Grounds For Hope for the Climate Change Agenda

• The Guardian
• December 13, 2010

The official communique from the Cancún climate change conference cannot disguise the fact that there will be no successor to the Kyoto protocol when it expires at the end of 2012. Japan, among others, has withdrawn its support for efforts simply to extend the Kyoto treaty.

New Green Drivers of Growth

• Project Syndicate
• November 9, 2010

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just released the final report of his High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF). As the two private-sector members of the AGF, we are proud of our work. The report lays out the available options for mobilizing $100 billion annually for climate-change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, and establishes the conditions that would make it possible to achieve this goal by 2020.

Why I Support Legal Marijuana

• October 26, 2010

Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

China Must Fix the Global Currency Crisis

• Financial Times
• October 7, 2010

I share the growing concern about the misalignment of currencies. Brazil’s finance minister speaks of a latent currency war, and he is not far off the mark. It is in the currency markets where different economic policies and different economic and political systems interact and clash.

Remarks delivered at the World Leaders Forum at Columbia University

• New York, New York
• October 5, 2010

“The Sovereign Debt Problem” As you know I have written several books which serve to explain the crash of 2008. Two years have elapsed since then – it is time to bring the story up to date. That is what I propose to do today.

America Needs Stimulus Not Virtue

• Financial Times
• October 4, 2010

The Obama administration’s insistence on fiscal rectitude is dictated not by financial necessity but by political considerations. The US is not in the position of Europe’s heavily indebted countries, which must pay hefty premiums over the price at which Germany can borrow.

The Plight of the Roma

• Project Syndicate
• August 23, 2010

The Roma have been persecuted across Europe for centuries. Now they face a form of discrimination unseen in Europe since World War II: group evictions and expulsions from several European democracies of men, women, and children on the grounds that they pose a threat to public order.

The Crisis and the Euro

• The New York Review of Books
• July 12, 2010

I believe that misconceptions play a large role in shaping history, and the euro crisis is a case in point. Let me start my analysis with the previous crisis, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. In the week following September 15, 2008, global financial markets actually broke down and by the end of the week they had to be put on artificial life support.

Germany’s Europe Deficit

• Project Syndicate
• June 24, 2010

Germany used to be at the heart of European integration. Its statesmen used to assert that Germany had no independent foreign policy, only a European policy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, its leaders realized that German reunification was possible only in the context of a united Europe, and they were willing to make some sacrifices to secure European acceptance.

Remarks delivered at Humboldt University

• Berlin, Germany
• June 23, 2010

I believe that misconceptions play a large role in shaping history, and the euro crisis is a case in point. Let me start my analysis with the previous crisis, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. In the week following September 15, 2008, global financial markets actually broke down and by the end of the week they had to be put on artificial life support.