Market speculation on whether the Fed will raise rates is reaching fever pitch, but the central bank no longer has the pull it once did.
The balance of trade positions of Australian agriculture and food manufacturing have deteriorated since FTAs with New Zealand, the United States and Thailand have come into play.
Flickr/Phil Greenhalgh
Outdoor air pollution causes 3.3 million premature deaths a year, mainly in Asia. And without policies to cut particulate pollution from traffic, industry and home biofuels, the deaths could double by 2050.
Qing Wang, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Having a Queen is a distinct business advantage, particularly due to reverence for the monarchy in new and emerging markets like China.
US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi have seen quantitative easing pay off, but what about on the way out?
David Stubbs/Reuters
The biggest factor behind the recessionary trend is not the Chinese market, austerity budgets, or even the threat of higher US interest rates this year.
Many people outside China find it hard to understand its obsession with history. Appropriately enough, however, a little historical context can help to explain this. China has had more recorded history…
New Delhi’s Yamuna River, like much of India’s water, is polluted. The world urgently needs low-carbon ways to clean things up.
EPA/Harish Tyagi
Much of the world still lacks access to proper sanitation and clean water - an issue that needs urgent action. But without low-carbon technologies, clean water could come at the expense of the climate.
In preparation for China’s commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war, a couple in Luoyang, Henan province, re-enacts the famous photograph taken in New York’s Times Square on V-J Day.
Reuters
It would be wrong to see China’s role in the second world war as a story of the powerful West coming to the rescue of a hapless Chinese nation.
Australia’s traditional reliance on multilateralism and alliances won’t be enough to negotiate the geopolitical rivalries of the Asian century.
EPA/Barbara Walton
For the past two centuries, Australia got many of the big calls on global engagement right. In our third century, there are worrying signs that we have not fully grasped what the rise of Asia means.
Africa needs to support small and medium-sized enterprises across the value chain of the agribusiness sector.
Reuters/Noor Khamis
Over the past 60 years, China has experimented extensively with policies and programmes to encourage the growth of rural enterprises. Africa could do well by following in these footsteps.
Time to panic, or time to chill: which is it?
Reuters/Lucas Jackson
We should not panic over the events of the last week. But slowing growth in China and concerns over “secular stagnation” in advanced economies present huge challenges.
Trade policy is usually the eye-glazing preserve of policy wonks and public officials. Suddenly, however, it’s the epicentre of a debate that tells us much about the difficulties facing political parties…
Time to reorder the flags?
BRIC flags via www.shutterstock.com
Back in 2001, a Goldman Sachs economist said Brazil, Russia, India and China would become the powerhouses of the global economy in the coming decades. Is that still in the cards?