Articles
Merge the IMF and the World Bank
05.10.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a fine choice as the new head of the International Monetary Fund, and the job he will take up formally on November 1st is a...
Read moreCan Brazil emulate China?
01.10.07 Publication: Exame
Economic growth in Brazil in recent years has been disappointing, especially to the country’s many well-wishers abroad. During a commodity-price boom, and...
Read moreJapan´s lessons for the financial crisis
01.10.07 Publication: Ushio
August is usually a quiet month in the financial markets. Even traders in bonds and shares take holidays. And, since markets generally become volatile in...
Read moreThe Age of Turbulence: Book review
30.09.07 Publication: Sunday Times
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. By Alan Greenspan Allen Lane £25 pp531 The common image of Alan Greenspan is of a brilliant but rather...
Read moreBurma´s importance for China and India
27.09.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
What happens now to the brave protestors in Burma, whether monks or ordinary citizens, is chiefly important for the Burmese themselves and for the fate of...
Read moreGet rid of the public v private ideology
08.09.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, said Deng Xiaoping, as long as it catches mice. The great Chinese leader was trying to persuade his fellow...
Read moreNightmares about globalisation
03.09.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun
There are two popular nightmares about globalisation, and sadly neither is quite foolish enough to be easily proven false. Over the next year, both are going...
Read moreGlobalisation and the credit crunch
01.09.07 Publication: Exame
August was such a hot month in the financial markets that it brought out all the sweatiest old cliches in the market-commentators’ lexicon. Traders were said...
Read moreOlympics, smog and China
01.09.07 Publication: Ushio
At eight o’clock in the evening of the eighth of August, the eighth month of the eighth year of this decade, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic...
Read moreEmbarrass Beijing, don´t boycott
21.08.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
The one-year countdown has begun in Tiananmen Square, for the Olympic Games that will open in Beijing at 8.08pm on the 8th day of the 8th month of 2008. That...
Read moreA healthy financial shake-out
17.08.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
When financial markets rise by three or four percent each day, no one pays much attention. But when they fall each day by that amount, it becomes front-page...
Read moreSad about the Wall Street Journal
02.08.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
If I had been one of the family shareholders in Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal, I would probably have agreed to sell my shares to Rupert Murdoch....
Read moreChina turns inflationary
01.08.07 Publication: Exame
For the past five years, companies around the world have talked of “the China price”, by which they mean the lowest price in their industry. China has come...
Read moreThe love of old buildings
01.08.07 Publication: Ushio
There are many things that Britain and Japan have in common, including our island status, our long histories as independent countries and our somewhat...
Read moreTony Blair´s lessons for Japan
28.07.07 Publication: Toyo Keizai
Tony Blair is undoubtedly a model for political success. After all, he survived for 10 years as Britain’s prime minister and won three general elections in a...
Read moreWelcome, Chinese investors
25.07.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
Foreigners don’t vote, and so they are a convenient target for politicians in all countries. That is why Europe’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson,...
Read moreShinzo Abe´s lessons for Gordon Brown
23.07.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun
It is hard to follow a superstar. In that regard, Britain’s Gordon Brown and Japan’s Shinzo Abe share a common predicament. Like Mr Abe in October 2006,...
Read moreAnxiety, marketing and the BBC
14.07.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
For many years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has had the nickname in England of “Auntie”. It is partly affectionate, since everyone in a family...
Read moreIllusions of change
02.07.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
What do we want from our political leaders? Wisdom, experience, steadiness under pressure, clarity of thought: those were once what most European voters seemed...
Read morePain and the solution to climate change
01.07.07 Publication: Exame
The debate over climate change has moved on—thank goodness. The gathering in Heiligendamm, Germany in early June of the leaders of the G8 rich industrial...
Read moreThe gap between Korea, Japan and the US
01.07.07 Publication: Ushio
When I lived full-time in Tokyo as a foreign correspondent in the mid-1980s, I used to visit South Korea quite frequently for my job. I enjoyed learning about...
Read morePraise the scientists who deny climate change
28.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
The essence of science is uncertainty, or so we non-scientists believe. I grew up being taught the principles of Karl Popper, the great Austrian philosopher,...
Read moreTough love needed for climate change to stop
24.06.07 Publication: Asahi Shimbun
Nowadays, we all think that the planet needs to be saved and we all want to do our bit to save it. That, at least, is what a visitor from outer space might...
Read moreThe European Union and Kosovo´s independence
24.06.07 Publication: Corriere della Sera
Russia’s rejection of the latest American and European proposal at the UN Security Council on helping Kosovo to become independent of Serbia looks like the...
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