Rising global food prices during 2006-08 contributed to high food price inflation in many countries with the consequent distributional impact of rising food prices that created serious concern in ...several countries. In response, several governments applied export taxes to limit exports and thereby increase domestic supplies at low prices. This chapter provides a theoretical and empirical background to better understand the use of export taxes when these are applied towards maintaining food security. The analysis emphasizes the negative impact of such measures on the welfare of trade partners and the effects of non-cooperative trade policies.
Rarely have opinions on the US economic outlook differed so much. Some observers interpret the sharp slowdown in US growth in late 2007 and early 2008 as the beginning of a long and nasty recession ...during which the US needs to purge itself of its excessive addiction to credit. Many of these pessimists had maintained for years that the comparatively strong US economic performance for the last 5, 10 or even 15 years was built on unsustainable foundations which have now – belatedly – started to crumble. However, others see the current calamity as a temporary and comparatively shallow interruption in a remarkable uptrend.
The question of what sort of wartime president George W. Bush has been runs like a thread through Bob Woodward's brilliantly reported "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008," the ...fourth volume in his running, insider's account of the Bush administration's conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Final Days Abramson, Jill
New York Times Book Review,
09/2008
Book Review
Jill Abramson reviews "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008," the fourth and final volume in a series on the George W. Bush presidency by Bob Woodward.
Ricks begins this sober -- and deeply sobering -- account with the military's heretofore secret report on the massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines at Haditha, an incident that stands as ...exemplar for a strategy that not only was failing tactically but also seriously eroding the morale and morality of the American forces deployed to Iraq.
