Kathleen Moore is the director of RFE/RL's Central Newsroom.
You could track consumer sentiment indexes, scour the latest numbers for U.S. home sales, or pore over the fine print of China's GDP data.Or you could look at the price of copper.
Already they were the biggest in the world. But now China’s foreign exchange reserves have topped the $2 trillion mark for the first time. It’s a sign that overseas investors are increasingly confident the Chinese economy is improving. It also might mean China will buy more U.S. debt, which is being sold in record amounts as Washington tries to spend its way out of recession.
Members of the G8 group of leading industrialized nations have agreed to limit rising world temperatures, and promised $20 billion to help farmers in poor countries. But perhaps the most remarkable thing to emerge from last week's summit in Italy was the signal the group's days might be numbered.
When it comes to excitement, the EU's rotating presidency doesn't usually spring to mind. But the past six months, under the leadership of the Czech Republic, has been anything but boring. Prague's presidency has been punctuated by offending art works, inflammatory remarks, and, well, embarrassing nude photos.
They poured billions of dollars into troubled banks, unveiled massive spending packages, and even turned on the money printing presses. The economic crisis prompted unprecedented rescue measures by financial authorities around the world. Now they’re turning their attention to how they might unwind these emergency programs. But is it all too soon?
The name was coined by an economist to group together the world's biggest emerging economies. Now BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) is holding its first official summit. It's seen as a sign they want to show their growing economic clout -- especially amid a global economic crisis that has pushed the world into its first postwar contraction.
2008 was a roller-coaster year for oil prices. They soared to an all-time peak of $147 a barrel in July, before slumping to below $33 in December as the global economic crisis bit. Now they’ve rebounded, rising to their highest level this year at above $71 a barrel. What’s behind the rise and are we in for another spike?
For the first time, the International Monetary Fund is planning to issue bonds. It's one of the ways the fund is trying to boost its resources to help countries hit by the economic crisis. China and Russia have already lined up to buy billions of dollars' worth.
Storm clouds are once again gathering over Eastern Europe, with Latvia in the grip of a deepening financial crisis. For months it has been mired in the worst recession among EU members. And now there's renewed speculation that the country might have to devalue its currency. If it does, analysts warn there could be implications for other countries in the region.
As political parties in the Czech Republic vie for spots in the European legislature ahead of the June 5 and 6 elections, domestic political tensions are dominating the campaign.
A wave of job cuts, bankruptcies, and closures has hit the newspaper industry, particularly in the United States. The recession and the availability of free news on the Internet are blamed for turning newspapers into what one prominent senator called an "endangered species."
For a country's economy there can be no higher accolade, perhaps, than a "triple A" rating from the world's top credit-rating agencies. It's a sign to foreign investors that there is no safer place to invest their money. But the number of those countries is diminishing. Spain and Ireland were the first this year to lose their AAA status. And last week Standard & Poor's warned that Britain's AAA rating was at risk because of rising debt. That has spurred many to ask if the United States could be next.
Hosting a huge sporting event like the Olympics obviously carries with it immense prestige and it’s a prize coveted by cities -- and governments -- all over the world. But do such costly undertakings bring economic benefits? A new study suggests yes, in the form of a large boost to trade. Perhaps surprisingly, its authors say unsuccessful bidders reap similar benefits, too.
Ben Bernanke was one of the first, spotting "green shoots" back in March. Then President Barack Obama spoke of "glimmers of hope" for the U.S. economy. And influential voices in Russia and Britain have said the worst of the crisis in their countries appears to be over. Are there real signs of economic recovery?
EU leaders, gathered in the Czech capital together with U.S. President Barack Obama, issued a joint statement on North Korea's April 5 missile launch and traded opinions on the EU membership bid of Turkey.
In an open-air address today in the Czech capital, Prague, U.S. President Barack Obama called for the elimination of the world's nuclear weapons, just hours after a controversial rocket launch by North Korea.
Leaders of the G20 have gathered to chart the next steps in dealing with the world financial crisis. U.S. President Barack Obama said he was confident leaders would find consensus. But the run-up to the summit was marked by differences, chiefly over the balance between extra spending and financial market regulation.
Domestic political squabbles were the chief cause of the Czech government's fall. But the center-right coalition's handling of the economic crisis played its part, too, making it the latest government in Central and Eastern Europe to be hit by political turmoil amid the economic crisis.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has announced it will start buying up billions of dollars of government bonds as part of a new trillion-dollar effort to revive the economy. The aim is to lower the cost of borrowing across the economy and get banks to lend more. But "quantitative easing" also carries risks -- that it could lead to inflation in the future, and hammer the dollar.
He was one of the few people to accurately predict the bursting of not one but two financial "bubbles." The "dot.com" collapse in technology stocks at the beginning of the decade, and the U.S. housing market collapse that triggered the current economic crisis. So when Yale professor Robert Shiller comes up with suggestions for a way forward, they're likely worth hearing. One is about derivatives, the complex financial instruments -- many based on mortgages -- that were blamed for fueling the cri
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