From AAA to AA+

A last minute compromise between Democrats and Republicans last week may have averted a debt crisis and bankruptcy in the United States last week.   However, it was enough to stop Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, to downgrade US debt paper from a pristine AAA to AA+ (with a negative outlook),  the first downgrade [...]

Woes of foreign nurses, caregivers in Japan

Note from Bong Mendoza:  This is another cross-post from the Forging a New Philippine Foreign Policy (FNPFP) blog that I moderate. Ed C. Tadem   Eduardo Climaco Tadem, Ph.D., is a professor of Asian Studies at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Kyoto [...]

After the Asian Summits of 2010–Global Economic Imbalances: Currencies and Economic Cooperation

In this blog entry, I share the talking points I made at the 5th ASEAN-South Korea Cooperation Forum held in Hua Hin, Thailand, December of last year. __________________________________________________________________________ Global economic imbalances have been a key issue in international policy discussions in recent years and most especially in the summits held in the Asian region during [...]

Cross-strait relations and implications for Southeast Asia

Dear readers, I have not been exactly idle during the time span that I neglected this blog from July to December last year.  In this entry, I will share with you a paper I presented at the 12th ASEAN-Taiwan Forum held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last October. The recent signing of the ECFA between China [...]