Andrew West

As a global equity analyst, I have been faced of late with many questions concerning "DOW 10,000". Investors are curious about the importance of this number, and whether it is an indication of good economic news. For those of you pondering the same issue, I offer my...

"A lot of what keeps some economies immune is the fact that people think they're immune. Believing makes it so. And that's very good." - Paul Krugman, MIT Economist A dangerous notion is currently gaining credence among global policy-makers: perception "creates"...

This quarter the Clinton administration played the "good cop/bad cop" game. US chief trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, was the bad cop, menacing Japanese steel producers with threats of punitive measures for "dumping". Robert Rubin played good cop, publicly...

England's Tories, following the dubious example set by their US Republican counterparts, seem to have also concluded that standing on principle is politically inexpedient. The Tories recently chose to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's first...

Some months back the World Bank issued a report titled "Global Economic Prospects 1998/1999". The report's foreword, written by Joseph Stiglitz, World Bank Chief Economist, is demonstration of how statists blame capitalism and free-markets for the disatrous effects of...

"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense, perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire, that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that...

Accounting is no fun to me. In business school, it struck me as the dullest and most tedious part of the curriculum. Throughout the Chartered Financial Analyst program, accounting studies kept me up past an acceptable bedtime. So while I'm proud to say that I'm no...

June 18th, 1999 was to be a momentous day for global economic progress. It marked the start of the annual "G8" economic summit in Germany. The leaders of the world's seven wealthiest industrialized countries, plus Russia, gathered to propose inventive solutions to the...