Feel Like Investing in a State Sponsor of Terrorism? How about a country whose leaders have stolen $400 billion in the last decade and have seen 300 foreign workers kidnapped? Another country lost four wars in the last 40 years. Still interested? How about a country that suffers one of the world?s highest AIDs rates,
Where is the 2012 London Olympics turning to meet gargantuan cost overruns? None other than BP, which is going the extra mile to burnish its tarnished image. With the British economy mired in a vicious financial crisis, many are wondering if hosting the games was such a great idea. The original plan was to convert
My former employer, The Economist, once the ever tolerant editor of my flabby, disjointed, and juvenile prose (Thanks Peter and Marjorie), has released its ?Big Mac? index of international currency valuations (click here for the story). Although initially launched as a joke three decades ago, I have followed it religiously and found it an amazingly
?When the fools are dancing, the greater fools are watching,? according to an old Japanese proverb.
I have just finished leisurely reading Tom Standage?s book The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century On-Line Pioneers. Standage discusses the creation and development of the telegraph system and how it revolutionized communication in the nineteenth century. The book claims that Modern Internet users are in many ways the
My friend, Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, a global risk analyst who I regularly follow, will soon publish another book entitled The End of the Free Markets: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations. I find this highly depressing, as it takes me as long to read one of Ian?s books as it
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open,? said Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone.
Come join me for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s Global Strategy Seminar, which I will be conducting in New York, NY on Thursday, July 5, 2012. Coffee, tea, and soft drinks will be provided, but no food. A PowerPoint presentation will be followed by an extended question and answer period. I?ll be giving you my
?The art of taxation consists of so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing,? said Jean-Baptist Colbert, a 17th century French minister of Finance.
I spent the weekend attending a graduation in Washington state, a stone?s throw from where the 2010 Winter Olympics were held last year. While sitting through the tedious reading of 550 names, and listening to the wailing bagpipes, I did several calculations on the back of the commencement program. I came to some startling conclusions.