Zachary Karabell
- Company
- River Twice Research
- Bio
- Zachary Karabell is an author, historian, money manager and economist.
Karabell is President of River Twice Research, where he analyzes economic and political trends.
He is also a Senior Advisor for Business for Social Responsibility. Previously, he was Executive Vice President, Head of Marketing and Chief Economist at Fred Alger Management, a New York-based investment firm, and President of Fred Alger and Company, as well as Portfolio Manager of the China-US Growth Fund, which won both a Lipper Award for top performance and a 5-star designation from Morningstar. He was also Executive Vice President of Alger's Spectra Funds, a no-load family of mutual funds that launched the $30 million Spectra Green Fund, which was based on the idea that profit and sustainability are linked. At Alger, he oversaw the creation, launch and marketing of several funds, led corporate strategy for acquisitions, and represented the firm at public forums and in the media.
Educated at Columbia, Oxford, and Harvard, where he received his Ph.D., he is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World's Prosperity Depends on It, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2009, and previous books such as A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election (which won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award for best non-fiction book of the year), and Peace Be Upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Coexistence (Knopf, 2007), which examined the forgotten legacy of peace among the three faiths.
In 2003, the World Economic Forum designated Zachary a "Global Leader for Tomorrow." He sits on the board of the World Policy Institute and the New America Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a regular commentator on national news programs, such as CNBC, CNN, and a contributor to such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek and Foreign Affairs.
MY RECENT POSTS
- The China Blames Game
October 01, 2010 11:41AM - Behind the Mosque Controversy,
Coexistance and Conflict
September 26, 2010 12:15PM - How Bad Is It? Greece, Panic
and the Crisis of Confidence
May 07, 2010 12:33PM - China’s growth: still real
January 26, 2010 06:19PM - The U.S. and China - The
Defining Issue of Our Day
November 14, 2009 12:21PM
Zachary Karabell's Links
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
So bipartisanship isn’t dead. By a vote of 348-79, Democrats and Republicans alike put aside their acrimonious differences and agreed, at least for a moment, to stop blaming each other for the sad state of American economic life. Instead, they agreed to… Read full post »
Behind the Mosque Controversy, Coexistance and Conflict
Cross-posted at River Twice Research. This article first appeared in The Atlantic.
Over the past two months, the planned construction of a Muslim cultural center in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site has become the fulcrum of an acrimonious debate about religion, freedom of expression, an… Read full post »
How Bad Is It? Greece, Panic and the Crisis of Confidence
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
The Greek debt crisis finally spilled over in full force to U.S. markets, aided and abetted by extreme statements emanating from such esteemed and prominent voices as Muhammed El-Erian of the large bond investor Pimco, who warned that Greece could be just the be… Read full post »
China’s growth: still real
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
This week, the Chinese government announced that China’s economy had expanded by a stronger-than-anticipated 10.7 percent in the last quarter of 2009 and that it had grown 8.7 percent for the entire year. This news, however, was not greeted with relief but… Read full post »
The U.S. and China - The Defining Issue of Our Day
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
In his current Asian trip, President Obama visits Japan, then addresses a forum of leaders in Singapore, and eventually ends up in Seoul to discuss nukes and North Korea. But make no mistake, the axis of this week is the time Obama will spend in… Read full post »
Krugman is wrong: Why China won’t revalue
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
For years, Americans have been fulminating about China and its policy toward currency. While many of the debates are technical and laden with econo-speak, they boil down to the simple conviction that China is unfairly manipulating its currency to keep it underva… Read full post »
Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determ… Read full post »
The winds are still blowing east
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
While Washington is glued to the drama over health care, over the past few days, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been in Beijing meeting with Chinese leaders including Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao. In a series of communiqués,… Read full post »
The recession is over - and it isn’t
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
With Wall Street - and the Federal Reserve - in a headlong rush to declare the recession over, the economic data has indicated that the simple binary recession-no recession framework obscures more than it reveals. Yes, defined purely in terms of… Read full post »
China and the United States - a marriage of convenience
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
As the United States and China wrap up their two-day “Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” it’s more apparent than ever that the two find themselves in a marriage that neither can easily dissolve and that neither fully wants.
