The banking crisis that hit Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week has spread. We recall with a shudder two recent financial contagions: the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which led to a deep Asian recession, and the 2008 Great Recession, which led to a global downturn.

We are not at the one-year anniversary of the war, as the Western governments and media claim. This is the 9-year anniversary of the war.

The greatest enemy of economic development is war. If the world slips further into global conflict, our economic hopes and our very survival could go up in flames.

I inaugurate this new series of columns in a New Year and a new beginning for Brazil with the inauguration of President Lula da Silva.

NEW YORK  —  Wars often erupt and persist because of the two sides’ miscalculations regarding their relative power. In the case of Ukraine, Russia blundered badly by underestimating the resolve of Ukrainians to fight and the effectiveness of NATO-supplied weaponry.

NEW YORK — At last month’s COP26 climate summit, hundreds of financial institutions declared that they would put trillions of dollars to work to finance solutions to climate change.

NEW YORK — The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) fell far short of what is needed for a safe planet, owing mainly to the same lack of trust that has burdened global climate negotiations for almost three decades.

NEW YORK — The philosopher Immanuel Kant famously said that, “Whoever wills the end also wills… the indispensably necessary means to it that is in his control.” Put simply, when we set a goal, we ought to take the actions needed to achieve it.

NEW YORK — The world stands at a critical juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries that lack the first round of vaccine coverage are extraordinarily vulnerable to the highly infectious Delta variant, and are also seedbeds for new variants that could quickly spread worldwide.