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2012
03/24/2012
Jim Kim: Obama’s Bold Pick to Lead the World Bank
Yesterday, President Obama announced his nomination for the next president of the World Bank, and the choice came as a surprise to almost everyone. Unlike recent heads of the bank—from Paul Wolfowitz, whose tenure was cut short by a minor scandal, to Robert Zoellick, who is now retiring, to the rather august James Wolfensohn—Dr. Jim Yong Kim is neither a power player in Washington nor a well-known political figure globally. Nor is he a banker of repute. He is instead a major figure in international aid circles, a founder of the health-care organization Partners in Health, a former leader of the World Health Organization’s initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS, and most recently, the president of Dartmouth University.
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03/15/2012
Why Was Executive Greg Smith Shocked by Greed at Goldman Sachs?
Yet again, Goldman Sachs has seen its reputation plummet in the public eye. A scathing resignation letter-cum-opinion piece by a disgruntled midlevel executive published in Wednesday’s New York Times quickly went viral and was the talk of the financial town. And it was quite the letter, filled with accusations of a “toxic and destructive” culture, of executives expressing unmitigated scorn for clients, including referring to hapless ones as “muppets,” and general disdain for anything except profit and more profit, whatever the ethical or moral costs.
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03/07/2012
What Market Panic? Halcyon Days for Silicon Valley
It’s no secret that the media world is disproportionately represented by denizens of the East Coast, which also overlaps with the corridors of politics and finance. For the past years, these circles have been focused on financial crises, the fate of the euro zone, high unemployment, government debt, unbridled political partisanship, nuclear proliferation, and successive waves of market panic.
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03/31/2012
Before Condemning Foxconn, Americans Should Examine Their Own Labor History
Apple has made waves this week, but not for its products or its stock price. Instead, it has once again been the center of damning revelations about labor practices in Chinese factories that make the iPad and the iPhone. But while Apple certainly deserves the criticism, this story is not as simple as it seems. It’s not just about Apple and working conditions; the other story is U.S. anxiety about China, double standards, and an American tendency to forget our own history and how we have evolved.
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03/19/2012
China’s Not the Big Trade Cheat Harming America’s Domestic Economy
As in 2008, China has again emerged as a central campaign issue. On the stump, Mitt Romney has emphasized that if he is president, China will no longer run roughshod over the United States as he contends it has during the Obama administration. “On day one,” he thunders, “I will declare China a currency manipulator, allowing me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs unfairly. We can compete when there’s a level playing field, and we’d win.”
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03/09/2012
Jobs Report Shows Unemployment Steady, but There’s Underlying Trouble
Friday’s monthly dose of official information about the U.S. employment picture, a.k.a. the jobs report, showed very little change. The official unemployment rate stayed the same, at 8.3 percent, and 227,000 jobs were added. The number of long-term unemployed, or those without jobs for more than six months, stayed the same at 5.4 million, as did the number of those working part time but wanting to work full time, at 8.1 million. And there was also little change in hours worked per week.
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03/02/2012
Job Market’s Tough ‘New Normal’: Some Careers Aren’t Coming Back
As the overall economic picture in the United States continues to brighten, the job market remains a contentious issue. Yes, the headline official unemployment rate has fallen sharply in recent months to just over 8 percent. But most Americans, judging from polls, remain pessimistic about jobs and see a challenging landscape of high unemployment and stagnant wages. The fall elections promise to hinge on whether people believe that the employment picture is bright or dark. The entire issue, however, remains trapped in a broken framework, harkening back to a past that was never quite so good and is not going to return.
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