by Mike Azar With the Russian currency (the ruble) plummeting and borrowing costs shooting higher, Russia is on the edge of a full-blown financial crisis.  In the last three months, the ruble has lost nearly 50 percent of its value against the dollar, as the price of Brent crude oil (a key oil price benchmark) […]

It is important that prices don’t rise too fast when times are good or too slow when times are bad. The latter is the current situation in some key advanced economies, with low and falling inflation emerging as the most serious obstacle for a return to full employment and a durable economic recovery. Weak demand […]

**This article originally appears here in the Financial Times online blog ‘Beyondbrics’ and refers to the interactive China Currency Tracker.  Both are featured in the Financial Times Special Report: The Future of the Renminbi.** By Eswar Prasad, Karim Foda, and Abhinav Rangarajan September 30, 2014 China is making steady progress on its path to making the renminbi an […]

For the first time in history, the largest economy in the world will be poor.  Last week, the World Bank revealed that prices in developing countries are much lower than we previously thought, implying that the purchasing power of citizens in those countries is stronger.  Taking this into account, new estimates of GDP at purchasing […]

The persistent decline of global real interest rates since the 1980’s has been puzzling.  Public debt in advanced economies is approaching record highs, yet borrowing costs have continued to decline.  The good news is that a low interest rate improves fiscal sustainability for governments trying to improve their fiscal positions. The bad news is that […]

The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining since it hit 10 percent in October 2009.  Four and a half years of steady and consistent improvement in the unemployment rate, however, has convinced neither policymakers nor the public that the American labor market is on track for a comeback.  At the end of […]

Any casual observer of the world’s state of affairs knows that advanced economies have been in trouble and emerging markets and China in particular have been important drivers of global economic growth.  Despite concerns of “emerging market turmoil” over the last couple months, there has been a sense of unease and fear in advanced economies […]

Note: This article originally appears at and belongs to The Brookings Institution. By Kemal Derviş, Galip Kemal Özhan and Karim Foda On Thursday, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi outlined a framework for a bond buying program to stabilize financial markets as policymakers tackle the underlying national and eurozone structural reforms that are necessary to […]

Today, markets rallied.  Financial markets around the world let loose a big sigh of relief as the President of European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, said today at a conference in London that he is ready to do “whatever it takes” to support the euro.  People have been wondering whether or not the ECB would do […]

One day, markets are up immediately after some EU summit but back down again just hours later.  Another day, Spain asks for a bailout because its banks have reached the point where they might fail, all while Greek voters are hitting the streets to protest drastic spending cuts and austerity measures that are meant to […]

As members of a monetary union, stronger economies have an interest in keeping the problems in the weaker economies from spreading and affecting the rest of the union.  Therefore, there is a common stake at making sure each country is meeting its obligations and doing the best it can to support its economy.  A common […]

Much of the high sovereign debt in many euro area countries are direct results of policies that led to high spending in the years before the financial crisis hit in late 2008 (like Greece, Portugal, and to an extent Italy), but in other cases are results of excessive lending by private banks into the real […]