Gwadar conundrum
By Mir M. Ali Talpur.
Militarising Gwadar and imposing apartheid-like measures is not something random but is part of a systematic policy to ensure that the Baloch are thoroughly disenfranchised in every way
Gwadar seems to [...]
Violent and Non-Violent Civil Unrest “More Likely” for Economically Backward Countries Says Study
by Alton Parrish.
Economically more backward countries are more likely to experience both violent and non-violent civil unrest, according to research by the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The study looked at how economic backwardness [...]
TTIP & TPP – A Threat to Latin America?
By Otaviano Canuto, Samuel George and Cornelius Fleischhaker.
For centuries, Latin America’s economies have revolved around exporting commodities – be it digging up minerals and hydrocarbons, planting soya or coffee, or taking advantage [...]
Ban-Free Iran Smashes Regional Equations
By Peyman Jonoubi.
TEHRAN, March 20 (Shana) — Ever since the victory of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran’s regional rivals, which happen to be seeking to dominate the global oil market, never relented to tense up their [...]
Egypt: The Pound Plunges
by Steve Hanke.
The Egyptian pound is plummeting, again, losing 6.1% of its value against the greenback over the past week. As shown in the accompanying chart, the black market premium has soared to 25.2%.
The plunging pound [...]
The Hong Kong Dollar, Rock Solid
By Steve H Hanke.
The currency speculators are restless, again. Many, like George Soros and Kyle Bass, are reportedly taking aim at the Hong Kong dollar (HKD). HKD bear circles think China’s renmimbi (RMB) will lose value against the U.S. [...]
Free Trade vs. Fair Trade
By Nelson Hultberg.
The argument over trade and whether governments should allow it to be “free” goes back to the latter 18th, early 19th century economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and James Mill. They could be said [...]
Hollywood’s misleading history
By Peter J. Wallison.
The film called The Big Short differs in a significant way from the book of the same name on which it is based, and this difference reveals how the film-makers made it more politically charged in order to blame [...]
Stocks Rally on Lies, Fantasy, and Hope
By Barry M. Ferguson
What should we make of the rally in stocks, world stocks, metals, materials, oil, junk bonds, and everything else that could be counted as an asset in the third week of February, 2016? Well, not much. When central [...]
The Hong Kong Dollar, Rock Solid
By Steve H. Hanke.
The currency speculators are restless, again. Many, like George Soros and Kyle Bass, are reportedly taking aim at the Hong Kong dollar (HKD). HKD bear circles think China’s renmimbi (RMB) will lose value against the U.S. [...]
Will natural gas shelter Iran from oil price crisis?
Reza Yeganehshakib.
After years of negotiations with six world powers, Iran celebrated the official lifting of international sanctions on Jan. 16. Having long awaited this moment, the Islamic Republic acted quickly thereafter, commencing [...]
Why democracy fails to deliver in Pakistan?
By Riaz Missen.
While appreciating the government for bringing back economy from brink, the World Bank Group (WBG) President Jim Yong Kim, who recently visited Pakistan, has urged on the need to create more space for the private [...]
On Hyperinflation Hype
By Steve Hanke.
The Great Recession of 2008-09 brought with it quantitative easing. This, in turn, spawned a cottage industry of books, articles and blog posts about hyperinflation. The burgeoning literature contains a great deal [...]
Has the Global Trade-Development Link Peaked?
By Otaviano Canuto.
Trade has been a key driver of global growth, income convergence, and poverty reduction. Both developing countries and emerging market economies have benefited from opportunities to transfer technology [...]
IMF: Whither Emerging Markets Foreign Exchange Reserves
Otaviano Canuto.
After a exponential rise in foreign exchange reserves accumulation by emerging markets from 2000 onwards, the tide seems to have turned south since mid-2014. Changes in capital flows and commodity prices have [...]
Demographic profile of India: Opportunity or Threat?
By Aditya Pandey.
Why do you think Arab Spring became a success? I think it was because the entire phenomena was built on the firm shoulders of the younger generation- a generation that had seen their parents being tormented and [...]
The European integration: Deliverance of a ‘welfare state model’?
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
There is a growing sense that the European social model is unsustainable and in need of reform. As the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is fond of claiming, the European Union (EU) accounts [...]
Economic Headwinds: Big Players, Regime Uncertainty and the Misery Index
By Steve Hanke.
Before we delve into the economic prospects for 2016, let’s take a look at the economies in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East/Africa to see how they fared in the 2014-15 period. A clear metric for doing [...]
Venezuela’s lying statistics
By Steve Hanke.
Surprise! Venezuela, the world’s most miserable country (according to my misery index) has just released an annualized inflation estimate for the quarter that ended September 2015. This is late on two counts. [...]
Currency dictatorship – the struggle to end it
By Rakesh Krishan Simha.
India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it really so?
The last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business, the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy, [...]