Consumer access to credit, housing, insurance, basic utility services, and even employment is increasingly determined by centralized records of credit history and automated interpretations of those records.
Credit histories in one form or another have long been an important factor in decisions to extend or deny credit to consumers. Historically, such decisions required a skilled, human evaluation of the information in an applicant’s credit history to determine the likelihood that the applicant would repay a future loan in a timely manner. More recently, computer models have been developed to perform such evaluations. These models produce numerical credit scores that function as a shorthand version of an applicant’s credit history to facilitate quick credit assessments.
This report begins with a question. What changes in U.S. strategic and defense relationships in the Asia-Pacific region, if any, are needed to respond to major developments in the region, particularly China’s emergence as a major power, the continuing potential for inter-state conflict, and the struggle against militant Islamists? The report addresses this central question by setting it within the larger dynamics of American strategy in both a global and regional context. It discusses the shifting correlates of power in Asia before considering the current strategic debate, force structure, and key American security relationships with regional states. It also considers the United States’ strategic response to recent developments and provides several policy options.
East Asia is rapidly changing, largely due to the rise of China which is fueled by China’s impressive economic growth. China’s new economic clout is giving it new power and influence in the region. Many Asia-Pacific analysts and observers, both in the region and in the United States, feel that the United States is preoccupied in the Middle East and as a result is not sufficiently focused on the Asia-Pacific at a critical point in the evolution of what mayprove to be a new era in Asia. China is the only power that is presently thought capable of becoming a peer competitor of the United States. To many the overwhelming challenge is the need to try to shape the global and regional geo-strategic and economic environments to encourage and facilitate China’s peaceful and constructive evolution as a great power. There is concern bysomethatapolicytowards Chinathatassumes Chinawill becomeathreat to the United States and its interests in Asia will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. That said, many feel that a strategy that hedges against the possibility that China’s rise is less than peaceful and cooperative is a prudent course of action.
Following their accession to the European Union (EU) on May 1st, 2004, ten New Member States (NMS), and two more that joined in 2007, are expected to fulfill the Maastricht convergence criteria and enter the last stage of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) thereby adopting the euro.
However, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) does not specify a time frame. Slovenia joined the euro area in 2007, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, and Slovakia in 2009. Other NMS have not yet adopted the euro. Some have made serious attempts at being ready to join; others are still far removed. So, why have some NMS not been able to join the euro area even if they made serious attempts at the outset?
