Share
You only get populism when liberalism has failed. That primarily means economic failure, but there are cultural and social fissures that matter too.
Europe
Share
Yet successful conservative politicians are always empiricists, not idealists…
Share
At the age of fifteen he was living with a geisha, and in his thirties he led a group of hard-drinking, brawling Japanese miners to the high Andes…
Share
The message was clear – deflation was the fault of Japan’s inadequately fertile womenfolk, not the elite officials of the central bank
Share
The triple disasters of March 2011 – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear contamination – offered a stark depiction of Japan’s strengths and weaknesses to the world and perhaps to the Japanese themselves.
Share
The Bank of Japan’s decision to adopt an inflation target and double its bond purchases completes the global flight to soft money.
Share
“What most likely happened was pedal misapplication.” So concluded an official of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the US body which has just published its report on the spate of accidents involving Toyota cars.
Share
Emerging markets used to be known as markets you couldn’t emerge from in an emergency. History is littered with examples of financial disasters in young fast-growing countries, from the Argentinian default of the 1890s to the Asian crisis of the mid-1990s.
Share
Di-worsification is what you do when you invest in mediocre assets for a mediocre reason – for example, because a statistical model has told you they reduce risk. Thanks to the boom in commodities over the past decade, they have become a favoured choice for di-worsifying institutions everywhere. The profusion of ETFs, funds, indices, and brokerage coverage has made them unprecedentedly easy to access for individuals too. However the long-term performance of commodities is pathetic, and there is little reason to believe that “this time is different.”
Share
Remember the fable of the hard-working ant and the irresponsible fun-loving grasshopper? As generations of parents tell their children, both creatures get what they deserve. The grasshopper pays a terrible price for his summer of fun, while the ant survives the winter snug and smug.