Reforming Global Finance

How can the global financial regulatory system be restructured so it works as well for Main Street as it does for Wall Street?

In the battle between governments and markets, can global problems be solved by localization, lateralization, learning and listening?

Can Europe find away to resolve its debt crisis even though it is clearly not ready to form a federal structure?

Could Egypt’s economic and financial problems be even worse than the political ones?

What steps can be taken to build a financial system that is better able to withstand future crises?

Does France really stand to gain much from emulating the German economy?

Which model of corporate governance is doing a better job of striking a balance between the needs of business and the need of society, the U.S.’s or the EU’s?

Is the current financial landscape too complex for any self-styled J.P. Morgan to master?

How can dominant economic powers of their time use their currencies to gain cheap financing from abroad?

The Nordic model has been hailed for its social successes. But does it make good economic sense?

What can be done so that financial capitalism is a source not of disasters, but of true human progress and democratization?

Who still remembers that, before the advent of modern financial capitalism, power was wielded in much starker ways?

Why do people who consider themselves pro-free market take radically different positions on the mobility of capital and labor?

What must a government consider when undertaking a critical intervention in financial markets?

Can China successfully shift from export-led to consumer-driven growth? Can the United States learn to save?

What’s “patriotic” about cutting taxes for the rich — and “empowering” the middle class by letting it pile up mountains of debt?

What can governments do to seize the opportunities of globalization, while minimizing its downsides?

Does the world need more markets, more government, or does it just need markets and government to be more effective?

Are social safety nets inherently incompatible with market-based incentives to work and save?

How justified are claims by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne that the eurozone crisis is killing Britain’s economic recovery?

Will Francois Hollande choose to make France like Germany or to make France like Italy?

Has Scandinavia’s emphasis on fairness and social cohesion made its economies more resilient to Europe’s crisis?

How does Germany see its role, and what are its real intentions and specific plans, with regard to saving the euro?

Why is the current economic crisis in Europe and the United States likely to be unresponsive to Keynesian solutions?

Is paper money created by the world’s central banks responsible for the “global imbalances” that destabilized the economy?

Could the LIBOR scandal become the biggest financial fraud in history?

Did Barclays Bank executives engage in fraud to boost the bank’s market valuation — or because they lacked simple values?

How did mid-century concerns about how economic gains were distributed throughout society give way to today’s crisis-prone, Darwinian capitalism?

Why should derivatives be moved out of the dark of over-the-counter markets into the brighter light of exchanges?

Are financial industry complaints about the alleged costs of regulation justified? Or does history prove they are without merit?

Why do economists — and the policymakers who heed their advice — need to reconsider the conventional wisdoms of their profession?

Financial systems play an important role in economic growth. Why, then, do they sometimes go off the rails?

What is it about U.S. and UK financial and foreign policy elites that has them engage so willingly in excessive risk-taking?

Are the current monetary tactics of Western central banks analogous to dosing a patient with steroids?

Has increasing financial concentration improved the economic function of finance — the effective allocation of credit?

How did mathematicians and traders, working hand in hand, find ways to take larger risks than banks officially contemplated?

Do economists have the right analytical tools to solve our most pressing problems?

Why doesn’t the European Central Bank act more like the Fed in its approach to the economic crisis?

Can China’s market-building approach to Africa complement the West’s tradition democracy-building approach?

Will the costs of the financial crisis limit the government’s ability to deal with future crises?

Why is it taking so long to write and implement new U.S. financial reform regulations?

What will it take to wind down the era of Too Big to Fail banks and financial institutions?

Why would a European CEO be “shunned” if he moved much of his production to China?

How can global citizens and international institutions create the conditions for inclusive and sustainable economic growth?

What policies should governments focus on to ensure that future generations live at least well as the current generation?

How can transparency help end the fleecing of resource-rich countries by their corrupt leaders?

Can the eurozone successfully model its monetary and fiscal community on the U.S. political regime of the 19th century?

Can the United States transform its consumption- and credit-based economy to one based on investment and saving?

Globalization has radically changed the dynamics of global income growth. So who has won and who has lost?

