South Korea has been a shining economic example for four decades, with an extraordinarily rapid and sustained growth rate, even after the 1997 Asian crisis. Now, with the election of Millennium Democrat Party president Roh Moo-hyun, this may be about to change. The Japanese disease beckons.

As we are reminded every Christmas of Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, it is well to remember, that as a small businessman, he had a point. “A day older, and not a penny richer” is precisely what’s wrong with Christmas for a person with payroll to meet, except that these days, the revenue downtime is far […]

Three times in the past two years, in January 2001, December 2001 and June 2002 I have listed three stocks that in my opinion were “Bear Food” — more likely than most to decline sharply. The time has now come for a fourth such meal, and for a review of the first three.

As the economic situation in Latin America deteriorates, should a rational bank or portfolio investor “redline” the region as a whole — refuse to lend or invest there?

Traditionally, U.S. banks “redlined” certain inner-city areas, refusing to lend to inhabitants thereof because they believed nobody living there could be an acceptable credit risk. As the political and economic situation in Latin America deteriorates, the question must now be asked: should a rational lending bank or portfolio investor “redline” Latin America as a whole?

The England Test cricket team has just blown the third successive Test Match in a five-match series, thus ensuring that the “Ashes” remain with Australia, as they have after all nine series since 1987. Since England’s population is more than twice Australia’s, and the country is somewhat richer, this becomes at some point embarrassing. It […]

Amid great fanfare, the U.S. Senate last week finally passed the largest reorganization of the U.S. federal government since 1947, in which 38 different government agencies are to be combined in a Department of Homeland Security. Few think this will make much of a difference in practice — after all, the provision of “homeland security” […]

It is a curious comment on the inflexibility of the human mind that, after an era in which breaking up public sector monopolies has been enormously fashionable — with both political parties in the United States, in Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia, Latin America and even France — there still remain certain areas of the economy […]

It was all so easy in 1908. Herbert Asquith introduced the British Old Age Pension, at 5 shillings (25 pence) a week, in the 1908 Budget, and didn’t even have to raise taxes to pay for it. It helped of course that the pension was payable from age 70, at a time when British life […]

Much ink has been spilled on the future of the U.S.-European Union relationship after the electoral successes of the “isolationist” Republicans and the anti-Iraq intervention German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but developments elsewhere are increasingly raising the question: On a 20 year view, does Europe really matter any more?