The recent hefty depreciation of the yen to a twenty-four-year low against the dollar has raised eyebrows due to the yen’s traditional safe haven role in times of turmoil, such as the war in Ukraine. The yen’s decline had already started when major central banks signaled a tightening of monetary policy to fight inflation while the Bank of Japan (BoJ) doubled down on its loose monetary policy and zero target for ten-year bond yields.

Speaking at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 26, 2022, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said the Fed must continue to raise interest rates—and keep them elevated for a while—to bring the fastest inflation in decades back under control. Powell said that a tighter interest rate stance is likely to come at a cost to workers and overall growth. However, he holds that not acting would allow price increases to become a more permanent feature of the economy and prove even more painful down the road.

The recently completed royal tour of the Caribbean has provoked debates about Britain’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade. Animated by propaganda, such discussions obscure the complexity of the slave trade. Political hustlers are characterizing the slave trade in racial terms to justify divisive ideologies when the issue is more nuanced. The transatlantic slave trade must be situated within the broader discourse of exploitation.

Jay “The Inflation We Caused Is Transitory” Powell finally did it.

On Friday, the Fed chair finally mustered the courage to say that he is going to do the job he has been hired to do: the Fed will not “pivot” to cut interest rates until inflation slows meaningfully and persistently—even if the stock, bond, and housing bear markets become much worse and the economy goes into recession.

When in March the Federal Reserve finally moved to belatedly embark on a series of rate hikes to slow the hottest inflation in the United States since the 1980s, it signaled impending trouble for many emerging market economies.

The ongoing energy crunch has revealed the hypocritical, if not duplicitous, nature of the Western imposition of climate and energy transition goals on other nations. Of course, we care about environmental protection, but the current arrangement amounts to eco-colonialism, is wildly detached from local realities, and severely hurts African economies and lives.

When I interviewed for a teaching job at private college in Alabama more than twenty years ago, the recently elected governor had won partly on a platform in which the state would install a lottery system that would give students a $3,000 grant for college. As the provost and I discussed the prospects of this new program, he smiled and said, “We hope this lottery passes. Then we can raise tuition by $3,000.”

(The Alabama legislature, despite being controlled at the time by members of the governor’s party, failed to pass and implement the lottery.)