Kenneth Rogoff - The Japan Times

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Kenneth Rogoff

For Kenneth Rogoff's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 7, 2010

It's the IMF to the rescue

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — With the International Monetary Fund playing a central role in the euro zone's blueprint for a bailout of Greece, the multilateral lender has come full circle. In its early days after World War II, the IMF's central task was to help Europe emerge from the ravages of the war. Once upon a time, the IMF had scores of programs across the Continent (as Rong Qian, Carmen Reinhart and I illustrate in new research on "graduation" from sovereign debt crises.) But, until the financial crisis, most Europeans assumed they were now far too wealthy to ever face the humiliation of asking the IMF for financial assistance.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 5, 2010

Japan's slow-motion crisis

If you listen to American, European or even Chinese leaders, Japan is the economic future no one wants. In selling massive stimulus packages and bank bailouts, Western leaders told their people, "We must do this or we will end up like Japan, mired in recession and deflation for a decade or more."

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 9, 2010

Can Greece outrun the lion of default?

ATHENS — Even as the European Union and the International Monetary Fund lay the groundwork for a giant first-round bailout, debate is swirling about whether Greece can avoid sovereign default.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 7, 2010

Grandmasters and the future of global growth

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the global economy limps out of the last decade and enters a new one in 2010, what will be the next big driver of global growth? Here's betting that the "teens" is a decade in which artificial intelligence hits escape velocity, and starts to have an economic impact on par with the emergence of India and China.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 7, 2009

The Chinese have a massive dollar problem

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When will China finally realize that it cannot accumulate dollars forever? It already has more than $2 trillion. Do the Chinese really want to be sitting on $4 trillion in another five to 10 years? With the U.S. government staring at the long-term costs of the financial bailout, as well as inexorably rising entitlement costs, shouldn't the Chinese worry about a repeat of Europe's experience from the 1970s?

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 5, 2009

Moving from financial crisis to debt crisis?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Everyone from the queen of England to laid-off Detroit autoworkers wants to know why more experts did not see the financial crisis coming. It is an awkward question.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 6, 2009

Finance lessons still not learned one year on

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Next month marks the one year anniversary of the collapse of the venerable American investment bank, Lehman Brothers. The fall of Lehman marked the onset of a global recession and financial crisis the likes of which the world has not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. After one year, trillions of dollars in public money, and much soul-searching in the world's policy community, have we learned the right lessons? I fear not.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 8, 2009

Will Europe's economies regain their footing?

STOCKHOLM — What will Europe's growth trajectory look like after the financial crisis? For some Europeans, still nervous that their economies and banking systems might collapse, this is a little like asking a passenger on the Titanic what they plan to do when they arrive in New York.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 17, 2009

Balancing U.S.-China economic ties

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the global economy stabilizes, there is a growing danger that the United States and China will slip back into their precrisis economic patterns, placing themselves and the rest of the world at risk. Despite Chinese official rhetoric about the need for a new global currency to replace the dollar, and U.S. lawmakers' flirtation with "Buy American" clauses (which scares everyone, not just the Chinese), no one will want to rock a boat that has almost capsized. So China continues to run a giant trade surplus, and the U.S. continues to spend and borrow.

COMMENTARY / World

May 10, 2009

Here comes a downsized 'norm'

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Markets are bubbling over signs of "green shoots" in the global economy. An increasing number of investors see a strong rebound coming, first in China, then in the United States, and then in Europe and the rest of the world. Even the horrible growth numbers of the last couple quarters don't seem to discourage this optimistic thinking. The deeper the plunge, the stronger the rebound, some analysts say.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 7, 2009

What's the deficit endgame?

REYKJAVIK — No one yet has any real idea about when the global financial crisis will end, but one thing is certain: Government budget deficits are headed into the stratosphere. Investors in coming years will need to be persuaded to hold mountains of new debt.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 6, 2008

It would be a mistake to super-size the IMF

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the global financial crisis radiates out from the developed economies into emerging markets, it is ravaging not only governance-challenged economies such as Venezuela, Russia and Argentina. The crisis is also striking countries like Brazil, Korea and South Africa, which appeared to have made substantial and lasting progress toward macroeconomic stability.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 8, 2008

Apply the fiscal brakes to this runaway train

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The global economy is a runaway train that is slowing, but not quickly enough. That is what the extraordinary runup in prices for oil, metals and food is screaming at us.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 6, 2008

U.S. debt isn't the bargain it used to be

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the world's financial leaders meet in Washington this month at the World Bank-International Monetary Fund annual meeting, perhaps they should be glad there is no clear alternative to the dollar as the global currency standard.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 9, 2008

U.S. resists its own medicine

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the United States' epic financial crisis continues to unfold, one can only wish that U.S. policymakers were half as good at listening to advice from developing countries as they are at giving it.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 14, 2007

Health-care costs to squeeze capitalism

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Will the inexorable rise in medical costs around the world someday pose a major challenge to contemporary capitalism? I submit that in the not-so-distant future, moral, social and political support for capitalism will be severely tested as would-be egalitarian health systems face ever-rising costs.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 9, 2007

Breaking locks on the pillars of finance

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — One has go back to the "Year of Three Popes" (1978) to find a succession drama as strange as what has been happening at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the two pillars of global finance.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 4, 2007

A rare internationalist off to the rescue

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Will newly anointed World Bank President Robert Zoellick be able to get the organization back on its feet after the catastrophic failed presidency of Paul Wolfowitz? Although hardly a megawatt star of the Bob Rubin category, he certainly brings some positive attributes to the job.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 9, 2007

A way forward for global financial policy

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Financial globalization is exploding. Yet, as the world's leading finance ministers and central bankers convene in Washington this month for the semiannual International Monetary Fund board meetings, policy paralysis continues.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 12, 2007

Lucky feeling helps to prop up U.S. dollar

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- Many people have been asking why the dollar hasn't crashed yet. Will the United States ever face a bill for the string of massive trade deficits that it has been running for more than a decade?

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