General

Around the world, rapid economic recovery from the Covid shock unleashed as predicted by us correctly the largest wave of inflation we have seen since the early 1980s. In response, in the summer of 2021, central banks began raising interest rates. Brazil led surprisingly the way. In early 2022, the US Federal Reserve (Fed)...

Every era of tech has its defining IPOs. From the dawn of the PC (Microsoft,1986) and the Web revolution (Netscape,1995) to the rise of the Faangs (Google, 2004) and China's new tech champions (Alibaba, 2014) these stock market debuts have been emblematic of their times. Tech’s unicorn era is finally having its Wall Street...

Uber's initial public offering - the biggest in a year of blockbusters - is yet another chance for Uber and its detractors to sell their competing ideas of what this company represents. As it heads toward a valuation of about 90 billion US-Dollar- nearly the combined value of General Motors and FedEx - Uber...

Educational inequity is a global crisis. 60% of primary children in low and middle - income countries leave school unable to read and write. Hundreds of millions more, in countries rich and poor, are not developing the ability to navigate the future of work, with its complex problem - solving challenges. Progress on...

Last year looked like the time when President Trump had delivered on his promises to strengthen the economy. His tax cuts appeared to juice growth above 3%, a pace The United States had not topped since 2005. But recently the Commerce Department revised 2018 growth downward to below 3%, even as forecasts for 2019...

A few months ago, a group of 50 start-up founders gathered in the dank basement of a Lower East Side bar in New York. They scribbled notes at long tables, sipping coffee and sparkling water while a stack of pizza boxes gove off the odor of hot garlic. One by one, they gave testimonials...

The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s grilling of the tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter in beginning of November told us something we already knew: Russia manipulated the US election results. Only the scale of the effort, which reached roughly half of the US population, was a surprise. It also told us something that we knew, but had forgotten: industry self-regulation rarely works....

The year 2019 was never going to be an easy one for markets. Between the record amount of corporate debt, trade conflicts between the US and China, and the fact that we are almost 10 years into a recovery cycle – the time when economic slowdowns typically occur many of us have been expecting...

The political and business elite attending 2019’s World Economic Forum clearly need some visionary thinking as there has been a real sense of a changing of the guard as a youthful energy takes over the discussion of how to resolve many of the world’s most pressing problems, including climate change, the fate of refugees...

Ten years ago this weekend, the failure of Lehman Brothers brought the international financial system close to collapse. The shock triggered a global recession that narrowly avoided becoming a depression. It caused banking crises in two dozen counties and brought in its wake the eurozone debt crisis, austerity and stagnation. Millions lost their jobs and homes. A decade later, the...

Global trade relations are currently moving in opposite directions. While US President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to impose new restrictions on its trade with the rest of the world – especially its main partners such as the EU, China and Japan – there are other influential powers with great leverage in trade ties seeking a further liberalization. The US has recently...

Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same as trivial. In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience-that is more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks-has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is...