Niall Ferguson
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
November 30, 2012
"Turning Points"
Op-Ed, New York Times
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
We yearn for turning points, writes Niall Ferguson. "Just as economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions, so journalists have surely reported nine out of the last five revolutions. Every election is hailed as epoch-making. Every president is expected to have a new foreign policy 'doctrine.' A minor redesign of a cellular phone is hailed by the devotees of the Apple cult as a 'paradigm shift.'"
October 15, 2012
"What Biden Doesn't Want You to Know"
Op-Ed, The Daily Beast
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Current veep Joe Biden certainly sought to play last Thursday’s vice-presidential debate for laughs. Embarrassingly for Democrats, the laughs were mainly his own. Guffawing, chortling—all but slapping his thighs and wiping away the tears—Biden might equally well have been arguing about the relative merits of whiskey and poteen in a hostelry with a name like 'The Shamrock'" writes Niall Ferguson.
October 8, 2012
"Europe's New Fascists"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
“It can be a mistake to laugh at fascists,” writes the Belfer Center’s Niall Ferguson, “Charlie Chaplin mocked Hitler and Mussolini in The Great Dictator. P.G. Wodehouse had fun with his preposterous parody of Oswald Mosley, Roderick Spode. But Nazism turned out to be no joke.... So when a party called “Golden Dawn”—which has something that looks a lot like a swastika as its logo— starts denying aspects of the Holocaust and heaping opprobrium on immigrants, it’s best to keep a straight face. Sure, they’re Greeks, not Germans... But if elections were held tomorrow, these guys could become the third-largest party in the Greek Parliament.”
Guang Niu
September 24, 2012
All the Asian Rage
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Belfer Center Board member, Niall Ferguson, examines China and Japan's relationships with the United States' administration.
September 3, 2012
"The Fed's Dirty Easy Money"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Niall Ferguson, member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, reacts to the Fed's economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. held last week. Ferguson grades Bernanke on S&P performance, price stability, and unemployment. He also applauds Paul Ryan's Republican National Convention speech on economic possibilities.
August 27, 2012
"Who Needs College?"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Will higher education the next big bubble to pop? Niall Ferguson, a noted historian and member of the Belfer Center's Board of Directors, thinks so. In a new op-ed, Ferguson argues that despite the United States having 22 out of the top 30 world universities, "all is far from well in the groves of American academe."
AP Photo
August 6, 2012
"Lights Out in India"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
The recent power outage in India interested me more than the Olympics. (I had a very British reaction to the opening ceremonies: I found them excruciatingly embarrassing.) The Indian blackout was surely the biggest electricity failure in history, affecting a staggering 640 million people. If you have ever visited Delhi in the summer, you will have some idea what it must have felt like.
July 30, 2012
"Facebook Won't Save Us"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
“Are you a technoptimist or a depressimist?” asks Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a member of the Belfer Center’s Board of Directors. “This is the question I have been pondering after a weekend hanging with some of the superstars of Silicon Valley. I had never previously appreciated the immense gap that now exists between technological optimism, on the one hand, and economic pessimism, on the other. Silicon Valley sees a bright and beautiful future ahead. Wall Street and Washington see only storm clouds.”
July 9, 2012
How Barclays Lost Its Head
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Recently a series of emails dating back to 2005 and 2006 came to light which document repeated efforts by traders at Barclay's bank to get their colleagues to rig the interest rate known as LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate). "Had the LIBOR scandal been an isolated incident, the chief executive of Barclays, Bob Diamond, might just have survived," writes Belfer Center Board member Niall Ferguson, "[b]ut coming as just the latest in a succession of revelations of sharp practice and/or mismanagement at British financial institutions, “Liborgate” proved fatal not only to Diamond but also to the Barclays chairman and the bank’s chief operating officer."
AP Photo/LOCOG
May 21, 2012
"London's Last Waltz"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Niall Ferguson writes that those planning to come to London for the Olympics should read Joseph Roth’s Radetzky March. For London today, he says, resembles nowhere more closely than fin-de-siècle Vienna—in good ways, but also in bad.
