On July 4, the US celebrated its 223rd birthday with hot dogs, cotton candy, ice-cream and fireworks. There was much self-congratulation but few tributes to the day's real meaning. July 4, 1776 was the day the Continental Congress approved and signed the Declaration...
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.
‘Capitalists’ Celebrate 50 Years of Communism in China
I've seen numerous broadcasts of news programs on CCTV (the Chinese State-controlled TV channel) via satellite transmission. Even without the benefit of English translation, it is obvious that many of the "news" shows are little more than propaganda--pieces deployed...
The Unfavorable ”Balance of Trade” and Other Dense Horror Stories
Government leaders have, for centuries, bemoaned the imagined ills of trade deficits. Kings of ancient yore endeavored to achieve surpluses to fund their wars. Dictators of all stripes have carefully sheltered their economies from foreign goods. Because of this...
The “Bubble” Theory is Full of Hot Air: A Case Study in Japan
What the market at large did not foresee [which] perhaps could be called a ‘widespread error in thinking’, was that Japanese politicians would [take] political issue [with] the quickly increasing prosperity.
The Importance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Reaching 10,000
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...
The Economic Spin Doctors: Perception Creates Economic Reality
"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"...
The Hydra of Protectionism!
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...
“Mixed Economy” Pragmatism versus Capitalist Principles in England
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...
The IMF in Brazil: The Emperor Has No Clothes!
I'm not sure what's more infuriating: witnessing Brazil's drawn out slow-motion crash and burn after an endless string of stupid policies over the past year; the sudden breakdown in devaluative stupidity; or enduring the lame economic analysis that ensued in the days...
Bureaucracy Goes Global: The World Bank vs Capitalism
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...
Will the Real Alan Greenspan Please Stand Up?
"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...
Fun with Accounting: How the IMF avoids admitting that it regularly makes bad loans financed by US taxpayers
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...
G8 and J18: The Carnivals Against Capitalism
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...
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