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 […]

Peru’s supreme court is forcing the government to honor bonds issued 40 years ago, to compensate the victims of “land reform.” The government should welcome the opportunity. As Alexander Hamilton discovered in the 1790s, paying off dubious obligations of defunct government entities is one of the best ways to establish a state’s credibility with long-term […]

As commentators worldwide have noticed, the global recovery since 2009 has been exceptionally weak. Books such as Stephen King’s “When the money runs out” (Yale, 2013) are now suggesting that the era of Western affluence is over. This reflects considerable writing in this column over the last few years; indeed I first mooted the idea […]

Croatia’s accession to the European Union on July 1 was met with far fewer welcoming noises than had been apparent for the new entrants in 2004 or even Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. It’s fairly clear that the more ambitious fantasies of an EU extending to Turkey and into the wilds of central Asia are […]

China is reportedly planning a city of 250 million people within the next ten years, hoping it will spur economic growth. The United Nations’ population estimates for 2100 have Lagos, Nigeria with a population of about 150 million in that year. The Financial Times last week had a snooty editorial asserting that the 21st Century […]

Last week the Nicaraguan congress approved a $40 billion project for a Chinese company to build an Isthmian canal parallel to Panama’s. For those of us prone to peering anxiously into the future, this gave a disquieting advance picture of the new world of Chinese hegemony into which we are probably entering, whether we like […]

A recent study by the website Bankrate.com shows that it can take decades in some professions to pay off college debt. Conversely the leaker Edward Snowden according to reports failed to graduate high-school and yet was holding down a six-figure job in one of the most bureaucratized of sectors. Those and other signals strongly suggest […]

Much commentary this year has been devoted to the dramatically negative effect which the “sequester” spending cuts would have on U.S. Gross Domestic Product. In Japan, one leg of prime minister Shinzo Abe’s three-part plan to revive the economy is additional state spending, predicted to increase GDP in spite of its damaging effects on Japan’s […]

The stock markets of the world spiral up to infinity with only an occasional hiccup and the U.S. housing market is well into bubble mode again, pumped up by cheap money. Only gold and silver languish, hard assets that have gone out of fashion because of the lack of inflation. At some time this bubble […]