The speeches struck al… Read full post »
Earnings - who knew?
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
With a slew of major companies reporting earnings so far, it’s clear that expectations were severely skewed to the negative. Once again, Wall Street analysts overshot - this time to the downside. The substantial margin expansion reported by Intel; the high… Read full post »
You can be great at soccer, or globally dominant - not both
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
So the United States lost to Brazil in the final of the FIFA Confederations cup, in that thrilling but painful tale of two halves, with the U.S. up 2-0 only to see Brazil roar back (or rather dance and prance and glide with balletic ferocity)… Read full post »
Youssou N’Dour, “I Bring What I Love”: An elegaic meditation
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week as well as the candid and heated debates in Iran during its contentious presidential election provide yet another opportunity to revisit the sterile images of Islam that dominate the discussion both in the West an… Read full post »
The unknowable lightness of being
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
Each month, the Federal Reserve releases its latest minutes of its last meeting along with its projections of economic activity (www.federalreserve.gov). The minutes just released indicate that its prior forecasts have been tweaked a bit, with update p… Read full post »
Enough already
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
The financial markets are again getting pummeled, both domestically and globally; the nearly $800 billion stimulus package signed with fanfare by President Obama has done little to alter the mood. In fact, if you read through financial websites and assorted blog… Read full post »
Stimulating
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
After months of confusion, we are about to close a painful chapter in the economic crisis of 2008-2009. With the imminent passage of the $800 billion stimulus package combined with the roll-out of the next stages of the government-orchestrated bank bailout and r… Read full post »
Don't demonize debt
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
As Wall Street continues its slow-motion hari kari, tens of millions of people on the lower-end of the income spectrum are finding that their access to credit is becoming all but nonexistent. As banks set aside ever more cash to cover themselves against potentia… Read full post »
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
If you were not one of the 2 million people watching the inauguration on the Mall in Washington, you could watch the spectacle on any number of television channels. Flipping between ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS would have yielded different commentary but larg… Read full post »
Nobody knows nothing
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
Everyday, my mailbox gets inundated with reports from strategists and economists. Two years ago, most were predicting a fairly rosy scenario for the global economy - and to be fair, so was I. Today, most are predicting a dire future of negative growth and econom… Read full post »
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
The current economic crisis has claimed many victims, but what has changed most is the way that the United States is viewed, perhaps permanently. That isn’t ideology; it isn’t declinism; it’s a fact. For all the talk in past year about the shif… Read full post »
China Will Be a Winner in the New Economy
The following is an excerpt from a recent opinion piece of mine in the Wall Street Journal. For links to this and other writings, please feel free to visit River Twice Research.
The incoming Obama administration will face formidable challenges, but global economic collapse is no longer imminent. That… Read full post »
There's only one end of the world...and this isn't it.
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
So here we are once again on the precipice, at least in terms of global stock markets and credit markets. Another bout of nail-biting panic is hardly unexpected, though it’s always surprising when otherwise sane people veer sharply into hysteria. It’… Read full post »
The new world economy
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
So the G20 met over the weekend, and if there was any doubt before, there should be none now: the financial balance of power is shifting. China, Brazil, even Japan can all claim more sound economies than the United States, and they collectively let… Read full post »
Greenspan, bubbles, and responsibility
Cross-posted at River Twice Research.
We are now in the season of scapegoats. The brays for justice and villains grow daily, and this week has seen a walk of shame as various participants in the credit debacle sit in front of Congress to be scolded and upbraided for their sins. Many… Read full post »
Cross-posted at River Twice Research. Please note that this article first appeared in the October 18, 2008 edition of Newsweek.
You’ve heard the story. On the heels of tumbling shares and dire warnings from the U.S. president, as well as business and government officials across the globe,… Read full post »
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com