"This challenge is certainly global," says former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker concerning the future of international financial regulation, "but much depends on our two countries working together to solve the problem." Volcker, now at the helm of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, spoke on March 6 at the Federal Presidential residence, Schloss Bellevue, to an audience of distinguished guests -- diplomats, bankers, and fiscal policy legislators -- from across Europe and the United States. The Academy's Spring 2010 Richard von Weizsäcker Distinguished Visitor, Volcker was introduced by German Federal President Horst Köhler and by Peter Y. Solmssen, an Academy Trustee on the management board of Siemens AG, who delivered remarks on the Academy's behalf. Following his talk, Volcker sat down for an in-depth discussion with Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, Jürgen Fitschen of Deutsche Bank, and Ambassador John Kornblum, a Trustee of the American Academy in Berlin, who moderated. 

India it is now unquestionably the world's innovation hub, says the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, holding that India is a near-future superpower. The Bush Administration, too, was clear about its wish to help India into superpower status during the twenty-first century; and the Obama Administration seems set to continue to policy, hosting Manmohan Singh, India's Prime Minister, as the first guest of an official State Dinner. Indeed, the numbers point in the same direction: the GDP of the Indian economy, Goldman Sachs analyses detail, will surpass that of the United States before middle of the century. So how did all of this happen -- and so fast? How has India risen from a class-riddled, colonized, overcrowded nation to become one of the rising stars of the global economy? "India's ambitions have been always been immodest," says Sunil Khilnani, the Academy's inaugural Metro Fellow and Director of the South Asia Studies program at the Johns Hopkins University.