Like many of you I am eagerly awaiting the new James Bond film Skyfall, especially Javier Bardem’s star turn as Raoul Silva, the classic Bond villain with his outlandish plot to pay 60% over market price for a Canadian oil company. No, wait, that’s from the business pages, isn’t it? You’ll forgive me: the stories sound […]
It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in Mongolia, the large country of high desert plains sandwiched between China and Russia, and much has changed. Some, education and food supply, is for the better, and a lot – including urban sprawl and rising inequality – is for the worse. Much of the change has to […]
AFTER giving a speech at a business conference in London a young analyst chatted with investment executives in the audience, then followed two of them to a nearby hotel lobby. Over glasses of Chablis the executives raved about their company’s worldwide network of extravagantly decorated offices and their fat annual bonuses. Then they offered the […]
Recent rhetoric concerning the East China Sea and the Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, makes it appear that the Japanese government is taking a tougher approach on foreign policy and military affairs. Its decision to purchase the disputed islands in September triggered outrage from China and spawned observations that Japan is […]
The recent crackdown by the Ghanaian government on illegal gold mining put the livelihood of hundreds of Chinese workers in the country at stake. On October 11, when Ghana’s police and immigration bureau raided mining fields in Ashanti province, a security officer shot and killed a 16-year old Chinese worker. More than one hundred Chinese […]
It isn’t every day that the finance minister of a major nation mentions a rap star when talking up his economy. But then South Korea (KOSPI) isn’t your average economy and Psy isn’t your usual entertainer. Bahk Jae Wan did that in an Oct. 9 interview. South Korea’s top economic official cited the singer of the global smash hit […]
The current trade dispute between the United States and China isn’t the first and won’t be the last. This one involves auto parts. Earlier it was solar panels. Before that: rare earth minerals. Next it will be something else. All of these disputes will be resolved in due course. They are important for many reasons. […]
Further evidence that the fight over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea is having an impact on the global economy: Auto sales in China fell in September for the first time in eight months, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced on Wednesday. That’s largely because Chinese consumers are staying away from Japanese brands. The overall […]
Mitt Romney may have talked about the Middle East yesterday in what was billed (and panned) as a major foreign policy address, but ad spending by both candidates’ camps shows that global affairs are still low on the list of key campaign topics. Fewer than 10% of ads aired in the U.S. presidential race to date have made […]
Want to find a job? That’s not a problem if you are trained as a technician and looking for work in China or Brazil. Ditto for sales representatives, who are in hot demand in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Japan, engineers won’t sit idle. Meanwhile, in Ireland, IT workers are needed. In the Netherlands, it’s […]
looking beyond borders 