What are the potential costs if Wall Street is successful in weakening the Dodd-Frank financial regulations?

The $600 billion of total income of the world’s poorest 1.3 billion people is equal to the income of what percentage of the richest Americans?

The global balance of economic power is changing — and the IMF is changing right along with it.

How did the U.S. election of 1980 and the British election a century prior lay the groundwork for each country’s decline?

Wall Street lost its bid to unseat President Obama. Now it should get onboard with sensible regulation and oversight.

Why have Americans been so tolerant of the rising gulf between rich and poor?

Is the euro crisis just a European crisis — or is it a global crisis in search of a global governance solution?

Are international financial institutions helping or hindering the switch to clean energy technologies?

Can the United States muster the economic insight and political will to step into the 21st century world of energy?

Can the fragmentary and chaotic process of resolving sovereign debt crises be made fairer and more effective?

Why has the American Dream slipped out of reach of much of the middle class?

How has the American middle class fared under Presidents Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama?

What’s the historical background of Congressional negotiations over domestic debt?

How could a nation become the world’s second fastest growing economy despite a weak, flailing state?

Will the political class of India step up or will the Indians themselves need to reform government and rid it of corruption?

How does Europe exercise world power? Isn’t doing it away from military battlefields a truly modern form of global leadership?

Is the United States’ anti-regulation stance undermining its global power?

Does the United States have a stellar credit record — or is it a nation of deadbeats?

What can be done to make finance serve interests of the real economy?

Will the U.S. lead in technological innovation falter if the government can’t reap some of the rewards from its successful investments?

Was the second half of the 20th century — when capitalism became closely entwined with democracy — just an unusual interlude?

Why have bank lobbyists been so successful in stymieing efforts to rein in banking, despite the massive fallout from the global financial crisis?

Is Latin America’s largest country providing a model for how to reduce poverty in lean budgetary times?

Beyond political frustrations and social distrust, could the present level of gross income inequality also destabilize the U.S. economy in the future?

Can giant insurance companies help small customers in developing countries bounce back from environmental catastrophes?

Is capital itself the only practical force capable of restraining capitalism’s own excesses?

Is the U.S. Federal Reserve the chief culprit in bringing about the grotesque levels of U.S. income inequality?

What is the world to do when national governments retreat from global commitments?

How did Europe become, in effect, the 13th district of the Federal Reserve system?

Why should real capitalists and long-term investors love quantitative easing?

Has the Obama Administration’s Pacific trade negotiations violated the President’s pledge to open government?

Why are U.S. regulators (again) failing to take action to prevent a bubble in the U.S. housing market?

Why is China looking more attractive to Latin America than the U.S. for new trade?

Why are Brazil and Turkey both facing mass protests right now?

Will Pope Francis be able to reform the Vatican Bank?

Are regulators making it easier for Wall Street to return to pre-crash behaviors and export them to the world?

Does Wall Street have different standards for its male and female financial analysts?

How has Turkey’s prime minister failed to anticipate the social and political changes that accompanied his government’s economic successes?

What can be done to prevent a wave of competitive devaluation of currencies?

Why is it in the world’s best interest for China to go slow on deregulating its financial system?

Is Europe stuck in its economic ways because the United States protected it from harsh global realities for too long?

Is it a good idea to make a brilliant man the next U.S. Fed Chairman?

What can be done to reduce rampant corruption with resources revenue in Africa?

As investors pull back and commodity prices fall, is a new crisis in emerging markets brewing?

In finance and beyond, how is global cooperation failing from its own prior wins?

Why Germany should show more generosity toward eurozone countries in crisis.

What are the architects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreements trying to keep secret?

Instead of pushing for cross-border financial deregulation, the United States should learn from other nations’ safeguards.

Do we need to repeat the 19th-century savings bank movement for the 21st century?

Accountability has to be the key underpinning of modern capitalism.

A different case for higher U.S. taxes on the ultra-rich.

What will be the ramifications of a Swiss referendum on executive compensation?

Does allowing India and other poor countries to help farmers and consumers really distort global markets?

To reform the WTO, the director-general can take a cue from his home nation, Brazil.