Recent Articles

The Lure of China and Economic Activism

November 14, 2010 09:49

I wonder what do you think about Google’s decision to confront China’s censorship by pulling out of the country entirely despite a potential lost of profit for not doing its business with now the second largest economy in the word? A Google's engineer that I talked to over the weekend seemed to...

March's Winners and Losers

April 03, 2010 04:47

We are moving further away from the double dips danger! Last month the US economy added 162,000 jobs- a strong showing of a potentially more sustained recovery for US economy. Payroll gains are largely boosted by private sectors and much less by temporary census hiring. Unemployment remains at 9.7%...

Behind President Obama’s Warning of “Double Dip” Danger

November 25, 2009 06:40

Today, in an interview with Fox News in Beijing, President Obama warned that “the US economy could head into a ‘double-dip recession’ unless urgent steps were taken to rein back America’s mounting level of public debt,” reported the Financial Times. Speculation about a double dipping, also known as...

Sri Lanka and Trade Policy: Concession or Sanction?

October 27, 2009 15:00

The European Union last week produced an official notice derived from its year-long investigation on human right violation in Sri Lanka. Here are the Commission's final report, and the independent expert's report. Given the Commission's conclusion that Sri Lankan government breached its human...

New Wave of Insider Trading Charges as Judge Approved Wiretaps for White Collar Crime Investigation

October 21, 2009 19:12

It’s all over the news, and I should not be caught by surprise. Yet here I am becoming very disturbed by the loopholes in our financial institutions, which gave rise to an unprecedented amount of white collar crime - from Bernard Madoff to Raj Rajaratnam. Wall Street this week has seen the biggest...

America's Third Nobel Peace Prize In A Decade

October 21, 2009 07:36

At 4am, the news that president Obama received the Nobel peace prize came to me just as unexpected at it was for all of us. However, as the dust settled, and president Obama finally responded with his speech in the White House's rose garden saying that the prize is "an affirmation of American...

A Proposed Solution for California Budget Crisis

September 11, 2009 04:22

People pointed to California's divided government and the supermajority law, which requires the legislature to adopt a budget with a two-third vote as reasons that cause the ongoing budget crisis in the Golden State over the last decade. The budget, which was passed by Arnold Schwarzenegger on July...

The Case Of Ben Bernanke

August 31, 2009 21:02

Last week, most news applauded Obama’s reappointment of Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Of the few commentators who opposed the reappointment, Morgan Stanley Asia's Stephen Roach lists three critical mistakes that Bernanke made leading toward the financial crisis. He argues...

Sheehan is out of Retirement

August 28, 2009 03:26

I've talked about Cindy Sheehan before and was under the impression she had given up her war protest. I'm glad to read that Sheehan has once again taken up her charge and is dogging Obama while he is on vacation. The Breit Bart put it as follows: After spending weeks dogging George W. Bush's...

Posner v. Macroeconomists

August 23, 2009 22:26

This week brings a heated debate between Judge Posner and some prominent economists including Brad DeLong of UC Berkeley. The debate comes at the heart of my recent discussion with a lawyer who is also a faithful follower of Paul Krugman blog. I argued that certain opinions made by Paul Krugman are...