Ugly unemployment numbers are politically inconvenient in democracies. Red-faced politicians have to come up with excuses. Elections are lost over them. So, countries use inscrutable statistical systems to make unemployment look better. But France also…
The “Blackest Day,” is how The Economist called January 12 when the Air Quality Index (AQI) in Beijing rose to a record 755. It was “Beyond index”…
The state-sponsored chorus about the end of the debt crisis in the Eurozone has been deafening. It even has feel-good metrics: the Euro Breakup Index for January…
Could 87% of the French Really Want A Strongman To Reestablish Order? Wolf Richter- Testosterone Pit
Americans are cynical about politicians. Congressional approval ratings were mired just above single-digit levels in 2012, hitting 10% twice. An expression of utter disdain. But the French—with their economy spiraling deeper into crisis&mdas…
On January 22, 2012, French presidential candidate François Hollande shook up the banks: “It has no name, no face, no party, it will never be…
Facebook isn’t over the hill, exactly. Last October, it announced that 1 billion people a month used it, in a world of 7 billion. Leaping from one milestone to the next. But in key markets, such as the US where it derives most of its revenues, it…
Congress excels at enriching corporate welfare programs—in this case, Medicare. Ironically, it happened while Congress is struggling to rein in Medicare’s gargantuan deficits with belt-tightening measures that…
Much digital ink has been spilled about the oil and gas boom in the US, the result of ever improving fracking technologies, and whether or…
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party went all out late last year to re-grab the power it had held for 50 years before getting booted out in…
“Repression” is what Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Fed, called “the injustice of being held hostage to large financial institutions considered ‘too big to…
