estate transfer - are expected to fall 13.2%.
“Nobody prepared for the severity of the downturn that we have been experiencing,” Bloomberg said.
“Nobody’s ever seen a boom like this and nobody’s ever seen a decline like this.”
There is no easy relief in sight, either: Bloomberg’s forecasters expect jobs, wages and taxes will keep falling this year and won’t bottom out until sometime in 2010.
Almost 300,000 New Yorkers will have lost their jobs by the time the market bottoms out in mid-2010, down from the peak of 3,777,000 employed last fall.
That means a loss of $33 billion in wages this year and another $6 billion next year.
An estimated 46,000 of those jobs will come from Wall Street, which traditionally pays the fat salaries and bonuses that drive New York’s economy - and its municipal budget.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/01/30/2009-01-30_mayor_bloomberg_paints_grim_economic_pic.html
| The Editors 28 January 2009 |
VoxEU.org today launches the Global Crisis Debate. The aim is: 1) To broaden the discussion into a truly global debate, and 2) To make the Global Crisis Debate the dominant intellectual forum on the crisis. Thanks to partnership with the UK government, analysis on the Global Crisis Debate feeds into the UK government preparation of the April Summit via its own web site LondonSummit.gov.uk.
Today VoxEU.org is launching a new initiative – the Global Crisis Debate.
We are partnering with the UK government to collect the views of economists from around the world on how to fix the global economy. The analysis and proposals that appear on Vox’s “Global Crisis Debate” page will feed directly into the UK’s preparation for the April summit of world leaders in London. This debate will be featured on the UK government’s own web site, LondonSummit.gov.uk, which also goes live today.
Our ambition is twofold:
1) To broaden the discussion into a truly global debate.
The crisis debate has, to date, been largely dominated by a narrow range of economists from a fairly limited set of nations. The Global Crisis Debate will allow economists from around the world to share their analysis, views, and perspectives via the “Commentary” feature.
We have two main filters to avoid the ‘comment clutter’ typically seen on fully open forums. First, only professional economists can post Commentaries, and they must include their real name and professional affiliation in each Commentary. (First time writers must have their bona fides verified, but we hope to turn these around in less than 24 hours.) Second, each Commentary must be substantial, i.e. 200-1000 words.
2) To make the Global Crisis Debate the dominant intellectual forum on the crisis and ways to redress it.
The plan is to use the connection to the UK’s preparation of the April Summit to leverage Vox’s intellectual and reputational capital. Apart from feeding directly into the UK’s preparation of the April summit agenda, the UK website that will surely be read by decision makers from around the globe in the run-up to the April meeting. The Global Crisis Debate will continue well beyond the April summit.
Moderators and themes
The Global Crisis Debate has 5 themes:
· Development (Moderator: Dani Rodrik)
· Macro (Moderator: Philip Lane)
· Regulation (Moderator: Luigi Zingales)
· Institutional reform (Moderator: Francesco Giavazzi)
· Open markets (Moderator: Richard Baldwin)
The Scientific Committee consists of Hadi Soesastro (Jakarta) and Barry Eichengreen (Berkeley).
Help us make this the global debate on the global crisis
The Editors invite all professional economists to write 200-1000 word Commentaries on the crisis. These need not be original (for example you might cut-and-paste-and-update a recent column posted or published elsewhere); our aim is to agglomerate all the best thinking in one place to better foster dialog and exchange.
This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2911
FROM VOX EU
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2911
COPYRIGHT: VOX EU www.voxeu.org http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/87