The series of revolutionary movements around the Middle East raises the possibility of a general collapse of current Middle East regimes and their replacement by populist governments. Judging by current rhetoric, those governments would be anti-western and anti-capitalist, making their economies inefficient hotbeds of waste and unrest. Given that the West gets a high percentage […]

The merger between the New York Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Boerse, together with the SEC’s proposal to prevent money market funds from maintaining a stable $1 asset price per share are symptomatic of a worrying recent trend in global finance: the tilting of the playing field against individual investors of moderate means. This de-democritization […]

Emerging market central banks in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere are now raising interest rates fairly aggressively, and even in the United States long-term Treasury bond rates have risen significantly in spite of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s efforts to hold them down. Given the continued rise in commodity prices, it’s likely that these are just […]

Both the rioters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the Western commentators on those riots have missed a vitally important component of Egypt’s miseries: its excessive and rapidly rising population. With such population growth even the wisest Egyptian ruler, the great Ptah-hotep, could not have achieved a rapid rise in the living standards of Egypt’s people. […]