Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,
Martin Wolf: Grim truths Obama should have told Hu
Barack Obama, president of the US, met Hu Jintao, president of the People’s Republic of China, for a private meeting on Tuesday. The agenda was long, covering the world economy, climate change and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. The last two are the most important, over the long run. But the first is the most urgent, writes Wolf.
Bill Owens: America must start treating China as a friend
It is time to reflect on a rapidly changing world. We need to make a frank and pragmatic assessment of the US relationship with China, whose rise in wealth and influence is unprecedented, writes Owens, the former vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff .
Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian: Forget emissions, focus on research
International negotiations to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases driving climate change are gridlocked in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding about what is fair. The focus has been on greenhouse gas emissions, and on who bears responsibility for cutting them, by how much and when. Rarely in history have we seen constructive solutions coming out of blame games such as this, comment Birdsall and Subramanian, president and senior fellow respectively at the Center for Global Development.
Editorial Comment: Lagarde en garde
The financial sector is reputedly a brutal dog-eat-dog world. This apparently cut-throat spirit, however, has not resulted in competitive marketplaces. As Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister and a former competition lawyer, indicated in an FT interview this week, governments must attack this problem.
Lex on Bernanke blowing bubbles
Finally a central banker has admitted he is as clueless as everyone else. “It is inherently extraordinarily difficult to know whether an asset’s price is in line with its fundamental value,” said the Federal Reserve chairman in a speech on Monday. Ben Bernanke then contradicted himself, however, by adding: “It’s not obvious to me in any case that there’s any large misalignments currently in the US financial system.” Given the first statement, how can he know?
Insight: Trevor Greetham – Doomed to repeat history?
The warning that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is usually a caution against complacency. However, the past can teach us another lesson too — that not all crises need end badly, writes Greetham, Director of Asset Allocation at Fidelity International.
FTfm: Money for nothing
Pauline Skypala on the financial advisor who does not provide a service in return for this money – an example of how it is possible to earn money for nothing in the strange world of financial advice.