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Food markets: How to store and sell more stuff
Poor places need more than seeds, fertiliser or even food science IF FOOD aid is epitomised by a single image, it is that of neat bags of grain, stamped with the Stars and Stripes and labelled a “gift from the American people”, being ...
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The pros and cons of VAT: A last resort
Its advantages are oversold, but it is gaining adherents LIBERALS oppose a value-added tax because it falls more heavily on the poor. Conservatives oppose it because it is a money machine. Larry Summers, Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, ...
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Government
Lawrence Summers
Barack Obama
Vehicle-scrapping subsidies
As the world economy tumbled into recession, most rich countries’ governments tried to prop up ailing carmakers by dishing out cash to drivers who scrapped an old vehicle to buy a new one. According to the OECD, America’s programme was ...
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Gross Domestic Product
Politics this week
Barack Obama paid his first visit to China, where he held talks with his counterpart, Hu Jintao, and the prime minister, Wen Jiabao. A “town-hall meeting” in Shanghai was attended by only carefully vetted young people, and no questions ...
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Government
Barack Obama
Business this week
Ben Bernanke remarked that the Federal Reserve was “closely” watching currency markets, and that the central bank would “help ensure that the dollar is strong”. The weak dollar has caused commodity prices to nudge up, a ...
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Government
Ben Bernanke
Federal Reserve
Treasury Bills
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
International Monetary Fund
Vehicle telemetry: Calling all cars
Tapping remotely into a car’s data systems provides lots of useful services IN THE early hours of the morning two men are robbed at gunpoint and ordered out of their Chevrolet Tahoe. The thief jumps in and roars off, but he does not get far. ...
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Conservation: In wolf's clothing
Wolves are being blamed for damage actually done by dogs FARMERS have never liked wolves. That is why wolves are rare where farmers are common. Fashion, though, is swinging round to the wolf’s point of view in many places where town-dwellers ...
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Spain
Tuna fishing: Changing tides
The bluefin tuna is still being managed badly. A trade ban is on the cards IN A world where wildlife is under increasing pressure, good management can mean the difference between survival and extinction. In the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean ...
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Sex and pharmaceuticals: Arousing interest
The search continues for a pill that will lift a woman’s libido BACK in the 1990s a drug firm called Pfizer thought it had a treatment for angina. Unfortunately, the new medicine failed its clinical trials. But a curious side-effect was seen ...
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Stocks
Pfizer
Award: Gulliver
Gulliver, our blog on business travel, won the award for innovation at this year’s Business Travel Journalism Awards. ... >
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Corporate crime is on the rise: The rot spreads
A survey reveals that desperate times have led to illegal measures THE recession has taken its toll on morals as well as profits. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting and accounting firm, has conducted a biennial survey of economic crime for ...
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LNG expands in Australia: Explosive growth
Australia is becoming one of the world’s biggest exporters of gas WALLAROOS, bandicoots and other marsupials on Barrow Island off the north-west coast of Australia will watch curiously over coming months as workers start building a huge plant ...
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A spat among professional networks: Class war
Does local beat global in the professional-networking business? IN THE three-way fight between the biggest online professional networks—America’s LinkedIn, France’s Viadeo and Germany’s Xing—this week the French ...
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Stocks
Kenneth R. French
The psychology of warranties: Protection racket
If extended guarantees are overpriced, why are they so popular? CUSTOMERS tend to agonise over the relative merits of different models of electronic goods such as digital cameras or plasma televisions. But when they get to the till, many spend ...
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Counterfeit handsets proliferate in China : Talk is cheap
Chinese firms are making and exporting ever more suspect phones CHINESE consumers appear fixated with Apple’s iconic iPhone. It draws throngs of eager buyers in Shanghai’s Xujiahui computer market. Similarly, at the Canton Trade Fair in ...
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Stocks
Apple Inc.
