Global Strategic Finance Initiative: Latest Articles

Since the global financial crisis began, one of the major surprises has been the continued resilience of the U.S. dollar - despite attacks on the "American-style capitalist model," financial sector weakness, and record U.S. government deficit spending. The dollar today represents almost two thirds of the world's official currency reserves. Its holders presumably believe that it will remain highly liquid, relatively stable in value, and supported by prudent economic policies by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve.

When future historians look back at the major shift in power that came in the fall of 2008, they will focus not just on the election of Barack Obama. Less than two weeks after Obama's historic election, finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-20 nations convened in Washington at the height of a global panic to discuss the future of global finance.

You know the financial crisis is bad when investment bankers are grumpy at Christmastime. That's because in investment banking, Christmastime is bonus time, and bonus time is what it's all about.

Bonus time is when all the deals you crafted and all the money you made for the bank gets toted up and you get your fair share.

Usually, in the world of Wall Street and its international counterparts, that "fair share" can reach 10 or 15 times your annual salary. That usually makes year-end a… more

If anyone doubts the increasing importance of finance as a tool of foreign policy, one need look no further than Iceland, a NATO member, which this past week announced that it is in negotiations for a 4 billion euro bailout from Russia. Iceland's prime minister was blunt: "We have not received the kind of support that we were requesting from our friends, so in a situation like that one has to look for new friends."

While denied by the Icelandic government, there have been suggestions that one area… more