Niall Ferguson
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
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.
AP Photo
May 2, 2012
"Merkel Can Achieve Fiscal Union in Europe"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Pierpaolo Barbieri, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy, International Security Program
"Europe's monetary union is neither the joint checking account of a dysfunctional family nor a latter-day gold standard. It was always meant to be a staging post on the road to a federal Europe. Today the biggest threat to its survival is no longer the economic consequences of austerity; it is the political consequences, in the form of populist, anti-European, usually xenophobic fringe parties. Almost everywhere but Germany, such parties are gaining support."
April 30, 2012
"African Game Change"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"In the years that lie before us, a great struggle will play out south of the Sahara: a struggle between man and Malthus. According to the Rev. Thomas Malthus’s famous principle—sometimes called the Malthusian trap—population grows geometrically, but the supply of food increases arithmetically. Viewed in those terms, many African countries today seem doomed to misery and vice," writes Belfer Center International Council member Niall Ferguson, "So is Africa heading over a demographic waterfall? Maybe not....Two things are changing the continent’s prospects. The first is the surging demand for the natural resources that are so abundant in Africa....The other game changer is mobile telephony....cellphones are giving poor Africans access to basic financial services for the first time."
AP Photo
April 9, 2012
"It's the Weather, Stupid"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
It must be the weather. For some reason, everyone thinks that the economy is recovering and so President Obama is going to be reelected. Just put a bit of blossom on the trees and people lose their minds.
(Photo by Feng Li)
March 19, 2012
"China's Great Leap Backward"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
While antiwar protesters clashed with the National Guard on American campuses and Czechs defied the Red Army in the streets of Prague, China had the Cultural Revolution. In some ways it was the ultimate ’60s teen rebellion. In other ways it was totalitarianism at its worst: a bloody revolution from above unleashed by one of the 20th century’s most ruthless despots.
