Global Economy

Japan's once-envied economy is now in shambles. The European economy, built on the same shaky tenets, is crumbling, too. Where to go from here?

It is a huge mistake to call the repeating cycle of boom and bust a business cycle. That name implies the bust is the failure of markets and capitalism. But it is really due to monetary and credit inflation licensed and promoted by governments and central banks.

Trade agreements have thus become obsolete tokens of negotiation in larger geopolitical disputes, protectionist tools for managing and interfering with global trade flows. 

The true lesson from Japan is that central planners prefer to gradually nationalize the economy before even considering a moderate reduction in government size and control.

Rahim Taghizadegan from the independent Viennese Scholarium offers a European perspective on the anti-economics of negative interest rates

Anti-market activists in Argentina try to blame the country's economic woes on markets, but the populist movement of Peronism is what has doomed the country to endless cycles of economic and monetary crises.

Thanks to huge amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus, China is in the midst of a very large housing bubble, with predictable results for housing affordability.

The African continent is exceedingly rich in natural resources, yet the living standard of Africans is very low. The most plausible explanation for this discrepancy is the lack of a system that protects private property.

Despite the IMF’s claims to the contrary, the case of Sweden actually shows that a political “solution” to climate change is ineffective.

Abenomics, Japanese Keynesianism on steroids, has made the rich richer, and all others poorer.