Author Archives: timwferguson

Another period of singing the virtues of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) direction seems upon us, at least when it comes to steering an economy.  Just as after the Great Recession of 2008-9, China’s rebound from the Coronavirus Covid-19 has led the world. Of course, the official statistics always bear scrutiny, and public debt levels probablyContinue reading “China Rediscovers Rural Life (Cue Applause)”

The economics of wine are complex on many fronts, but today I want to consider just the consumer end of things: Specifically, why aren’t retail wine prices rational? That is to say, at a time when purchaser information can be nearly “perfect” (by smartphone search), why such disparities in what competing shops charge for theContinue reading “Why’s Your Desired Wine $8 Less Within 8 Blocks?”

Taiwan can take heart that rarely in the wake of a U.S. presidential election has its own fate been so quickly prominent in foreign-policy discussion. The past week has seen several major media reports either raising anxieties about Joe Biden’s new approach to cross-strait tensions with China or reassuring the democratic island of unwavering support.Continue reading “Taiwan Gets Center of U.S. Stage”

The rapid transformation of the U.S. economy to “remote” during the pandemic—a switchover likely to endure in many respects after vaccinated immunity to Covid-19 is reasonably achieved—is gigantic testimony to the private sector’s adaptability. No official edicts beyond the initial lockdowns were necessary to bring about a relatively efficient changeover. Start with the physical deliveryContinue reading “Business Led The Way To Virus Revamps”

Mass political uprisings continue to ring the globe—Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Nigeria and Thailand at the moment—and as always a big question is whether the political ferment will culminate in widespread violence. The situation in Bangkok is probably of most interest to Westerners because of travel familiarity—its airports are the busiest such international hubs in the world.Continue reading “Can Thais Find Peaceful Reform?”

When the dust settles from the pandemic blowout of U.S. employment, I’ll be interested to see how many security guards this anxious nation has retained. Although optical technologies ranging from robots to drones, plus the omnipresent video-cam in the corner, have made the watchman an endangered species in some analysts’ eyes, through 2019 the jobContinue reading “The Watchman’s Work Is Hardly Done”

“Coupon clippers” is not a description Americans aspire to fit. In the French, they are rentiers, those who live off the regular payments of others. The words have the whiff of an idle, leisure class–parasitical in many eyes. But what they are (or their forebears were) are savers, a rather more virtuous-seeming lot. Yet evenContinue reading “Punish the Prudent: Fed v. Savers”

08/24/2020 Emerging markets are under stress again in the global downturn that’s accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic. Few of their stories are as compelling to a world audience—and as exasperating–as South Africa’s. Prolonged African successes are still exceptional, and so many wanted to believe that after the Nelson Mandela presidency his country had been redeemed fromContinue reading “South Africa: The Clouds Return”

08/12/2020 The fact that Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai and other dissidents have been freed on bail after their latest arrest shows that even under new security laws imposed by Beijing, the Special Administrative Region still enjoys a distinction from Chinese mainland legal practices.  Arrestees there do not soon emerge from incarceration pre-trial—sometimes never. ThisContinue reading “A Requiem for Old Hong Kong”