December, 2016

• 11 December

  Decoding secrets of ancient rock art

  

    Fez, Morocco / AFP An Iranian archaeologist has spent years in an almost single-handed quest across the country’s hills and desert plains to uncover ancient rock art that could be among the oldest in the world. Now he hopes that renewed ties with the West after years of international isolation could help decipher its mysteries. Despite its rough beauty, …

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• 11 December

  Acolytes of Pina Bausch keep her dance in motion

  

    Berlin / AFP The dance company that legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in 2009, built into one of the world’s most acclaimed is doing its utmost to foster her moving legacy. Beloved of fellow artists and seen as a visionary by her peers in the dance world, Bausch mixed dance and theatre to produce a tumult of …

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• 11 December

  The Pentagon versus the welfare state

  

    Any reporter who’s written about the federal budget knows that there’s a surefire solution to every problem. It’s called “fraud, waste and abuse.” You want to end budget deficits? Just eliminate all the “fraud, waste and abuse” in the $4 trillion budget. The same is true for cutting taxes or raising spending. Attacking fraud and waste is virtuous and …

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• 11 December

  A better theory to explain financial bubbles

    What causes asset bubbles? This question is the great white whale of finance theory. We know that asset prices are given to spectacular rises and falls over short periods of time. Answering this question is hugely important, not just for people’s pensions and retirement, but for the whole economy, since crashes in asset prices can leave growth in the …

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• 11 December

  South Korea’s susceptibility to scandal

    The impeachment of South Korean leader Park Geun-hye should herald the end of a painful and drawn-out political scandal. As they move forward, Koreans should be thinking about how to avoid another one. With Friday’s 234-to-56 vote in the National Assembly, Park’s powers as president have been suspended. For weeks, she tried to fend off public anger over influence-peddling …

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• 11 December

  Park’s removal spawns political uncertainty

    Tens of thousands celebrated the impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye. The motion to impeach was adopted by 234 votes to 56, easily securing the required two-thirds majority in the 300-seat chamber. It triggered wild celebrations among hundreds of anti-Park activists gathered outside the National Assembly. The protesters called the impeachment a new beginning in South Korean politics. …

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• 11 December

  In 2017, watch Merkel pivot to the right

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been designated the new leader of the Western world on the strength of her values. Now, watch her lift that mantle for a deft feint to the right. This week Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union re-elected her as its leader by an impressive 89.5 percent. That’s higher than the 88.6 percent Shavkat Mirziyoyev received in …

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• 11 December

  Unicredit’s Mustier must be ruthless

    Unicredit Chief Executive Officer Jean-Pierre Mustier is scheduled to present his five-month review of the bank’s strategy. To salvage a bank that’s seen its market value drop to just 13 billion euros ($14 billion) from almost 40 billion euros in the space of just eighteen months, Mustier needs to become best-in-class — and that means aggressively shrinking his bank …

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• 11 December

  Economists are out. Goldman is back in for Washington

  

    It looks like Gary Cohn will be leaving Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he is president and chief operating officer, to become director of Donald Trump’s National Economic Council. This is not a unique career trajectory! The first director of the NEC, which President Bill Clinton created in 1993 to coordinate economic policy among the sometimes-warring government agencies responsible …

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• 8 December

  ADX receives AED7.9bn investments by Nov end

  

  ABU DHABI / WAM Foreign and institutional investments at the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) totalled AED7.9 billion by the end of November 2016. Net flow of foreign investments in the last six months, from June to November, reached almost AED850 million. Data from the exchange shows that institutional investments in the last eleven months reached AED4.6 billion, whereas investments …

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