Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish
The health of a body politic can often be gauged by its ability to act in the long-term, national interest. On that metric, all does not seem well in the...
The Betamax Bust and the Future of Global Business
Sony's Betamax gave television viewers the ability to record programs even while they weren’t watching them.Forty years ago this month, a breakthrough product appeared in U.S. retail s...
How Refugees Can Revive Europe’s Economies
Refugees will deliver a long-term economic stimulus to the region.Continuing to stream into and across Europe, the refugees risking their lives for hope confront the continent’s policymakers...
The Financial-Inclusion Revolution
The banking industry is in the doldrums.The banking industry is in the doldrums.A sour cocktail of low interest rates and heightened regulation is squeezing the earnings of many...
Three Reasons to Support the TPP
A plurality of Americans support the Trans-Pacific Partnership.After many years that embodied about a gazillion person-hours of bleary-eyed yeoman-like effort, the 35-word statement issued in Atlanta, Ga., a few...
Brazil’s Dubious Destiny
Once called "the land of the future," Brazil struggles to live up to its potential.In 1941, an exiled Austrian writer, Stefan Zweig, moved to a city near Rio de Janeiro...
Who Has an Answer to the Puzzle of $53,657?
What do U.S. Presidential aspirants Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common? Quick flash quiz to start your week: What do U.S. Presidential aspirants Bernie Sanders and...
An Offer in the Oval Office
Here's what we hope President Obama says to China’s President Xi.China’s President Xi lands in Seattle tomorrow for a whirlwind tour of the United States. His i...
Albert Einstein and the Global Economy
“Everything should be made as simple as possible—but not simpler,” counseled Albert Einstein. As with physics, so too with public policies aimed at addressing the world’s tensions of rising ...
A Day for the History Books
U.S. economic policy must encourage investment and job creation.Expert historians often find nuggets in time that encapsulate for posterity deep and wide forces. Thursday, July 18, may end up...
The Fundamental Lesson of Brexit Lies in Skellig Michael
To our readers: Thank you for your many inquiries about our hiatus in recent weeks. Our break allowed us to focus both on other work commitments and on family&mdash...
The Fight Against Fat
Barack Obama’s presidency will forever be linked to his contentious, but ultimately successful, effort to enact comprehensive health care reform. Whatever one thinks of “Obamacare” (a...
The Approaching Hurricane
Hurricane Katrina remains the costliest natural disaster in United States history. So much of what the world knows of this 2005 storm centers on either its aggregate totals—a haunting...
Meet George Jetson
A few years ago, the acclaimed investor and author Peter Thiel pithily summed up the paucity of big-bang innovations: “We were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters.”...
What Prince Taught Us About the Global Economy
Towards the end of one of his early hits “1999,” Prince hauntingly foretold that, “life is just a party and parties weren’t meant 2 last.” Last...
Stuck in Second Gear
“Growth has been too slow for too long.” That was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Maurice Obstfeld, writing last week about global economic conditions. His...
The World’s Most Precious Resource
Stroll down the Quai d’Orsay in Paris and you will find the French Foreign Ministry, art galleries, and something completely different: the Musée des égouts...
Who Will Make the Case for Trade?
Divided though the four leading presidential candidates are on so many topics, united they stand on one: the assertion that trade harms America.
All four oppose America ratifying the Trans-Pacific...