The scourge of child labor has proven difficult to eradicate. The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children are still being exploited for work, much of it hazardous. In recent years, the fair-trade movement has presented itself as an answer, offering, at a premium, goods and commodities certified to have been produced without exploitation. It is thus all the more appalling that a fair-trade program in Burkina Faso has been shown, in an investigation published in Bloomb

Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone; the war in Afghanistan and the “peace” in Iraq; turmoil in Syria, Egypt and across the Middle East; Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; Pakistan’s chronic instability; Kim Jong-un’s succession and China’s soft landing, to name a

Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts turned to John Sasso for help in getting a health- care bill through the state legislature, may want to solicit the Democratic operative’s advice again, this time on how to handle Ron Paul. Even before the voting started in Iowa on Jan. 3, Romney was a prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination, a 77.2 percent probability as of Dec. 31, according to InTrade.com, an online betting service. Texas Congressman Paul, with a committed following,

MUNICH -- Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Balance-of-payment disparities are steadily increasing. The sovereign-debt crisis is eating its way from the periphery to the core, and the exodus of capital is accelerating. Since the summer, 300 billion euros, in net terms, may well have fled from Italy and France.The printing presses at the Banque de France and the Banca d’Italia are working overtime to ma

BERKELEY ― In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8 percent of GDP, and reached 6 percent of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4 percent of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.Lahart goes on to say that growth in the finance-and-insurance share of the economy ha

EditorialBloombergThe scourge of child labor has proven difficult to eradicate. The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children are still being exploited for work, much of it hazardous. In recent years, the fair-trade movement has presented itself as an answer, offering, at a premium, goods and commodities certified to have been produced without exploitation. It is thus all the more appalling that a fair-trade program in Burkina Faso has been shown, in an investigation p

Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone; the war in Afghanistan and the “peace” in Iraq; turmoil in Syria, Egypt and across the Middle East; Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; Pakistan’s chronic instability; Kim Jong-un’s succession and China’s soft landing, to name a

I’ve been making the same New Year’s resolutions since I was 11: be nicer, get organized and lose weight. And although I still have friends who speak to me, can easily locate 1,392 pencils in my office without searching and am not yet being hauled around by a winch, I haven’t exactly exceeded my expectations.In the spirit of new beginnings, and yet aware that, if certain fringe groups are correct, the world will end before I pay off my 2011 Visa bills, I’d like to propose a new vision for New Ye

I am not an expert on health-care policy, but I do know something about job creation. So when a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee asked me to testify about the effect on employers of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes known as Obamacare, I thought I could offer some insights. As I told the committee in a July 28 hearing, it is critical that Congress does a good job of balancing the benefits of new legislation against the costs of that legislation. That pro

The news from Mexico, in recent years, has most often been bad. For a while, it was largely reports of corruption, electoral fraud and economic crisis. These days, it’s all about crime and insecurity. The country hasn’t been given sufficient credit for the good news it has generated since the 2000 elections broke the 71-year hegemony of a single party: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, better known as the PRI. Neither the international press nor we Mexicans have fully acknowledged what has