Opinion

A Catch of the Day to Kevin Drum at Mother Jones for pointing to polling showing that, no, Republicans in 2016 aren’t especially angry about the economy. And HuffPollster notes that Republicans aren’t really angry, period, at least compared with the 2012 cycle. Drum puts it this way: People aren’t more angry, or more bigoted, or more scared than usual. …

One of the key arguments used by the Obama administration to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is that if the United States doesn’t write the rules on trade, China will. There’s some truth here: China is, in fact, leading an effort to negotiate a massive trade agreement across the Asia-Pacific – one that excludes the United States and that will …

In late February, hundreds of coal miners in Anyuan, where Mao Zedong first organized workers for the Great Strike of 1922, protested against their state employer over low wages and even poorer working conditions. On Wednesday, China wrapped up its most important legislative meeting of the year, announcing sweeping free market initiatives for economic recovery and long-term growth. Though clearly …

I spend a decent amount of time traveling around the U.S. speaking at conferences and visiting clients. Doing this is a visceral form of economic research — you can witness just how various regions are recovering and expanding with your own eyes. It doesn’t take much to realize that, to paraphrase science fiction writer William Gibson, the recovery is here, …

Canada, home to some of the world’s largest gold-mining companies, recently announced that it had effectively liquidated all of the country’s holdings of the shiny metal and is moving to what a government spokesperson described as “easily tradable” assets. It has been a long process. Canada held 1,088 tons of gold in 1955. By 2000, it was down to 46 …

The Obama administration is moving towards what could be a dangerous showdown with China over the South China Sea. The confrontation has been building for the past three years, as China has constructed artificial islands off its southern coast and installed missiles and radar in disputed waters, despite US warnings. It could come to a head this spring, when an …

The Bank of Korea is planning for a cashless society by 2020. Swedes are making the shift. I am intrigued but also troubled. There’s a lot to like about the idea of a cashless society, starting with its effect on crime. The payoff to mugging people or snatching their bags has already declined dramatically, simply because fewer and fewer people …

A host of risks — including turbulence in financial markets, slower growth in economies like China, weak growth in other developed countries and prospects of Brexit — cast shadow on British economy, forcing it to take more austerity measures. With such measures in place, it is quite interesting to see where the additional cuts would be made. Presenting the annual …

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest economic projections contain an encoded message crucial to understanding the central bank’s policies: Inflation has been stuck below the Fed’s target in part because officials don’t actually want to get it back up. It’s important to recognize that the Summary of Economic Projections, released four times a year, does not consist of forecasts about the …

Asia’s major economies marked International Women’s Day 2016 with relatively little fanfare, despite the demographic imperative that confronts the aging populations of China, Japan and South Korea. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian corporate boardrooms have low gender diversity despite moves such as Japan’s “Womenomics,” although the bank blames societal issues rather than deliberate hiring decisions. In its …