LOS ANGELES — Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, examines the euro zone in the wake of the Greek crisis in the new edition of the Milken Institute Review. His conclusion? The union needs a complete reboot to establish credibility and prepare for the future. "For the euro to survive the next shock and the next, let alone fulfill its promise as the glue that binds the continent, the member states are going to have to fill the gaps in the monetary union′s institutional architecture."
Also in this issue:
Ted Moran, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, assesses China′s global grab for oil and other raw materials. "Concerns about China′s push to assure adequate supplies of natural resources are well-grounded, but probably misdirected," he concludes. "Whatever its leaders think they′re doing, the consequences in terms of access to supply for other countries are largely positive."
Larry Fisher, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, explains why the time for electric cars is right now. "The electric car, I believe, is more than a disruptive innovation like the PC - it is a systemic transformation, more akin to the transition from sailing ships to steam, which spanned more than a century and led to broad transformations ranging from sweeping changes in military power to the globalization of the market for meat."
Lee Lane, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, examines the case for using advanced engineering techniques to offset global warming. "[F]or those of us who believe that emissions containment is both costly and politically impractical, climate engineering is beginning to look like the last best hope."
G. Pascal Zachary, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, outlines Africa′s latest growing pain: widening income inequality. "Undermining the incentives to create businesses and to accumulate wealth legitimately has been a disaster, leaving much of the population of Africa scrambling at the lean edge of subsistence a half century after independence."
The latest edition also includes Susan Lund and Charles Roxburgh of the McKinsey Global Institute on the difficult process of deleveraging the world economy after the bubble; Erwin Blackstone and Simon Hakim of Temple University analyzing the trend toward privatizing police functions; a synopsis of the Global Conference debate between Mike Milken, chairman of the Milken Institute, and Nouriel Roubini, the head of Roubini Global Economics; and an excerpt from "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," the latest book from Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist of the IMF.
The Milken Institute Review is sent quarterly to the world′s leading business and financial executives, senior policymakers and journalists. Its editor is Peter Passell, former economics columnist for The New York Times.