China Unicom
The global crackdown on corporate bribery: Ungreasing the wheels
Governments around the world are making life difficult for corrupt firms IF EVER a clash was inevitable between one country’s commercial law and another’s business culture, it would be between America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices ...
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Global Downturn
Schumpeter: Remembering Drucker
Four years after his death, Peter Drucker remains the king of the management gurus IN THE normal run of things the management world is divided into dozens of mutually suspicious tribes—theoreticians versus practitioners, publicity-hogging ...
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Government
Republican
University students abroad: And is there honey still for tea?
Luring foreign students is getting harder IN MEDIEVAL times, the choice was simple. A Christian man of means could enroll at one of a handful of universities, two of which were in England. Since then, continents have been discovered, everyone has ...
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British Retail Consortium
Harvard University
Municipal Wi-Fi : Metro-net
Public wireless internet has had a tough time in America. Can Britain do better? ON A cold and drizzly autumn day, no one would mistake Swindon, a prosperous mid-sized town near Bristol, for northern California. But it does lie on the M4 corridor, a ...
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Stocks
Motorola
Reforming financial regulation: A one-trick bill
An exercise in bank-bashing which may just please consumers CRACKING down on financial services was always likely to be a highlight of the Queen’s Speech, which sets out the government’s legislative priorities until the general election ...
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Government
Financial Crisis
Bill Clinton
The Conservatives' media policy: Nice guys may finish first
A shadow culture secretary begins to makes his mark THE Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has rarely been the frivolous sideshow suggested by its Whitehall nickname, “the ministry of fun”. It was a training ground for some ...
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Financing Scottish start-ups: Better up north
New firms are finding funds in Scotland, despite the downturn. Why? THESE are tough times for venture capitalists. According to their trade association, the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA), investment in new and fledgling firms fell by ...
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Lending to small companies: Now, worry about the upturn
Small firms risk financial starvation just as the economy recovers JUST when you thought an upswing was around the corner it seems that smaller firms have yet to face the worst. Nick Hood, executive chairman of Begbies Global Network, an insolvency ...
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Government
Bank of England
America's fiscal deficit: Stemming the tide
Unprecedented levels of government debt may require radical solutions STUDENTS at National Defence University in Washington, DC, were recently given a model of the economy and told to fix the budget. To get the federal debt down, they jacked up ...
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Government
US Trade Deficit
Recession
Stimulus Plan
Feeding the world: If words were food, nobody would go hungry
Investment in agriculture is soaring. So, worryingly, is distrust of markets and trade “THE world’s attention is back on your cause.” That was Bill Gates talking to agricultural scientists gathered recently to honour the late ...
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60 Minutes
Monsanto: The parable of the sower
The debate over whether Monsanto is a corporate sinner or saint FEW companies excite such extreme emotions as Monsanto. To its critics, the agricultural giant is a corporate hybrid of Victor Frankenstein and Ebenezer Scrooge, using science to create ...
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Stocks
Monsanto
Hope and worry in Zambia: Less poor, less free
The president is making the country’s well-wishers anxious WHEN Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) got independence from Britain in 1964, it was one of Africa’s richest and most developed countries. It has vast copper-ore deposits and ...
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Yemen's war: Pity those caught in the middle
A bitter local conflict threatens to spread across the region MUHAMMAD REDWAN and his family were being hammered from all sides. In early August, rebels from Yemen’s Houthi clan took over his village in the rugged mountains of the Malahid ...
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Iraq and its neighbours: A regional cockpit
As Americans prepare to leave, Iraq’s biggest neighbours vie for influence OF ALL the foreign officials an American general or ambassador would least want to be seen with, General Qassem Suleimani would—you may think—be high on the ...
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Government
Sierra Leone's corruption problem: A mortal enemy
The government is having some rare success in trying to eradicate an old sore IN MOST African countries, the fight against corruption is deemed important but hardly a matter of life and death. In Sierra Leone it is exactly that. In 1991 the ...
