The World Bank’s Doing Business rankings rate countries on the complexity and time taken to follow the official steps to set up and run a company. It may sound like a banal process, but the ranking has sparked a bitter international argument. Read Here – Businessweek
Some of America‘s biggest social media and tech companies have been denying in recent days that they were aware of the National Security Agency’s recently-exposed “PRISM” and telephone monitoring programs. But these denials obscure a larger truth: The government’s massive data collection and surveillance system was largely built not by professional spies or Washington bureaucrats […]
As tensions on the Korean Peninsula have grown, much of the relevant conversation within the United States has focused on China, the one nation that, according to many American policymakers, can control the North Korean leadership. Does it, or is i a flawed view? Read Here – The Diplomat
Among European publics ‘the Greek crisis’ is a phrase that invokes images of corruption, poor government, civil unrest, and social turmoil. Foreign governments and political commentators have grasped that this narrative also provides a way to provoke political change in their own countries. By threatening a future ‘akin to Greece,’ unpopular domestic reforms are passed […]
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, and dropping the continent’s welfare model in favor of tougher U.S. standards would spark a revolution. Read Here – Reuters
The International Monetary Fund’s 2012 World Economic Outlook provided surprising cause for optimism about economic growth in several African countries. Based on the IMF’s estimates, Business Insider recently profiled 20 countries with the highest projected compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2013 through 2017; ten of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, and two are in North Africa. These statistics […]
The lack of women in the workforce poses one of the biggest structural impediments to faster growth. Japan’s institutionalized sexism deepens deflation, hurts competitiveness and exacerbates the demographic trends that make Japan’s debt load so dangerous. Read Here – Bloomberg
As evidence mounts that a mid-year slowdown is taking place in the world economy, the next few days will offer a clearer glimpse of how that will impinge on policymaking and buoyant financial markets. Read Here – Reuters
If Obama and Xi lift their heads above the parapets and begin charting a jointly agreed course through the coming decade, they may find that they have much in common. Read Here – Project Syndicate
For Chinese audiences, the extras mown down in a screen war that never ends are a powerful reminder of Japan’s brutal 14-year occupation, the climax of more than a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. Japanese foreign-policy scholars say more than 200 anti-Japanese films were made last year. This well-nursed grudge is now a […]
looking beyond borders 