It’s impossible to tell when the world’s stock markets will finally wake up from their easy-money induced stupor, but one thing is clear: when they do so the initial break will look like last Tuesday. A modest event of no apparent global significance will cause a stock market drop that cascades around the world, producing […]

The high tide of globalization, free trade and capitalism, which had seemed so irresistible in the 1990s, appears to be receding, even as the world economy continues to expand. In country after country, new economic experiments are being tried which have the effect of increasing the state’s control over economic matters. Not just a general […]

It is becoming clear as we move further away from the Cold War years and confront new geopolitical threats that there is a high correlation between the level of asymmetrical threat from a country and the hopelessness of life in the country concerned. Thus North Korea is a country from which threats to our existence […]

The Economist’s leading article last week suggested that India’s long boom was about to end in a credit crunch. At first sight, this seems unduly pessimistic. China’s boom hasn’t yet ended in disaster, so why should India’s? However, when India’s position is examined more closely one comes to the conclusion that, while a crunch is […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday threw yet more dust into the eyes of investors on the knotty question of stock options valuation, when it issued a letter to Zions Bancorporation allowing them to value management stock options by means of a tiny parallel issue in the “market.” While appearing to be only a modest […]

President George W. Bush’s plan to abolish the tax deductibility of corporate health insurance, while granting a tax break for its private purchase doesn’t solve many of the US health system’s problems. Not surprising; the incentives involved in healthcare purchase are bizarre, and always have been. Only when this reality is recognized, and the economics […]

U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s announcement that he will devote $800 million of his Goldman Sachs fortune to charitable activities, primarily in the area of the environment, brought coos of approval from the business and establishment press. In reality, it raises serious questions about the market’s efficiency. Does a system in which wealth is achieved […]

Venezuela’s nationalization of the telephone company CANTV and the electric utility Electricidad de Caracas have demonstrated once again how insecure are property rights, not just in Venezuela, but in Latin America as a whole. Latin Americans pay for their disdainful attitude to those rights, in every paycheck they get, because the lack of secure property […]

The Wall Street Journal Thursday reported that no less than 71% of companies with Standard and Poor’s credit ratings had junk-quality ratings – BB and below—in 2006, up from 32% in 1980. An astounding 42% of companies with credit ratings were rated single B, the lowest possible credit rating that isn’t vulnerable to immediate default. […]

The SEC recently decided that executive stock options should be disclosed in the table of management compensation only over the life of the deal, not up-front. It knew it was being naughty, so it announced this the Friday before Christmas. Only the unsleeping vigilance of incoming House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D.-MA), ever […]