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Congo's constitution: Democracy under threat
Is Congo’s President Joseph Kabila flirting with dictatorship? AFTER 32 years of rapacious dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko and nearly a decade of chaos following his demise in 1997, Congo’s elections in 2006 marked the first time the ...
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Overview
Japan’s economy grew strongly in the third quarter. It expanded at an annual rate of 4.8%, aided by a 3.3% rise in domestic demand and rapid export growth. The recession ended in the euro zone, where GDP grew by 0.4% in the three months to ...
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Gross Domestic Product
R&D spending
Toyota spent the most on research and development (R&D) of any company in the world in 2008, according to the European Commission’s latest tally. The Japanese carmaker increased its annual R&D spending by 7.6% to €7.6 billion ...
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Stocks
Microsoft
Simon Johnson
Sanofi-Aventis
Kenneth R. French
Robert Rines
Robert Rines, scientist and Nessie-hunter, died on November 1st, aged 87 EYEWITNESS evidence may be all very well in a court of law, but it cuts no ice with scientists. Robert Rines knew that perfectly, because he was a scientist himself, and a good ...
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Correction: Peat
In “For peat’s sake, stop” (November 7th), an overenthusiastic spell-checking system led to the word “rewetting” being rendered as “reletting” in three different places. We apologise for any confusion caused. ...
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Economics focus: Green with envy
The tension between free trade and capping emissions STATEMENTS by Barack Obama on his travels through Asia have lowered expectations that December’s global summit on climate change in Copenhagen will lead to binding cuts in carbon emissions. ...
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Government
Barack Obama
Spanish banks: Savings and groans
Misery for the cajas does not mean joy for the banks SPAIN’S banks face a grim 2010. True, the listed banks made over €4 billion ($6 billion) in net profits in the third quarter of this year. But most economists predict that Spain will ...
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Spain
Public-sector finances: The state's take
Governments differ dramatically in how they tax—and how much they raise THANKS to the collateral damage from the financial crisis, government deficits have surged across the rich world. Once the recovery is entrenched this fiscal deterioration ...
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Spain
Rebuilding UBS: Ossie's casino
UBS wants to grow, but its supervisors want it to shrink “I’D LIKE to see us put more risk on the table and actually trade a bit harder.” In these times, such words from any banker might be enough to cause a little concern. Coming ...
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Stocks
UBS AG
Fund management: Payback time
The European Union lashes out at hedge funds and private equity “WHEN a fight breaks out in a bar, you don’t hit the man who started it. You clobber the person you don’t like instead.” That is the cynical verdict of a ...
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Government
European Union
Risk Management
China's exchange-rate policy: A yuan-sided argument
Why China resists foreign demands to revalue its currency PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, on his first visit to China this week, urged the government to allow its currency to rise. President Hu Jintao politely chose to ignore him. In recent weeks ...
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Government
Barack Obama
Jean-Claude Trichet
European Central Bank
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
International Monetary Fund
Buttonwood: Something's gotta give
Either central banks are wrong to keep rates low, or markets are wrong to expect recovery LIKE a truck rolling downhill, the rally in risky assets is proving hard to stop. Good economic news causes share prices to rise because it indicates the ...
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EDF: Nuclear contamination
The giant French utility’s ambition to lead a global revival in nuclear energy is running into difficulties as a controversial new boss takes over NEXT week Henri Proglio will become the boss of EDF Group, the state-controlled French firm ...
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Kenneth R. French
Gordon Brown's next six months: The great calculating machine
A nakedly political Queen’s Speech marks the start of the election campaign “THERE are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics,” said the last Labour prime minister to lose a general election. ...
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Government
Gordon Brown
Bagehot: I know my rights
Public-service satisfaction guaranteed, or—what, exactly? ALTHOUGH it was introduced long before he left Downing Street, John Major’s “cones hot-line” came to epitomise, in the public imagination, the intellectual exhaustion ...
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