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Opinion / Thought Leaders

China's Five-Year Plan and global interest rates

[2011-03-31 09:40]

China's new five-year plan will have important implications for the global economy. Its key feature is to shift official policy from maximizing GDP growth toward raising consumption and average workers' standard of living.

Japan's recovery bonds

[2011-03-30 14:20]

The tsunami raced through the town at eight meters per second, the speed of a gold-medal sprinter. The wave's height reached 15 meters, towering above even the highest pole-vault bars.

The California syndrome

[2011-03-28 10:28]

California has long been a harbinger of national and global trends (both wonderful and overindulgent), a birthplace of innovation in everything from technology and entertainment to lifestyles.

Greasing the brave new market's skids

[2011-03-24 09:09]

Internet firms are supposed to be all about the cutting edge, but reality and buzz sometimes conflict. Consider Groupon: its focus is the power of groups, but its actual business is the old standby of direct-mail marketing and coupons.

Jobs and structure in the global economy

[2011-03-18 15:19]

The global economy is at a crossroads as the major emerging markets become systemically important, both for macroeconomic and financial stability and in their impact on other economies, including the advanced countries.

Japan's nuclear morality tale

[2011-03-16 13:42]

The troubles of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant - and other reactors – in northeast Japan have dealt a severe blow to the global nuclear industry.

A race to hunger

[2011-03-15 09:41]

Spectators at February's Daytona 500 in Florida were handed green flags to wave in celebration of the news that the race's stock cars now use gasoline with 15% corn-based ethanol.

Development in reverse

[2011-03-11 10:55]

One does not have to spend much time in developing countries to observe how their economies are a mish-mash, combining the productive with the unproductive, the First World with the Third.

A slowing Chinese economy?

[2011-03-10 09:17]

Chinese officials warn that their economy is poised to slow. In late February, Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the target for annual GDP growth over the next five years is 7%.

Readers' Comments: What about inflation?

The EU's band-aid on a bullet hole

[2011-03-08 10:43]

Is the euro crisis any closer to a resolution? Europe's leaders have promised to devise by the end of this month a comprehensive package. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to succeed, because most of the elements of the package revealed so far address the symptoms of the crisis, not its underlying causes.

Machiavellian economics

[2011-03-04 16:57]

When is it legitimate to lie? Can lying ever be virtuous? In the Machiavellian tradition, lying is sometimes justified by reference to the higher needs of political statecraft, and sometimes by the claim that the state, as an embodiment of the public good, represents a higher level of morality.

Global imbalances without tears

[2011-03-04 09:49]

Doctors have long known that it is not just how much you eat, but what you eat, that contributes to or diminishes your health.

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