Global Economy

What do we do if we're serious about racial integration, diversity and the competitiveness of this nation in a global economy? What Prop 2 did was eliminate one method of dealing with these issues, but it doesn't take away the urgency of the issue."

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Department of Commerce will release data Tuesday showing a record trade deficit with China of more than $200 billion in 2006. This news will likely fuel reaction alleging China is plotting to harm the U.S. economy and its workers by flooding the American market with cheap goods. Such vilification is based on a mirage. Nearly $300 billion worth of U.S. goods were imported from China in 2006. Based on the pattern for China's total exports, up to two-thirds are likely to have come from other countries' corporations that are operating in China.

Maryland's single greatest competitive advantage in today's high-tech, global economy is its well-educated work force. But that is also its great vulnerability: Workers eventually retire, and unless the state replaces each retiring generation with a generation that has an even larger proportion of college graduates and holders of other post-high school certificates, its competitive edge could soon disappear. Will Maryland do what it takes to keep raising the education level of its work force?

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered the House Banking Committee the same optimistic outlook he gave the Senate: The Fed's best guess is the U.S. economy will continue to expand at a robust pace with no evidence of inflation.Still, the Fed chairman said policy-makers are struggling with a global economy that's not following historical road maps. Economies around the world have slowed, yet the United States is booming -- and has no inflation."What we do is to endeavor to understand how the world at large is impacting on us. And that's becoming ever increasingly more complex," Greenspan said.

GOLD MAY have great value in industrial uses, but it has lost its luster with the world's governments.Last week, Great Britain announced it would sell 415 tons of its 715-ton stockpile of the precious metal and invest the proceeds in other financial instruments. If the signs were not already clear, Britain's move certainly means the end of gold's role in the global economy.Its decline began more than a quarter-century ago. In 1972, the United States cut the link between gold and its currency.

Until now, the United States has been strong in the face of enormous weakness in the global economy, but three local business leaders said yesterday that expectations need to be moderated.George A. Roche, chairman and president of T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., told a business outlook conference that he expects a slowdown in the second half of 1999.His fellow panelists -- Abraham Gulkowitz, chief global strategist and director of economics and strategy for BT Alex. Brown, and Raymond A. Mason, Legg Mason Inc.'s chairman and chief executive -- agreed.

GOV. Parris Glendening addressed the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs Tuesday while some 50 people with placards denouncing the World Trade Organization and capitalism picketed the World Trade Center where he spoke.He did not say yea or nay about the WTO, which has drawn the ire of demonstrators who know little about it.Commentators have suggested that the protests in Seattle are really about the whole effect of globalization of the economy, with the trade body conference just a convenient peg for venting.

WASHINGTON -- Central banks in the world's leading industrial nations aren't planning coordinated interest-rate cuts to help combat a global economic slowdown, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan told the House Banking Committee yesterday."

A NEW ECONOMIC system has emerged in the past decade, founded on computer technology, fueled by information, held together by an almost religious belief in the sanctity of freemarkets and driven by a deep disdain for centralized government, safety nets and any other restraint on competition and personal enterprise.Now we're going to see whether it holds together in a crisis.This is not quite the "new world order" that George Bush envisioned in the late '80s. That phrase suggested a tidy little arrangement of national governments working in unison for the betterment of all. What we have today is something very different.

More than two decades ago, the emergence of the global economy nearly destroyed the big three auto companies. Now, it's dividing each of the two major political parties as well.For those who were unaware that globalization is generating new arguments, new alignments, and surprising outcomes, the defeat of Fast Track trade legislation last year was a rude wake-up call. Fortunately for those who want to understand the trade debate, there is a growing number of controversial and comprehensible books on the subject.

As the dollar falls against the euro, yen and other major currencies, China and other emerging economic powers holding lots of dollars and U.S. securities are crying foul - and urging an end to the dollar's central status in global commerce. If they are truly disgusted, they should look to themselves for answers. Since the end of World War II, the dollar has largely replaced gold as the reserve asset central banks hold to back up national currencies. The supply of gold is too limited, and efforts to back up currency with gold would result in chronic shortages of liquidity and global deflation.

