There is reason to believe that the global economy will have to navigate troubled waters till 2015, since the Eurozone is now in recession and the crisis will take time to abate. Europe has made several important moves since December 2011, by injecting some essential liquidity in the system. But it is necessary to understand […]
A landslide victory for the Liberal Democratic Party in elections Sunday for the lower house of the Japanese legislature has given party leader Shinzo Abe something no other Japanese politician has achieved in the last half century: a second chance as prime minister. Abe had the job for a year in 2006-2007, part of a […]
The Liberal Democratic Party, which was badly defeated in the Lower House election in August 2009 and had to give up power to the Democratic Party of Japan after ruling the nation almost without interruption since 1955, made a comeback in Sunday’s general election. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the current LDP chief, will regain […]
Large oilfields often don’t fall neatly within national boundaries. Intent on securing underground or undersea reserves, nations contest territorial claims. China battles Japan for the Diaoyu/Senkakku Islands and ASEAN members for large sections of the South China Sea. Settling disputes quickly is in the interest of all claimants, particularly those with less technological expertise, suggests […]
After announcing that its rocket was facing technical difficulties that might delay its impending test, North Korea surprised the international community by abruptly launching a three-stage rocket on Wednesday morning local time. Even more surprising than the timing was that the “Unha” (the Korean word for “galaxy”) rocket appears to have successfully placed the Kwangmyongsong-3 (“Shining […]
WORLD VIEW: ‘It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.” So said Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt this week in a Bloomberg interview defending the company’s use of legal incentives in Britain, Ireland and other states to minimise worldwide taxation and therefore maximise worldwide profits. He spoke as a perfect storm engulfed […]
Most of us still look at China, the world’s second-largest economy, as the undisputed leader among major developing countries. In the long run, however, I’m betting on India to emerge as the more significant global economy. Those who are dazzled by China often forget that much of the rapid growth before 2008 was caused by the shift of […]
China said it will seek a higher “quality and efficiency” of growth next year, signaling new leaders may accept a reduced pace of expansion in exchange for a more sustainable model. There was no mention of seeking “relatively fast” growth, a policy in place since 2006, in a report yesterday by the state-run Xinhua News […]
A FORMER prime minister, who resigned in 2007 after a shambolic first year in office, and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which two years later was hounded out of the governing role that it had taken as its birthright, are both headed for a remarkable return to power. In the hours after midnight it became […]
A casual observer of the Arab world will most likely have concluded that the experiment in adapting political Islam to democracy has already failed. Almost two years ago, as the Arab revolutions began in Tunisia, it seemed a foregone conclusion that political pluralism on a western model would take the place of the ageing autocrats […]
