The media is abuzz with the news that the former head of McKinsey consulting, Goldman Sachs director and current board member of Proctor & Gamble Rajat Gupta has been charged with insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is now the highest-profile individual to be implicated...

So Hu came to Washington, met with some CEOs, had a nice dinner and a 21-gun salute, and opened the Chinese purse to the tune of $45 billion in new business between China and the United States. The buzz was mostly positive, and the billions didn't hurt. But it's...

Over the next two weeks, Cancun will be in the spotlight for something other than spring break madness. As host of the annual climate summit that once saw such promise in Kyoto in 1997, Cancun in 2010 is framed by the spectacular failure of last year's Copenhagen talks and by...

The economy continues to limp along, and from the debate in this U.S. election season, it seems as though the path to restoring economic vitality is terra incognita. Over the past generation, economic advances have been jump started by fundamental changes: first, globalization, and then the rise of the internet...

So bipartisanship isn't dead. By a vote of 348-79, Democrats and Republicans alike put aside their acrimonious differences and agreed, at least for a moment, to stop blaming each other for the sad state of American economic life. Instead, they agreed to blame China.

The bill authorizes the president of...

The Greek debt crisis finally spilled over in full force to U.S. markets, aided and abetted by extreme statements emanating from such esteemed and prominent voices as Muhammed El-Erian of the large bond investor Pimco, who warned that Greece could be just the beginning of sovereign debt catastrophes. In the...

Last week, I published an essay in Time magazine about debt, arguing that our current preoccupation with the federal deficit and with debt in general is a dangerous distraction from the real issue (namely, our inability to invest and spend wisely to create the economy of the future)....

In his current Asian trip, President Obama visits Japan, then addresses a forum of leaders in Singapore, and eventually ends up in Seoul to discuss nukes and North Korea. But make no mistake, the axis of this week is the time Obama will spend in China, which has catapulted to...

For years, Americans have been fulminating about China and its policy toward currency. While many of the debates are technical and laden with econo-speak, they boil down to the simple conviction that China is unfairly manipulating its currency to keep it undervalued against the dollar. The result is to give...

The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determine the arc of the coming decades -- or...

While Washington is glued to the drama over health care, over the past few days, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been in Beijing meeting with Chinese leaders including Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao. In a series of communiqués, they celebrated the "strategic partnership" between the two...

With Wall Street -- and the Federal Reserve -- in a headlong rush to declare the recession over, the economic data has indicated that the simple binary recession/no recession framework obscures more than it reveals. Yes, defined purely in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the recession looks to be...

As the United States and China wrap up their two-day "Strategic and Economic Dialogue," it's more apparent than ever that the two find themselves in a marriage that neither can easily dissolve and that neither fully wants.

The speeches struck all the rights notes -- "the United States and...

So the United States lost to Brazil in the final of the FIFA Confederations cup, in that thrilling but painful tale of two halves, with the U.S. up 2-0 only to see Brazil roar back (or rather dance and prance and glide with balletic ferocity) and win 3-2. All...

President Obama's speech in Cairo last week as well as the candid and heated debates in Iran during its contentious presidential election provide yet another opportunity to revisit the sterile images of Islam that dominate the discussion both in the West and throughout the Muslim world as well. That discussion...

Each month, the Federal Reserve releases its latest minutes of its last meeting along with its projections of economic activity (www.federalreserve.gov). The minutes just released indicate that its prior forecasts have been tweaked a bit, with update projections for unemployment over the next two years, GDP growth, and inflation....

The financial markets are again getting pummeled, both domestically and globally; the nearly $800 billion stimulus package signed with fanfare by President Obama has done little to alter the mood. In fact, if you read through financial websites and assorted blogs on politics, economics, or anything related to those, you...

After months of confusion, we are about to close a painful chapter in the economic crisis of 2008-2009. With the imminent passage of the $800 billion stimulus package combined with the roll-out of the next stages of the government-orchestrated bank bailout and recapitalization, we are about to end the talking...

As Wall Street continues its slow-motion hari kari, tens of millions of people on the lower-end of the income spectrum are finding that their access to credit is becoming all but nonexistent. As banks set aside ever more cash to cover themselves against potential future losses, the credit spigot that...

If you were not one of the 2 million people watching the inauguration on the Mall in Washington, you could watch the spectacle on any number of television channels. Flipping between ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS would have yielded different commentary but largely the same mood: euphoria, awe at the...