A peaceful and prosperous East Asia is coalescing around a steadily growing Chinese economy and the region’s determination to foster cooperation and amity. ASEAN (ten Southeast Asian countries) and China now represent one-fourth of the world population and one-fifth of the global GDP. That huge and increasingly compact economic area follows its own business cycle […]

It will take quite a bit of revenue raising and spending cuts just to stop the progression of America’s current $1.7 trillion budget deficits -- accounting for 6.3% of GDP. No political party contending for power in next November’s elections has made this national emergency part of its campaigning platform. But the strictly nonpartisan Congressional […]

“We don’t do sanctions …” was a calm response, with a disarming smile, of an ASEAN (an association of ten Southeast Asian nations) official to western demands to punish and expel one of its member-countries allegedly violating a democratic code of statecraft. Americans and Europeans were also startled when ASEAN refused to yield to western […]

Ever since China’s paramount leader Deng Xiao Ping began his relentless drive for economic development in late 1970s, Beijing has been offering a de-risking masterclass on trade and incoming foreign direct investments. And the long march from sweatshops and smokestacks to productive agriculture, hi-tech manufacturing, modern infrastructure, “anti-access, area denial (A2AD)” defenses, moon shots and […]

The economy is currently held together by a roughly neutral monetary policy that ignores inflation and monetizes an irresponsibly loose fiscal policy. The markets and the mainstream media are supporting the idea that we shall somehow muddle through the next elections in early November. After that – we shall see. Some might even say, like […]

Trade and investment flows between the U.S.-led West and the Global South – represented by the BRICS – are drying up in an increasingly direct, proxy and hybrid warfare. Ideological and political underpinnings to this epochal change of world economy stems from the U.S. assessment that its “rules based international order” is challenged by Russia […]

Last Wednesday, Brazil’s G20 presidency opened up as a slugfest about global governance – a totally inappropriate agenda item for the world’s only economic forum. Predictably, a gathering of foreign ministers (sic) had nothing to say about the ailing developed economies and their systematic macroeconomic mismanagement. That, clearly, was not their brief. The only thing […]

The world’s largest archipelago, consisting of 18 thousand islands and islets, is home to 278 millions of Indonesians and an economy that has grown at an average annual rate of 5% since the turn of the millennium. Over the same period, Japan’s economy lost its forward momentum under an increasing burden of unresolved structural problems, […]

There was no economic growth in the European monetary union last year. And, on current evidence, the outlook is for a much worse downturn in the months ahead. The euro area’s monetary policy cannot help. The core inflation of nearly 4% and unit labor costs of 5.5% offer no room for increasing supplies of cheaper […]

America’s current monetary management is a bright spot in global economic affairs. Struggling with a horrendous legacy of errors that led to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, followed by a long period of subsequent extraordinary credit creation, the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) is still trying to “normalize” its support to economic […]

Almost two-thirds of American foreign trade transactions in the first eleven months of this year took place with friends and treaty allies. Canada and Mexico account for about one-third of the U.S. foreign trade business, and there is every reason to expect that those two countries will remain America’s largest trade partners – regardless of […]

Jobs and incomes are America’s principal election issues. This time will be no different, although wars in Europe and in the Middle East, the chaos of illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border with Mexico will register with American voters. The real election mover, however, will remain Reagan’s iconic one-liner that made all the […]

When the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship was negotiated in late 1970s, Japan’s Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda asked China’s leader Deng Xiaoping how they should deal with a contested territorial claim over a group of uninhibited islands (Diaoyu/Senkaku) in the South China Sea. Deng did not want that issue to hold up China’s economic […]

The G7 (major trans-Atlantic countries plus Japan) and the Global South (the developing world led by Russia, China and India) are pushing their confrontation beyond hybrid and proxy wars. Debilitating economic sanctions, massive supplies of financial support, arms, military instructors, battlefield intelligence, satellite guided attacks, political sponsorships and emphatic vows to destroy challengers of the […]

The recently departed former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang knew what he was doing when he chose Germany in May 2013 for his first visit to Europe. Struggling to put an end to China’s smokestack industries and to leap into a new era of smart (IT-driven) manufacturing, Li knew that Germany was his best choice as […]