Monetary Easing’s the Game, but It Can’t Fix Economies By Itself
It’s all forces to the deflation front now, except when the troops are fighting inflation. Either way, monetary policy is now the confirmed fashion as all three of the leading economies—Europe, Japan, and the U.S.—simultaneously put their faith in money…
Japan and China Vie for 21st Century Dominance
A specter haunts the great powers of East Asia. It is the specter of ethnic chauvinism and a recrudescent nationalism one would have thought a thing of the past. With this comes the possibility of irrational conflict, and for the…
Japan’s Pivot Away from the West Leads Back to China
Japan-watchers have asked since the “bubble” of the late-1980s, “What are the Japanese going to do?” Now Shinzo Abe, the bluntly nationalist prime minister, is making this clear, prompting a new question: “How will Americans and Japan’s neighbors handle what…
Why Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ Will Prove a Non Event
HONG KONG—After two years of dithering and drift in the Pacific, the Obama administration is now trying to give substance to its noted “pivot to Asia.” The White House’s problem simply put: Symbols and gestures do not amount to substance,…
Europe’s ‘Ogre of Deflation’ Is Rapping at the Door
All eyes on the European Central Bank this week. Its Governing Council meets Thursday in Frankfurt, and ECB President Mario “Whatever It Takes” Draghi will have to announce an historic interest rate cut if he is to earn his middle…
Why the Global Economy Could Go Off the Rails in 2014
You do not have to go far to hear that financial hard times are over in 2014. But no one looking around the global economy could possibly miss the work still undone. Some see potholes deep enough to send the…
China Grows Impatient with the Barbarian of North Korea
North Korea’s leader has a baby face and a weird haircut and exhibits the whims of an unsupervised kid at Disneyland. He’s thrown tantrums before, threatening to fire nuclear missiles at the United States, executing a female musical group, and…
American empire is over: Somebody tell John Kerry!
New York Times embarrassingly praises Biden and Kerry’s sorrowful efforts, all unaware U.S. exceptionalism is dead We have made ourselves a navel-gazing folk, a little like Americans of the 19th century — until we lunged into the world by bravely…
Japan’s Huge Stimulus Plan: A Bold Roll of the Dice
Young Japanese of 23 has never known anything but a wheezy, punked-out, slump-shouldered Japan—a country that has been in and out of recession and deflation since its famous bubble burst in 1990. Now this is supposed to change—big time. Analysts…
Is “Abenomics” Japan’s Second Economic Miracle?
Shinzo Abe is proving to be a surprise-a-minute prime minister. This week he will announce his intention to enter talks with the US on a controversial free-trade pact called the Trans–Pacific Partnership, according to Japanese media. It is the latest…
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