“We live in an age of progress” Commencement address by Fareed Zakaria [as prepared] May 24, 2012 Thank you so much, President Faust, Fellows of the Corporation, Overseers, Ladies and Gentlemen, and graduates. To the graduates in particular, I have to tell you, you’re way ahead of me already. I never made it to my commencement, either from college or graduate school. I went to college south of here, in a small town called New Haven, Connecticut. And, well, I celebrated a bit the night before the ceremony. The honest truth is, I slept through much of my commencement. Then, after I had finally made it to Harvard for graduate school, I took a job before I had finished my Ph.D., and wrote the final ... Continue reading →
Home Join Us for the Alumni Spread Luncheon All Harvard alumni and members of the Harvard community are invited to attend the Alumni Spread Luncheon and the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association (a.k.a. the Afternoon Program) on Thursday, May 24, 2012, in Harvard Yard. Reserve your Ticket → Continue reading →
Ruchir Sharma, who runs Morgan Stanley’s Emerging Markets Fund, makes a different and more persuasive case in his new book, “Breakout Nations,” pointing not to China’s failures but to its successes: “China is on the verge of a natural slowdown that will change the global balance of power, from finance to politics, and take the wind out of many economies that are riding in its draft.” Evidence is accumulating to support his view.China’s growth looks remarkable. But it isn’t unprecedented. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all grew close to 9 percent annually for about two decades and then started to slow. Many think that China’s fate will be like that of Japan, which crashed and slowed down in the 1990s and has yet to boom ... Continue reading →
Ruchir Sharma, who runs Morgan Stanley’s Emerging Markets Fund, makes a different and more persuasive case in his new book, “Breakout Nations,” pointing not to China’s failures but to its successes: “China is on the verge of a natural slowdown that will change the global balance of power, from finance to politics, and take the wind out of many economies that are riding in its draft.” Evidence is accumulating to support his view.China’s growth looks remarkable. But it isn’t unprecedented. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all grew close to 9 percent annually for about two decades and then started to slow. Many think that China’s fate will be like that of Japan, which crashed and slowed down in the 1990s and has yet to boom ... Continue reading →
Editor's note: Ravi Agrawal is the senior producer of "Fareed Zakaria GPS." You can follow him on Twitter @RaviAgrawalCNN. By Ravi Agrawal, CNN I was browsing through the website of the magazine Foreign Affairs when I came across an article titled “The Present Crisis in Democracy.” The author describes dire times: a world “in a state of hysteria” where an “intoxication of unusual prosperity” was followed by “the harassing uncertainty of the depression.” From finance boom to housing bust, it reads like a description of inept governance in the last decade. But it’s not. The article was written in 1934 by Lawrence Lowell, a former president of Harvard University and frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs. It turns out we’ve always talked about a “crisis in ... Continue reading →
