The U.S. dollar has been…
Some funds have become obsessed…
On a map, it appears that the United States is made up of 50 states. The fiscal reality is that we have 20. Portugal’s, 15 Italy’s, 10 Irelands, 3 Greece’s,…
According to the latest Wall Street Journal economic forecasting survey, sluggish hiring along with a lowered estimate of job creation anticipated in the next year are the leading threats to…
I have long sat beside the table of Mckinsey & Co., the best management consulting company in Asia, hoping to catch some crumbs of wisdom. So, I jumped at the…
Earlier this year it appeared that economic and financial policy officials were finally coming together with an effective approach to addressing the critical debt crisis in the smaller “peripheral” economies…
The 2008 crude oil price, $147 per barrel, shattered the global economy. The “invisible hand” of economics became the invisible fist, pounding down world economic growth to match the limitations…
Hedge fund titan, Jim Chanos, is well known for his extremely bearish views on China. He says that the cracks are spreading on the façade, real estate sales are falling,…
No one can explain the most complex economic and monetary issues in a simpler, more homespun fashion than former governor of the Federal Reserve, Bob McTeer. He is known for…
I received a call from a friend in Osaka last night. It was scratchy, kept cutting in and out, and was barely comprehensible. There are so many companies attempting to…
Radiation fears have begun to play havoc with the global shipping industry, in which Japan is a key player on several levels. Fearing the potential impact on crews, cargo and…
The highly publicized cases of Sergei Magnitsky -- a 37-year-old lawyer who died in pretrial detention in November 2009 after exposing a multimillion-dollar fraud against the Russian taxpayer -- and…
As destructive as the Japanese tsunami has been, it may have left some investment pearls in its wake. It has suddenly made available some of the country’s best of breed,…
I am not in the habit of regularly lifting data out of the Wall Street Journal, but even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn. I was tempted by the…
The performance of the US dollar constitutes a central determining factor for the development of the oil price. The criticism of the US dollar hegemony is getting louder on a…
As Japan reels from the human catastrophe of the earthquake and tsunami that struck on Friday, the insurance industry said it is too early to estimate the economic losses. On…
I rely on hundreds of “moles” around the world whose job it is to watch a single, but important indicator for the world economy. One of them checks for me…
According to an old saying on the stock exchange, “if the USA sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”. But in the meantime it would seem as if…
I wanted to offer some clarification on stories about all the money that the Federal Reserve is supposedly printing. It depends, I guess, on your definition of "money." And your…
4XP foresees much on the financial front of 2011. The previous financial year really did witness a lot of ground-breaking events from the global economy. Oil prices rose from right…
Lifetime followers of the monthly nonfarm payroll report were more than a little amused by the Friday numbers, which could not have been more contradictory, conflicting, and confusing. The headline…
In booming South America, oil-rich Venezuela is the exception: the continent's only shrinking economy in 2010. Officials are rationing hard currency. Government takeovers of private businesses are increasing. One prominent…