Live Talk: Peter Peterson | Newsweek Turning Points

Dominique Strauss-Kahn : The Constant Crisis
Tony Emerson 9/26/2009 12:00:00 AM
The sense of relief at last week's G20 summit was nearly palpable: thanks to their decisive actions over the last year, world leaders had staved off a second Great Depression. But Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, cautions that "crises never end." NEWSWEEK's Tony Emerson and Barrett Sheridan spoke with him about the knock-on effects of the recession, from war to banking reform.
Surviving Swine Flu
9/19/2009 12:00:00 AM
As I type these words my brain is swarming with mind-twisting immune-system chemicals called cytokines: I am in day six of the swine flu. Yes, I wrote The Coming Plague in 1994 and have warned about pandemics for most of my life. (I also wrote "The Path of a Pandemic," the May 18 cover story of this magazine.) My diagnosis is unofficial: doctors are no longer testing for swine flu, but since it's the only strain now circulating in the U.S., it's the likely culprit. Colleagues have noted the irony of the fact that I find myself an early victim of what will likely be an enormous American epidemic. As we brace for an H1N1 outbreak that White House science advisers predict will sicken half the country before the end of the year, I am fighting trillions of nasty influenza RNA molecules. This bug is, in virology parlance, a "mild flu," but only somebody who hasn't been laid low by H1N1 would consider days of semi-delirium, muscle aches, fatigue, nausea, and stomach twisting to be "mild."
The Real Yukio Hatoyama
Takashi Yokota 9/19/2009 12:00:00 AM
For the first time since he became Japan's prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama will address the international community this week, with an ambitious statement at the United Nations in which he is expected to promise that Japan will take the lead in the effort to build a world free of nuclear weapons. But in many ways, Hatoyama's speech will be far more than that: it will represent the formal introduction of a man whose lofty, sometimes esoteric rhetoric has given him an early reputation as something of a mystery man.
The Real Emerging Market
Rana Foroohar 9/12/2009 12:00:00 AM
It hasn't been easy to find a bright spot in the global economy for a couple of years now. Growth markets, once as numerous as no-interest mortgage options, have grown scarce. But in the last few months, economists, consultants, and other business types have begun to track the rise of a new emerging market, one that may end up being the largest and most powerful of all: women. According to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group, women are now poised to drive the post-recession world economy, thanks to an estimated $5 trillion in new female-earned income that will be coming on line over the next five years. Worldwide, total income for men ($23.4 trillion) is still more than double that for women ($10.5 trillion), but the gap is poised to shrink significantly because the vast majority of new income growth over the next few years will go to women, due to a narrowing wage gap and rising female employment. That means women will be the ones driving the shopping—and, economists hope, the recovery. That growth represents the biggest emerging market in the history of the planet—more than twice the size of the two hottest developing markets, India and China, combined.
Nothing to Fear
Takashi Yokota 9/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
By all appearances, the signs are bad. The incoming Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has pledged to take an independent line with Washington—and has consequently petrified observers that it will undermine the military alliance between the two largest economies of the world. During the election campaign, the DPJ said it would stop a program in which Japanese vessels refuel U.S. warships in the Indian Ocean for the war on terror, and that they would renegotiate the relocation of a controversial Marine airfield in Okinawa. Another worry is that, by forming a coalition with leftist parties, the DPJ's foreign policy will be hampered by them. But what especially ruffled feathers in Washington are the excerpts of an essay by Yukio Hatoyama, the presumptive prime minister-elect, which appeared in the op-ed pages of The New York Times late last month. At first glance, it reads like an anti-American rant by an antiglobalization activist; it elicited an editorial in The Washington Post earlier this week warning that Tokyo shouldn't "seek a rupture with Washington."
10 PARTISAN MYTHS