Mercantilism reconsidered
This question constitutes a Rorschach test for policymakers and economists. On one side are free market enthusiasts and neo-classical economists, who believe in a stark separation between state and business. In their view, the government’s role is to establish clear rules and regulations and then let businesses sink or swim on their own. Public officials […]
ETFs and emerging markets
Emerging markets and exchange traded funds (ETFs) have one thing in common: both are destined to hold increasing importance for investors for many years to come. Emerging markets offer some of the strongest long-term return prospects as they take their place in the global economy of the 21st century. The BRIC countries are widely predicted […]
Red squared
Russia’s budget deficit could reach 7.5 percent of GDP in 2010, stretched by state aid for banks, but economic growth should return after this year’s recession, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said recently. Russia has kept spending high to help the economy out of its first recession in a decade, while tax revenues are falling, in […]
The birth of a paradigm?
Even before the birth of the moniker, corporate social responsibility and sustainability have loitered around the foreground of investment analysis. ESG is becoming increasingly prevalent as not only a part of decision-making but also, as a representation of what traditionalists would consider a new paradigm. Never before have these non-financial factors become such a important […]
Barclays to generate £7.3bn
Sure, it’s possible to imagine better news – say £7.3bn in cash from a straight sale instead of a mix of cash and a 20% stake in the enlarged US find manager. But this deal would address the UK bank’s biggest problem: a perceived lack of capital. At first blush, selling all of Barclays Global […]
Assessing the US Treasury’s bail out plan
It had to happen. In the face of catastrophic losses, massive unemployment and an economy that is still scratching its head as to how the whole crisis unfolded, the US government has stepped into the breach in an effort to bail out the country’s banks, protect consumers, and restore investor confidence so that the economy […]
UK government seeks to prevent cost claims
As part of the UK government’s latest plan to curb taxpayer-funded legal spending, companies and directors cleared of criminal charges in the UK could be barred from recovering their defence costs – potentially leaving businesses and individuals acquitted of fraud, price-fixing, corporate manslaughter and other serious offences with legal bills ranging up to several million […]
Rumble in the jungle
Moses Singo is an African exception. A black farmer with green fingers, he has probably had to overcome more obstacles than faced by most entrepreneurs anywhere else in the world to get his family business off the ground. A little more than a decade since launching the Singoflora Nursery in Tswane (Pretoria), he now exports […]
Investigating fraud at Satyam
Oh the irony. “Satyam” means “truth” in Sanskrit, a fitting name then for the fourth largest company in India’s booming information technology sector – a company that named the World Bank and a series of international blue chip businesses among its clients. But not anymore. The company, it now turns out, was a scam. Its chairman and […]
Do we need the IMF?
“We were all Keynesians now,” said Richard Nixon, back in 1969. If it was true then, it didn’t stay true for long. The rise of monetarism and neo-liberalism in the 1970s sidelined the once-dominant theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes Nowhere was the decline of Keynes’ ideas, and their replacement with the ideology of […]
