This year's annual Jackson Hole economists' convention is discussing "Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial System". With the chit-chat led by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke! Maintaining stability? Days after US$4.6 billion of new credit is pumped into the economy?

Central banks show they have learned very little from history, with their interest rate manipulations and attendant inefficiencies and distortions. They need a Basel lll, setting appropriate guidelines, or inflation and instability will become the permanent landscape. - Hossein Askari

China is awash with cash, thanks to high levels of savings, increased enterprise profitability, a government budget surplus and more foreign exchange reserves than it knows what do with. It sounds good - but the imbalances are creating hazardous challenges

Many regions will suffer if the US enters a severe recession and as the government increasingly resorts to printing money to meet its promises. Nations that make still- needed goods and with prudent economic policies will be hurt the least.

Leaked reports of secret negotiations have aborted a long-awaited peace agreement in the Philippines' restive Mindanao region and triggered a rash of killings. The United States is dangling monetary carrots, but this just adds to the clashing interests of the

Talking tough with North Korea and casting it as a rogue regime didn't achieve much for the George W Bush administration. Tensions only began to subside when it tried a bold new diplomatic tack. US presidential candidates promising "change" should

The People's Alliance for Democracy's ongoing violent standoff with Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is a last desperate act to push its anti-government agenda. That it is being rebuffed by Samak's restraint will go down as an irony in Thai

Delhi seriously underestimated the opposition the United States-India nuclear deal would arouse in the international Nuclear Suppliers' Group, which must grant India a waiver from its tough rules on nuclear trade. The frantic scramble for a compromise US-drafted waiver motion

The killing of a young Japanese aid worker in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban will raise serious questions about Tokyo's refueling mission for United States-led coalition vessels in the Indian Ocean. Early elections for the Lower House are

In response to Russia's recognition of independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia - two nations that have paid in blood for that privilege - the West is chanting "cold war". Moscow's position is, if friendship with the West can only

Iran's geopolitical leverage has increased sharply as a result of the West's faceoff with Russia over Georgia. Tehran is potentially a valuable ally for either side in Cold War II, and for now it is cleverly keeping its options open

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has put himself on the line by insisting that all American troops leave the country by the end of 2010, as a precondition to signing a security accord with the US. Maliki's stance, clearly influenced

Foreign investors, faced with a falling US dollar and the plunging value of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are unlikely to repeat the recent scale of lending to the US, a borrower of more than 50% of internationally available savings.

The current global economic crisis will mark the end of the state's retreat initiated by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Deeper government interventions in society are here to stay and the hunting ground for financial heists, fictions and bubbles by

Folks will finally realize - if only as they face what they thought was going to be their retirement - that it is impossible for even the majority to take more purchasing power out of the stock market than they

Neither Beijing nor the Tibetan government in exile is prepared to concede to the other's version of history, but as frustration looms in the Tibetan diaspora and China shoulders the mantle of responsible world player, the two sides will have

India's has a trash crisis, while rapidly growing wealth levels have kick-started rampant regional construction. Both have encroached on the sacred landscape of the Himalayas and the Ganges River. A rag-tag bunch of volunteers has stepped in with a "devotional"

The breakup of Pakistan's short-lived ruling coalition adds to concerns for the economy, with foreign investors already pulling out funds and the risk of debt default growing. Islamabad may yet have to go with begging bowl in hand to the

Turkey is trying to develop an autonomous foreign policy, including deeper energy ties with Iran, in unprecedented conditions, among them war on its doorstep. Yet its regional Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform will not solve the country's basic economic problems

A United States-backed security operation meant to target al-Qaeda has instead focused only on Iraqi cities with large Sunni populations. Sunni residents claim the operations are clearly sectarian and also blame Shi'ite militias backed by the government in Baghdad. -