Egypt’s crisis may appear to exemplify the bad ways of the past, with an authoritarian military regime vying for power with a fanatical religious sect. However that analysis doesn’t explain why the country had previously existed for hundreds of years in reasonable contentment – as well as, millennia earlier, producing the first of the world’s […]

Emerging market stocks have underperformed the U.S. market by some 35% in 2013. That’s because investors, remembering the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, believe emerging markets will be zapped badly when money tightens. But that belief may be wrong; many emerging markets have pursued more responsible policies than rich countries since the 2008-9 recession and […]

Bloomberg BusinessWeek a few weeks ago ran a vulgar but highly apposite cover, in which a hedge fund’s claimed return pointed sharply upwards from a frat-boy fund manager’s abdomen while its actual return drooped feebly to the floor. Very clever, if uncouth. However Business Week covers are notorious contrary indicators, like that of 1979 headlining […]

The Standard and Poor’s 500 share index pushed above 1700 this week, and is now 10% into record territory above its 2007 high. Meanwhile the second quarter U.S. GDP report showed growth of only 1.7% — and that’s after including an extra 3% of intangibles in GDP that weren’t previously though suitable to capitalize. The […]