Early this year during a dinner discussion, a high-level manager at a well-known brokerage firm announced to the table that within a few years “value” managers [e.g. Warren Buffet] will be extinct, and that the greatest fear he had about his personal...
Andrew West
Andrew West is a Contributing Economics Editor for Capitalism Magazine. In 1997 he received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation from the Association for Investment Management and Research.
A Recipe for Economic Collapse in Venezuela: Hugo Chavez’s Anti-Capitalist Philosophy
One of the perennial complaints made of investment analysts is “why didn’t you warn me about this before the crash?” While difficult, it is sometimes possible to identify the makings of a country’s downfall beforehand, while the news about it...
Know Thy Enemy: The Dangers of the IMF’s “World Economic Outlook”
Every two years the IMF publishes its “World Economic Outlook“. (I’ll call it, aptly, WOE) The most recent advanced copy was released last week on the internet. [link], and I suggest that all global investors take a look at it. I disagree with most...
Europe’s High Fuel Taxes: Virtue or Vice?
High oil prices and rising fuel taxes have lit an explosion of fury across the European continent, resulting in protests and blockades of depots and refineries. Following the recent oil price rise, the Europeans have finally realized what a massive burden fuel taxes...
The “Economic Growth Causes Inflation” Myth
There’s a certain economic platitude that outrages me every time I hear it repeated by the financial press and political economists. Put simply, it’s the familiar comment that economic growth causes inflation. It has many variations, including “high...
Vampire Governments Feast on the Discoveries of the Telecommunications Industry
In early 2000, companies capable of building and operating third generation (3G) wireless networks were among the hottest stocks around. Using the radio frequency spectrum in a new way, 3G wireless networks promise to achieve revolutionary performance, combining the...
Bank of Japan Interest Rate Hike is a Canard
On August 11th, Japan’s central bank, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), announced its first interest rate hike in ten years. For seventeen months, the BOJ had lent money overnight to the banking system at a rate of zero; that is, no interest. Now, with the hike, it will...
Demonizing Private Doctors to Advance Socialism in Medicine
Last December [1999], the National Academy of Sciences has called for the establishment of a federal “Center for Patient Safety,” operating under the auspices of Public Health Service at a projected annual cost of $100 million. The...
Malaise in Malaysia
Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister and former finance minister, was recently sentenced to nine years in jail after he was found guilty of sodomy. The verdict, which has been condemned by government leaders and human rights groups around the...
Is Hong Kong’s Superstar Internet IPO “Tom.Com” Made of Smoke and Mirrors?
People in Hong Kong occasionally get a little over-enthusiastic when trying to buy hard-to-get items. When a real estate property is hot, for instance, both homebuyers and gangsters swamp agents with offers to buy. A few years ago, kids, parents, and their maids...
Colin Powell: A Future Speaker for the Democratic Convention?
On Monday night on the last day of July 2000, Colin Powell gave a truly awful speech at the Republican convention. It appears that he intends to move the Republican party even further away from individual rights and freedom and closer towards collectivism and...
The IMF in Asia: Please Hold Your Applause
Last week I noticed two important articles in the press regarding the Asian recovery. “Fortune” magazine, representing the new “establishment” view, ran an article celebrating the Asian economic recovery, giving the IMF credit for the...
The “Third Way” Moves Two Ways In Europe
In recent years, the leftist parties of England and Germany returned to power by promising voters that they had turned their back on command and control, tax and spend, economic policies. Instead they promised to “transcend” the old right and left by...
Pirates of the Internet
For years, lawyers representing Silicon Valley were rightly emphasizing the importance of intellectual property rights. Such rights were the major issue in the final Uraguay round of GATT meetings. At that time, trade negotiators warned that American companies and...
Hong Kong’s Contradictory Property Policies
Once again, the Hong Kong government has swung from manic to depressive over its property market. A few years ago, in an attempt to gain popularity with the poor, the government reacted to high property prices by promising more government housing programs and more...
Krugman’s Green Cheese is All Rotten
I read a most outrageous article in last Sunday’s New York Times written by Paul Krugman, the Times’ Keynesian economist in residence. (Available with free registration) Entitled “Green Cheese Rules,” the article was inspired by a theory...
On China: Put your money where your mouth is
Over the last month, we heard numerous discussions about whether granting Permanent Normal Trading Relations (PNTR) to China, in preparation for its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), was a good thing or a bad thing. Most who opposed the bill suggested...
The New Era Nikkei Falls Flat
Last month, the formulators of the Nikkei 225 attempted to update the index in order to reflect the growth of the high-tech sector in the Japanese economy. While editors at the Nihon Keizai newspaper were operating on the belief that the index had become increasingly...
Read their lips Hong Kong: “New taxes!”
For the sixth year in a row, Hong Kong has been named the world’s freest economy in the Heritage Foundation’s annual “Index of Economic Freedom.” One of the reasons for this is its low taxes, and what the Hong Kong government boasts on its web...
13 Reasons for the NASDAQ Crash
After the NASDAQ Composite Index slid 33% from March 27th to its dramatic one-day decline on April 14th, most people weren’t sure what had happened – or why it happened. The financial press was in an uproar trying to make sense of everything, and even now,...
How “Business” Works in China By
Despite claims that economics and politics are separate and distinct in Hong Kong and China, the PetroChina IPO certainly would suggest otherwise. In the first week of April, PetroChina finally completed its beleaguered IPO, issuing 10 percent of its share capital....
Breaking the Tokyo Banks?
Back in 1998, the big question in Japan was which, if any, of Tokyo’s big banks could escape collapse. Burdened by massive, non-performing loans, and holding assets (like Tokyo real estate) that had plunged in value, Japan’s big banks were in a serious...
How “Business” Works in China
Despite claims that economics and politics are separate and distinct in Hong Kong and China, the PetroChina IPO certainly would suggest otherwise. In the first week of April, PetroChina finally completed its beleaguered IPO, issuing 10 percent of its share capital....
“Look at ’em quit!”
At the end of the classic Western, “Rio Bravo,” when the bad guys came running out of a blown-up house holding up their hands in surrender, John Wayne’s sidekick couldn’t help but exclaim “Look at ’em quit!”. These days,...
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