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BlackRock’s China Blunder

  • Wall Street Journal
  • September 6, 2021
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has begun a major initiative in China. On Aug. 30 it launched a set of mutual funds and other investment products for Chinese consumers. The New York-based firm is the first foreign-owned company allowed to do so.

Investors in Xi’s China Face a Rude Awakening

  • Financial Times
  • August 30, 2021
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise has been a significant drag on the economy. The most vulnerable sector is real estate, particularly housing. China has enjoyed an extended property boom over the past two decades, but that is now coming to an end.

Xi’s Dictatorship Threatens the Chinese State

  • Wall Street Journal
  • August 14, 2021
Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, suffers from several internal inconsistencies which greatly reduce the cohesion and effectiveness of his leadership. There is a conflict between his beliefs and his actions and between his public declarations of wanting to make China a superpower and his behavior as a domestic ruler.

This is the time for France to issue perpetual bonds

  • Les Echos
  • March 2, 2021
Medical science will eventually bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control by producing enough vaccines to inoculate everyone. In the meantime, the virus has caused an economic shock of global proportions, worse than the financial crisis of 2008. With the rapid evolution of various strains the experts predict a new wave of infections that may be worse than the previous one.

The Costs of Merkel’s Surrender to Hungarian and Polish Extortion

  • Project Syndicate
  • December 10, 2020
The European Union is facing an existential threat, and yet the EU’s leadership is responding with a compromise that appears to reflect a belief that the threat can simply be wished away. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s kleptocratic regime in Hungary and, to a lesser extent, the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland, are brazenly challenging the values on which the European Union has been built.

An Effective Response to Europe’s Fiscal Paralysis

  • Project Syndicate
  • November 30, 2020
I have written a lot in the past about the desirability of the European Union issuing perpetual bonds. But today I am proposing that individual member states should do so. Right now, it would be impossible for the EU to issue perpetual bonds, because the member states are too divided.

Europe Must Stand Up to Hungary and Poland

  • Project Syndicate
  • November 18, 2020
Hungary and Poland have vetoed the European Union’s proposed €1.15 trillion ($1.4 trillion) seven-year budget and the €750 billion European recovery fund. Although the two countries are the budget’s biggest beneficiaries, their governments are adamantly opposed to the rule-of-law conditionality that the EU has adopted at the behest of the European Parliament.

The Great Anticipator

  • Mario Calvo-Platero, La Repubblica
  • August 11, 2020
George Soros is one of the most iconic financiers of the century. He is the man who in 1992 “broke” the Bank of England, the philanthropist who has given away $32 billion to promote open societies, the political pugilist who has sparred with Donald Trump and Viktor Orban.