[Sironimoll]

After reading a thread yesterday about outsourcing, I wanted to post a thread summarizing The Brookings Institute's recent release this month - their first “Top 10”, with respect to Global Economic challenges, for the year 2007. It was interesting. http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events...topten2007.pdf

The following is a summary (rather long, but not as long as the link ).

I. Energy and Environment: In an effort to have incentives for the US, China, and India to participate in a standard global plan to address global environmental issues and have more concrete and equitable benefits for those who participate, they recommend caps and domestically tradable emissions permits.
II. Conflict and Poverty: They suggest that susceptibility to civil wars, conflicts, and violence is not due to political rivalries and ethnic hatred, rather it is due to weak economic growth and low incomes. To address this, they recommend
A. The world’s most generous donor of foreign aid, the US, have a more focused effort and reduce the number of objectives from 50 to no more than five. It suggests that those five are chosen and customized based on the needs and current capabilities of the recipients.
B. All donors should prioritize aid based on risk of conflict and state failure.
C. All donor states, in an effort to attenuate resource scarcity/abundance risks on human security, should have measures to promote economic diversity, capacity building, public health, equitable distribution, enforceable property rights, and demographic sustainability. In addition, all donors should be able to rapidly respond and aid states facing economic or environmental disasters.
D. Private sectors and NGOs should target aid to youth to address the “youth bulge” (