Niall Ferguson
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
AP Photo
May 17, 2010
"The End of the Euro"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Just when it seemed safe to start using the word "recovery," a Greek crisis is threatening the world economy, and the very existence of the world's second-biggest currency."
AP Photo
January/February 2010
"What 'Chimerica' Hath Wrought"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, American Interest
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"For a time, [Chimerica] was a symbiotic relationship that seemed like a marriage made in heaven. Put simply, one half did the saving, the other half the spending. Comparing net national savings as a proportion of Gross National Income, American savings declined from above 5 percent in the mid 1990s to virtually zero by 2005, while Chinese savings surged from below 30 percent to nearly 45 percent. This divergence in saving patterns allowed a tremendous explosion of debt in the United States, for one effect of the Asian "savings glut" was to make it much cheaper for households to borrow money than would otherwise have been the case."
AP Photo
December 7, 2009
"An Empire at Risk"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Military experts talk as if the president's decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country's long-term national security. Call the United States what you like-superpower, hegemon, or empire-but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power."
AP Photo
November 16, 2009
"The Year the World Really Changed"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"...1989 was less of a watershed year than 1979. The reverberations of the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be much smaller than we had expected at the time. In essence, what happened was that we belatedly saw through the gigantic fraud of Soviet superpower. But the real trends of our time—the rise of China, the radicalization of Islam, and the rise and fall of market fundamentalism—had already been launched a decade earlier."
iStock Photo
December 2008
"Wall Street Lays Another Egg"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Vanity Fair
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world-call it Planet Finance-where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning."
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.
