Japan’s storied trading houses are emerging from the shadow of billions of dollars of impairments they took after the financial crisis and the end of the commodity super-cycle.Stocks of the so-called sogo shosha, the groups that drove Japan’s postwar export success -- the likes of Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp. -- have rallied as much as 36 percent over the last year, outpacing the race to a three-decade high by the broad Topix Index. The trading companies’ free cash-flow leve

Why is it that in the last days of September, 10 years after the failure of Lehman Brothers, the world feels as if it is a dangerous place?President Trump’s remarkable speech to the United Nations this week was supposed to re-state the New Order that America has envisioned for the world. And all he got was a laugh. But it was an important speech, because it spelt out more clearly what everyone knew since January 2017 -- his administration is dismantling what America has stood for since World War

In Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” the protagonist Willy Loman gets abruptly fired from his lifetime job. Frustrated, Willy expects his son Biff to succeed socially and financially. Unfortunately, Biff fails his father, as he neither enters college nor secures a decent job. Ultimately, Willy takes his own life in order to give his son Biff his life insurance policy money. It is a touching story about a frustrated salesman who sacrifices himself for his family in difficult times. Recently

Recent price hikes for housing in Seoul have fanned deep frustration among those living outside Seoul. While prices in Seoul are going through the roof, real estate markets elsewhere are struggling with too many vacancies. Local money is flocking to the Seoul real estate market in droves. As ever, people and money keep coming to Seoul.Seoul’s status as a powerful magnet for people and national resources is a chronic problem for Korea. The Seoul Metropolitan Area accounted for 49.5 percent of the

Japan’s economy is doing well. Unemployment is at multidecade lows. Capital expenditure is up, as is return on equity. And wages are finally rising. For the longer-term, Japan also looks strong. Contrary to the popular myth that the country suffered multiple lost decades after the bursting of the bubble economy in about 1990, Japan has outperformed many other rich countries in terms of real gross domestic product per working age population since the year 2000.　It’s small wonder, therefore, that

When US President Donald Trump gave his first press conference in 19 months on Wednesday, he was asked about the laughter that greeted him at the United Nations after he claimed that “in the history of our country” his administration had proven to be unusually successful.“They weren’t laughing at me. They were laughing with me. We had fun. That was not laughing at me,” Trump replied. “So the fake news said people laughed at President Trump. They didn’t laugh at me. People had a good time with me

Getting married isn’t cheap in China. In Da’anliu, a small farming village outside Beijing, the local “bride price” -- the fee that a groom’s family pays to a bride’s in advance of their nuptials -- recently breached the $30,000 mark. That’s extreme for a village where incomes average $2,900 per year. So, this summer, local officials decreed that bride prices and associated wedding expenses shouldn’t exceed $2,900. Violators will be treated as human traffickers.Da’anliu’s price controls went vir

World War II left the world in shambles. Europe was devastated; all major cities had been destroyed, the flower of European youth was gone, lying in unmarked graves. Asia had fared little better; China and Southeast Asia had borne the brunt of Japanese aggression, which itself had two nuclear bombs dropped on it. Africa had been devastated by the battling armies of Montgomery and Rommel. The Japanese had come to India’s doorstep and the Great Bengal Famine had inflicted horrendous causalities on