Global Middle Class Initiative: Latest Articles

A new model of consumer-led growth is beginning to emerge in the tiger economies -- in South Korea and Thailand, in particular.

This model owes a lot to the U.S. model. But in this instance, it is not the model that the U.S. Treasury and International Monetary Fund, both Washington-based institutions, have been peddling for more than a decade.

The real American model

Rather, it is the American post-war success story of consumer and government-deficit led growth that has… more

Thought at one time to be the likely centrepiece of its foreign policy, the Bush administration's relations with Latin America are in disarray.

Argentina, once Washington's neo-liberal darling, is in the midst of an economic and social meltdown. In Venezuela, the White House is backtracking after having been caught giving its blessing to an aborted coup attempt. US military involvement in Colombia is growing. And Brazil, one of the few bright spots in Latin America, is hammering the US… more

Glenn Hawes owns a 900-acre plot of land in California that has been in his family for three generations. He used to lease the land for cattle grazing, but recently found what may be a much more profitable undertaking: a "conservation bank" that will protect the land's natural ecosystems. Thanks to incentives created by environmental laws, the bank could one day generate handsome revenues for Hawes. He has already collected $300,000 from customers including Safeway and Wal-Mart. With time, he… more

There are episodes in history that deservingly draw our attention--some very small in scale, but major in impact. In U.S. history, one such moment at the start of the Revolutionary War has come to be known as "the shot heard round the world."

Another such momentous event recently appeared in Japan, which wrecked by a decadelong economic malaise and the potential threat of a financial implosion, saw the Nikkei Stock Average rise on a day that it should have plummeted.

After… more

U.S. President George W. Bush has injected potentially destabilizing dynamics into the domestic political arenas of many nations by pressuring all countries essentially to swear loyalty oaths to the United States and to work with him in going "after terrorism wherever we find it in the world . . . getting it by its branch and root."

Russia, China, Tunisia and even North Korea, in addition to nearly every other nation in the world, have signed on to the president's… more