The great recession hasn't been great for free trade. As unemployment has risen throughout the world, governments have become more focused on protecting their own industries than on promoting international commerce. The U.S., typically an enthusiastic supporter of open markets, included "buy American" clauses in its stimulus package and propped up its flailing auto industry with handouts. Although a meeting of ministers in New Delhi in early September promised to restart long-stalled World Trade Organization negotiations aimed ...

We are all Keynesians now. It's a phrase that entered public discourse as the headline of a TIME cover story in 1965. Now it's coming back into fashion. This does not signify that we are all--as was Englishman John Maynard Keynes--Cambridge University economists with lucrative side jobs as investment managers, spectacular art collections, lots of famous friends and Russian-ballerina wives. At least I don't fit that description. Do you? The resurgence of interest in Keynes also doesn't represent a full ...

Fed's $2 trillion may buy little improvement in jobs For $2 trillion, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may buy little improvement in growth, employment or inflation over the next two years. Firms with large-scale models of the U.S. economy such as IHS Global Insight, Moody's Analytics Inc. and Macroeconomic Advisers LLC project only a moderate impact from additional Fed asset purchases. The firms estimate that the unemployment rate will remain around 9 percent or higher next year whether the Fed buys ...

China's economic growth surges but inflation low China's economic growth surged to 11.9% in the first quarter, possibly giving Beijing room to allow its currency to rise, but analysts warned it faces growing pressure to cut back stimulus and keep the world's third-largest economy from overheating. The strong performance reported Thursday might allow a loosening of politically volatile currency controls by offsetting possible losses in export industries. Analysts expect Beijing to let the yuan rise sometime this year, though President Hu Jintao ...

As we reach the end of a miserable 2009, signs continue to mount across the globe that the world economy is stirring back to life. The U.S. finally returned to growth in the third quarter, with its strongest showing in two years, India posted inspiring 7.9% growth and the results out of tiny Taiwan, one of the economies slammed the hardest by the global recession, were so impressive one economist beamed that the island "got its groove on." Stock ...

Miami's poorer residents have long complained that the city's meager public-transit system makes it harder for them to get to work. So when the Obama Administration announced the $787 billion stimulus plan earlier this year, many hoped some of that money would help fund plans like an expansion of Miami's undersized Metrorail system — especially a 10-mile northern extension that would reach into predominantly African-American and other minority communities largely cut off from downtown and other employment centers. But ...

After Wall Street stabilized last spring, it didn't take long for the economy to become a political afterthought to the major battle of the year in Washington: health-care reform. But last Tuesday's off-year election broke D.C.'s political trance like a brick through plate glass. Republicans triumphed in two major gubernatorial races thanks largely to independents fleeing Democrats over economic worries. Suddenly every politician in town cares about the economy more than anything else. So Friday's jobless number from the Labor Department will quickly become ...

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was adamant Sunday, when asked if President Obama was considering a so-called "second stimulus" to deal with the rising unemployment rate. "I think it's too soon, it's premature to say is a second stimulus needed," she told David Gregory, the host of NBC's Meet the Press. But a moment later she said the White House was already looking at tax credits and other measures ...

Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second. The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The country is aiming for speeds that are ...

Leaders representing 85 percent of the world's economic output were gathering Thursday in a U.S. city that has reinvented itself, hoping to bolster the global economy. The Group of 20 will meet for two days to focus on the worldwide financial crisis, and plot how to avoid a repeat in the future. The White House is using the economic summit to showcase Pittsburgh -- a city that President Barack Obama says has exhibited an innovative 21st-century recovery after a well-publicized ...