The awarding of a $36 billion tanker contract to Boeing illustrated the well-known difficulties caused by crony capitalism in the awarding of government contracts. However what is less well appreciated is the damaging effect that crony capitalism has in a number of other ways, making the economy less efficient and providing rent-seeking opportunities that are […]

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. […]

The Congressional Budget Office’s report Wednesday that the U.S. budget deficit was to run close to 10% of Gross Domestic Product for a third successive year, together with President Obama’s refusal to face the need for major public spending cuts in his State of the Union Tuesday night, finally opened the possibility of a lengthy […]

Venture capital fundraising in 2010 declined from $16.3 billion to $12.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. That’s a far cry from the average of over $30 billion annually in 2005-07, let alone the peak of $106 billion raised in 2000. Contrast those figures with the datum that the value of hedge funds closed at […]

A poll last week showed that 71% of Americans don’t want Congress to raise the debt ceiling from its current $14.3 trillion, a level that the total of outstanding debt is expected to hit in March. According to conventional pundits, this is extraordinarily irresponsible, leading to a U.S. default on its outstanding debt. Yet as […]

Goldman Sachs’ $2 billion deal for Facebook, valuing the social networking site at $50 billion, combines the worst elements of the 1997-2000 and 2004-07 bubbles. It sets a grossly excessive valuation on an Internet company with modest revenues and prospects. It also involves an investment bank structuring a complex deal to maximize its own fees, […]

The French sale of an advanced helicopter carrier with all the latest equipment to Russia announced last week is yet another indication that not only are the old Cold War certainties gone, but so are the assumptions of the benign U.S.-centric “globalized” world of 1991-2010. The new multi-polar world order that seems to be emerging […]