Senator Max Baucus (D.-MT) this week came up with a proposal that corporate cash balances held outside the United States should be subject to a one-off tax at 20%, expected to raise $400 billion on the $2 trillion of overseas cash, which the good Senator can throw around to favored constituencies. At the other extreme, […]

One hundred years ago in early August next year, investors suffered a very nasty shock indeed, when the London and New York stock markets closed for some five months and many international bonds previously thought to be high-grade proved worthless. It should be remembered: for the average investor, World War I, the cause of this […]

This week the hedge fund SAC was fined $1.8 billion, and will revert to running Steve Cohen’s family money only — still a big job, since he’s worth some $8-9 billion. This raises the question of which forms of investment will be exploded by the next market downturn, just as were subprime mortgages and complex […]

John Authers, writing in the Financial Times on October 28, suggests that societies succeed, not because of their resources but because of their knowledge, and the economic complexity to which it leads. MIT’s “Atlas of Economic Complexity” reinforces this thesis, producing visually very attractive graphics of such matters as a country’s exports, showing where its […]