BusinessWeek

... chief executive officer of AS Roma, talk about the outlook for soccer in the U.S. and international markets. They speak with Bloomberg Businessweek's Romesh Ratnesar at the Bloomberg Link Sports Business Summit in New York. (Source: Bloomberg) ...

Ratings companies, such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service, would immediately downgrade U.S. debt, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Washington-based Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It's a “dangerous tipping point” ...

In 2011, China’s economy grew 9.2 percent, compared with 10.4 percent in 2010. In the second quarter of 2012 that growth rate had fallen further, to 7.6 percent. That’s set alarm bells ringing about the fate of the China miracle. Will the most successful and rapid decline in global poverty in the history of humanity shudder to a halt? Will the Asian Century be postponed, leaving the U.S., against the odds, as the undisputed top nation for the foreseeable future?

On Aug. 22, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued rules requiring U.S.-listed extractive companies such as Exxon Mobil (XOM) to publish more information on payments they make to governments around the world. The idea, labeled “publish what you pay” by activists, is meant to increase transparency and ensure that revenues from mining and drilling in developing countries go toward government services and poverty reduction—rather than to buy yachts and fast cars for the likes of Teodorin Obiang, the profligate son of Equatorial Guinea’s petro-dictator.

Over the next few weeks, millions of American schoolchildren will return to the classroom from summer vacation, and not a moment too soon. Compared to  those hard-studying kids in China, Korea or Finland, U.S. students appear to be chronic underachievers. The average kid in the U.S. does less than one hour of homework on average at all grade levels, according to a study from a few years ago by RAND and the Brookings Institution.

Mitt Romney created a stir this week when he pointed to the immense difference in wealth between Israel and the Palestinian territories and explained it with his interpretation of Harvard economic historian David Landes’s work that “culture makes all the difference.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned from a seven-nation tour of Africa last week, leaving controversy in her wake over veiled references to China’s engagement on the continent being self interested and value-subtracting. For all that this may sometimes be the case, U.S.

This has been a brutal summer. Record drought across the Midwest has forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to slash its forecast for 2012 corn production by 12 percent. Corn prices are already 90 percent higher than in July 2010. They’ve gone above 2007-08 levels, when soaring food prices sparked riots in more than 30 countries. On July 25 the U.S. government reported that corn prices may push the cost of meat 4 percent to 5 percent higher next year.

Mitt Romney’s speech to the gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev., offered his most expansive statements on foreign policy since the former governor clinched the Republican Party’s nomination for president. Making headlines was Romney’s suggestion that the White House, and possibly President Obama, has deliberately leaked sensitive intelligence for political gain.

“I expect to see a lot more decisions and impacts on the market in the coming year, and those will create some real battles with the industry,” said Reid Cramer, who studies banking services for low-income people at the Washington-based New America Foundation.

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