Publication: Ushio

01.12.08 Publication: Ushio

American presidential elections are extraordinary things. Can you think of any other country in which the winning candidate in an election spent 21 months,...

01.11.08 Publication: Ushio

Will food products made in China ever be safe? All countries have occasional scandals concerning badly made or deliberately adulterated foods and other...

01.10.08 Publication: Ushio

America, it is often said, is the land of free markets, of unregulated capitalism, of what detractors call “market fundamentalism”. The financial crisis,...

01.09.08 Publication: Ushio

The date that is conventionally chosen to mark the beginning of the so-called “credit crunch” in America and Europe is August 9th 2007. So one year has...

01.04.08 Publication: Ushio

I have been a financial journalist—among other things—for  more than 25 years. Most of the time I have concluded that although finance can seem...

01.02.08 Publication: Ushio

It has become conventional to say that most general elections are won or lost on economic issues, for those are the day-to-day matters that affect more voters...

01.01.08 Publication: Ushio

Europeans like to compare themselves with Americans. That is perhaps inevitable given our shared history and cultural origins. For the past decade, however,...

01.12.07 Publication: Ushio

During the Cold War, it became a sort of joke to look at the use of the words "democratic" or "peoples" in the names of countries: the joke was that if the...

01.11.07 Publication: Ushio

Twenty years ago, some Italian food producers started a wonderful campaign group called the Slow Food Movement. The idea was to start a reaction against the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

01.06.07 Publication: Ushio

Everyone who visits China comes back impressed: all the smart new buildings, the wide new roads, the sparkling and efficient airports. They invite a question...

01.05.07 Publication: Ushio

In democracies, it is said, politicians running for election try to bribe us with our own money. In other words, they make promises that will cost taxpayers a...

01.04.07 Publication: Ushio

In India, this year has been officially designated as “the year of Japan”. Thanks in part to an extremely energetic Japanese embassy in the Indian capital,...

01.02.07 Publication: Ushio

This year in my country, Britain, one of our longest-serving and most famous prime ministers will announce his retirement. Tony Blair established a worldwide...

01.01.07 Publication: Ushio

There is a common proverb in English that says that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. The meaning of this saying is that many policies or...

01.12.06 Publication: Ushio

Science fiction books in the 1950s and 1960s often seemed to feature human colonies, in the far distant future, that had been established on the Moon, or on...

01.11.06 Publication: Ushio

At one time, when there was a clear distinction between leftists and rightists in politics, the main task for political candidates was to sound different from...

01.10.06 Publication: Ushio

In every country around the world, in politics there are some issues on which good politicians know that it is vital to say the right words, but then to avoid...

01.09.06 Publication: Ushio

How fortunate it must have been to be a leader like China´s Mao Zedong. The man who in effect became China´s Communist emperor from 1949 until his...

01.08.06 Publication: Ushio

When I was visiting Milan and Florence recently, I was reminded how appealing Italy is to Japanese visitors. Although Florence was also full of American...

01.07.06 Publication: Ushio

In recent years, especially in Europe and America there has been a common lament, at least among the older and literate sort of people. It is that modern life...