Crash Survival Zone

City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to [...]

By Harold James

The Great Depression made the United States the world’s unquestioned financial leader. The current crisis can do the same for China.

In the Great Depression, as in the current economic crisis, the downturn was particularly severe because of a lack of leadership in the international order. The dominant financial power of the 19th century, [...]

By Simon Johnson

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many [...]

By Zachary Karabell

For Beijing and Washington to pull the world out of this Great Recession, they must overcome both mutual suspicion and self-perceptions that are quickly losing validity. China is no longer as poor as it claims; the United States is no longer as rich as it acts. This transition will be tough for both. [...]

By Desmond Lachman

Back in the spring of 1998, when Boris Yeltsin was still at Russia’s helm, I led a group of global investors to Moscow to find out firsthand where the Russian economy was headed. My long career with the International Monetary Fund and on Wall Street had taken me to “emerging markets” throughout Asia, [...]

Paul Krugman has emerged as Obama’s toughest liberal critic. He’s deeply skeptical of the bank bailout and pessimistic about the economy. Why the establishment worries he may be right.
Traditionally, punditry in Washington has been a cozy business. To get the inside scoop, big-time columnists sometimes befriend top policymakers and offer informal advice over lunch or [...]

By: James Saft
The dollar is, and will remain, the U.S.’s currency and its own and everyone else’s problem.

The idea of creating a global currency, as espoused by China earlier this week, is interesting, has a certain amount of merit and is simply not going to happen any time soon.
U.S. desire for free access to the [...]

Slowdown Signals A Static Horizon
Over the past decade, as new corporate headquarters, condominiums and subdivisions mushroomed across the region, developers relied on architects to turn their big-money musings into the lines, angles and dimensions that are the language of their craft.

Now, as banks have stopped financing construction, development projects are in limbo and architectural firms [...]

When treasury secretary Tim Geithner rolled out his long-awaited plan for buying up toxic mortgage loans and securities on March 23, reaction was split. Financial markets cheered, with the Dow Jones industrial average rocketing 497 points, or 6.8%, on the day. The chattering classes mostly grumbled, with Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul [...]