From a WSJ review of Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy: Mr. Neuwirth introduces us to a woman named Jandira who for a decade has peddled coffee and homemade cakes to the unlicensed vendors at São Paulo’s early-morning wholesale market for pirated movies. Her street-corner business, she proudly tells him, has enabled… Read More »
On naked capitalism: My first take on the question came when The Guardian asked me to write an oped on Occupy Wall Street a few days later. At the time I was inspired mainly by what Marisa Holmes, another brilliant organizer of the original occupation, had discovered in her work as a video documentarian, doing… Read More »
From Reuters: Nigeria’s central bank plans to diversify its $33 billion in foreign exchange reserves away from the dollar by switching a tenth of the stockpile into yuan, underlining the momentum behind China’s drive to internationalise its currency. “We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 percent of our reserves,” central… Read More »
From Bloomberg: Energy companies operating in Senegal will drill three offshore wells next year as the West African nation vies to join a growing group of regional crude producers, according to the state-owned oil company,Petrosen. Senegalese officials held talks with more than 10 oil companies this year in attempts to lure investors to its energy industry, said Joseph Medou, Petrosen’s geologist,… Read More »
The Economist Intelligence Unit answers here.
From NEXT: Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said at her maiden media briefing yesterday in Abuja that though government was not discarding its blueprint for economic development captured under the Vision 20-2020 and the Transforming Nigeria document, government has identified some key sectors that must be addressed to create the enabling environment for growth. These… Read More »
The American Civil War provided the opportunity for introducing a national monopoly currency. In 1879, having won the war and built up its gold reserves, the federal government finally felt able to back its dollars with gold. Immediately voices arose seeking to make money plural again. The People’s Party (better known as the Populists) found… Read More »
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a… Read More »
Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know. I am currently reading the book – just finished the first two chapters. Will write some more about it when I’m done.
… could have been the title of a detailed piece by The Economist on the actions of the Chinese Queensway Syndicate in Africa: The syndicate is built on links forged during the cold war. It is largely the creation of a man known as Sam Pa. Though he uses several names, he was born Xu Jinghua.… Read More »