PITTSBURGH - -World leaders pledged Friday to keep economic stimulus efforts going in order to nurture the tentative recovery. They also lent their support to a U.S. plan to restructure global growth by relying less on American consumers and more on domestic spending from export-dominant countries such as China. For the Obama administration, winning an agreement on its proposed Framework for Sustainable and Balanced Growth was a key objective at the Group of 20 summit. But analysts said the plan, while it called for member countries to review one another's economic policies, lacked an enforcement mechanism and would have little force in rectifying global imbalances.

To dig out of the "Great Recession," Washington needs to challenge China on trade and currency manipulation - but President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner must recognize that Beijing only has the leverage Washington gives it. The nation needs to realize that this is no Eisenhower recession, caused by too much inventory. Rather, this meltdown was caused by structural imbalances in the global economy that no stimulus spending can fix. Dysfunctions on Wall Street notwithstanding, China and several other developing countries produce far more than they consume and enjoy huge trade surpluses, thanks to artificially undervalued currencies, export subsidies and import restrictions.

Individual investors who once envisioned global investing as a growth portion of their portfolios are feeling the pain. Emerging markets have been hit hard in the financial downturn. There's really nowhere to hide. Even though the worst might not be over as we look to 2009, some experts believe the situation provides opportunities to increase international investments because much of the rest of the world will revive before the U.S. does. "International stocks have been hit worse than U.S. stocks, but most of that difference has been due to the strength of the U.S. dollar," said Allan Nichols, equities strategist and editor of Morningstar International Investor in Chicago.

Lola Tillyabaera shared artifacts from her native Uzbekistan with classmates at Harford Community College at a table set up in the Global Cafe. As students gathered at the table, she donned an ornate gold hat. "This hat is called a duppa," said Tillyabaera, 21. "This is the hat that women wear during their wedding." The hat was one of many things American-born students learned from about 100 international students at the school, who participated last week in International Education Week activities.

SHANGHAI, China - China announced yesterday a huge economic stimulus plan aimed at bolstering its weakening economy, a sweeping move that could also help fight the effects of the global slowdown. At a time when major infrastructure projects are being put off around the world, China said it would spend an estimated $586 billion - about 7 percent of its gross domestic product - over the next two years to construct railways, subways and airports, and to rebuild communities devastated by a May earthquake in the southwest.

The business press paints the Federal Reserve as omnipotent. Maybe once it was. But events are likely to prove it has lost some of its mojo. The nation's central bank controls a smaller piece of the global economy than in the last severe recession, in the early 1980s. And it no longer influences the price of oil as it once did. Those seldom-acknowledged facts make its job more difficult, and the outcome of its efforts to fight inflation or keep the country out of a bad recession more uncertain.

What do we do if we're serious about racial integration, diversity and the competitiveness of this nation in a global economy? What Prop 2 did was eliminate one method of dealing with these issues, but it doesn't take away the urgency of the issue."

Maryland's single greatest competitive advantage in today's high-tech, global economy is its well-educated work force. But that is also its great vulnerability: Workers eventually retire, and unless the state replaces each retiring generation with a generation that has an even larger proportion of college graduates and holders of other post-high school certificates, its competitive edge could soon disappear. Will Maryland do what it takes to keep raising the education level of its work force?

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Department of Commerce will release data Tuesday showing a record trade deficit with China of more than $200 billion in 2006. This news will likely fuel reaction alleging China is plotting to harm the U.S. economy and its workers by flooding the American market with cheap goods. Such vilification is based on a mirage. Nearly $300 billion worth of U.S. goods were imported from China in 2006. Based on the pattern for China's total exports, up to two-thirds are likely to have come from other countries' corporations that are operating in China.