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A small group of naïve billionaires in the United States are lining up begging for higher taxes on the super-rich. I say naïve because they itemize a whole list of problems they imagine can be solved with this additional tax. …
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The most important price in an economy is the exchange rate between the local currency and the world’s reserve currency — the U.S. dollar. As long as there is an active black‐market (read: free market) for currency and the data …
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Emerging out of the horrific spasm of genocide that claimed more than 800,000 of the minority Tutsi ethnic group in 1994, Rwanda has chalked up some spectacular economic performance. Its rate of economic growth has averaged 8 percent since 2001 …
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The whole world is worried about Africa, and with good reason. Late last year the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank approved a $34 billion debt relief package for 22 of what they classify as “heavily indebted poor countries”; …
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Last week, President Obama hosted the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. He welcomed over 40 African heads of state and their outsized entourages to what was a festive affair. Indeed, even the Ebola virus in West Africa failed to …
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The Wall Street Journal of August 31st carried an edifying op-ed by Kit Ramgopal and Matt Cooke. The title of their piece “Xanda the Lion Is Dead, but Trophy Hunting Helps His Kin” announces their thesis. That, as …
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Each year, I construct a Misery Index. The idea of such an index to measure economic misery was introduced by economist Art Okun in the 1960s as a way to provide President Lyndon Johnson with an easily digestible snapshot of …
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What do Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe, and Nicolás Maduro have in common? Other than being leaders who kept the Communist Manifesto at their bedside, all three ushered in devastating hyperinflations.
Hyperinflations are rare. They have only occurred when the supply
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Not long after Nigeria’s National Assembly agreed to an upward review of the minimum wage from ₦18,000 ($50) to ₦30,000 ($83), the federal government considered increasing value-added tax (VAT), which it believes will create more revenue to fund …
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Emmerson Mnangagwa, the new president of Zimbabwe, will have a hard time digging his country out of the economic hole that it fell into during the 37 years it was led by Robert Mugabe. But it can be done.
During
