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September 26, 2009
The G-20 leaders meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, assessed the progress made addressing the global financial crisis and agreed to maintain steps to support economic activity until recovery is assured. They further committed to additional steps to ensure strong, sustainable, and balanced growth, build a stronger international financial system, reduce development imbalances, and modernize the architecture for international economic cooperation. The leaders designated the G-20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation and agreed to have a G-20 Summit in Canada in June 2010, alongside the G-8 Summit, and in Seoul, Korea in November 2010. South Korea will chair the G-20 throughout 2010.
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September 24, 2009
Dr. Arnold S. Relman, M.D., professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, argues on the web site of Tikkun Magazine that President Obama cannot meet his criterion of signing a health care bill which does not add to the U.S. national debt unless health care reform includes eliminating the present profit motive from medicine. This includes licensing doctors so that they get a fixed salary rather than making profits from prescribing more tests, procedures and visits that increase their incomes. Relman, also a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, explains in Tikkun why the reform that is needed must go beyond a “public option” so that it can eliminate the constant growth of medical costs. Tikkun states that Dr. Relman’s analysis is extremely important because it helps people understand why the current plan to expand coverage by mandating coverage — without creating a vigorous public option to lower costs, and without challenging the ability of health care providers to raise costs — will bankrupt the system and provide insurance companies and others with the argument that “we tried government intervention in health care and all it succeeded in doing is to raise the costs for everyone and eventually led to collapse.” The Summit Council believes Relman’s plan is an example of the “Just Third Way,” as featured on our page devoted to Economic and Social Justice
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September 21, 2009
A new paper by economist Goohoo Kwon at Goldman Sachs argues that the economy of a reunified Korea could be larger than France and Germany and possibly Japan by the middle of this century. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kwon says “the risks of unification need to be reevaluated, particularly after the rapid development of countries such as Vietnam and Mongolia that had state-run economies like North Korea’s.”
The Journal adds, “Mr. Kwon’s study [suggests] that the North’s huge growth potential could help offset the slowing growth of South Korea, burdened by limited natural resources and a fast-aging population. North Korea has huge mineral deposits and a population that is younger and growing twice as quickly. Using long-term forecasts Goldman Sachs has previously published for industrialized countries, Mr. Kwon concluded that the gross domestic product of a united Korea would be the world’s eighth-largest in 2050 at $6 trillion, surpassing France around 2040 and Germany and Japan later that decade.” The Journal observed,”Nearly all previous economic reports on Korean unification focused on the costs that South Koreans will face, and ignore or play down investment and business opportunities that may arise.”
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September 18, 2009
According to the Carnegie Endowment’s Senior Associate, Uri Dadush, the upcoming G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, September 24-25, which brings together leaders of the largest developing and industrial economies, is the best available option to deal with the post-crisis world. Although he says the G-20 assembly is larger than necessary, “it is nevertheless a big improvement on the G-8, which is not representative of today’s global economy, and on any UN-style universal assemblies, which are far too large to be effective.”
Dadush adds that although the Great Financial Crisis is far from over, a stimulus-triggered recovery is now taking hold. “The contours of the post-crisis economy are already emerging—from the sharply rising public debt levels in most industrial countries to the severely impaired balance sheets of banks and households in countries at the epicenter of the banking disaster, including the United States, the UK, and several smaller European countries. At the same time, China, India, Brazil, and many other emerging markets, which were badly affected at first, demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of the crisis and have confirmed both their attractiveness as long-term investment destinations and their growing economic and political clout.”
He then outlines four challenges for the G-20 Summit: what kind of recovery; when to withdraw stimulus; how to avoid the same crisis in the future; and, what is the G-20’s long-term agenda.
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will host the G-20 Summit September 24-25, 2009. U.S. President Barack Obama will chair this meeting of leaders from countries that represent 85 percent of the world’s economy. At the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit, leaders will review the progress made since the Washington (November 2008) and London (April 2009) Summits and discuss further actions to assure a sound and sustainable recovery from the global financial and economic crisis.
Pittsburgh, once known as the “city of steel,” was selected because it has demonstrated a commitment to employing new and green technology to further economic recovery and development, and according to President Obama, “stands as a bold example of how to create new jobs and industries while transitioning to a 21st century economy.”
Read the White House statement on the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit here
Read more about the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit and the city itself here