The Korea Herald

[Shira Ovide] Amazon at $1 trillion is more dream than reality

Sept 6, 2018

The stock market is a weighing machine of companies’ potential rather than their current circumstances. That is doubly true for Amazon.　Amazon on Tuesday briefly reached a stock market value of $1 trillion. It’s a meaningless (and unoriginal) milestone but a notable symbol for a company that until recently hardly looked like a world-shaking giant. Amazon’s market cap is six times what it was at this point in 2014, or a gain of $840 billion. It took Google 14 years to reach that stock market valu
[Andrew Sheng] Remembering 1968

Sept 5, 2018

This year, baby boomers born after World War II like myself remember the 50th anniversary of 1968, when many of us came of age. 　I was studying at the University of Bristol that year, and it was illuminating that my generation of students were protesting against the Vietnam War in Paris, London and Washington, witnessing the unfolding of the Cultural Revolution in China and “flower power.” Bristol was then hardly the home of liberals, being a very middle-class redbrick university, but the protes
[Alex Webb] Soccer fans, your team is coming after you

Sept 5, 2018

It’s easy to think of sports teams as massive companies: They have huge global exposure, millions of fans, and athletes on eye-popping salaries.　In reality, though, even the biggest teams are little more than minnows. The world’s wealthiest soccer team, Manchester United, has a market value of just $4.1 billion -- less than, say, Fevertree Drinks, a maker of tonic water and mixers with just 51 employees.　While the biggest teams have millions, if not hundreds of millions, of fans, they have histo
[Satyajit Das] We may be facing textbook emerging market crisis

Sept 5, 2018

Emerging-market stresses have been building since at least 2013. Investors may have forgotten the effect of the “taper tantrum” on the “Fragile Five” -- Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa -- a term coined by Morgan Stanley to describe their vulnerability to capital outflows. Monetary accommodation, lower current-account deficits and growth disguised the underlying challenges, attracting more capital to those markets.　The textbook recipe for an emerging-market crisis requires a lar
[David Ignatius] To get back in Syria game, US must prevent Idlib bloodbath

Sept 5, 2018

As the Syrian tragedy lurches toward a bloody final showdown in Idlib province, the Trump administration is struggling to check Russia and the Syrian regime from an assault there that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns would be a “humanitarian catastrophe.” The administration’s efforts are so late in coming, and so limited, that it’s hard to muster much hope they can reverse seven years of American failure. But at least the administration has stopped the dithering and indecision of the
[Mac Margolis] Argentina’s Macri scores economic own goal

Sept 5, 2018

From debt vultures and cooked books to fiscal time bombs, Argentine President Mauricio Macri inherited quite the mess. In his three years of office, he has handled most of these challenges remarkably well, drawing cheers from investors and his compatriots. Here was a decisive, business-friendly manager, talking transparency and free market initiatives to end what might have been “the largest populist experiment” in the world, in the words of Oxford Economics analyst Guillermo Tolosa.　Now the muc
[Kim Seong-kon] Riding the Seoul-Washington Express

Sept 4, 2018

Although Richard Brautigan tragically took his own life in 1984, before he died he left us some legendary literary classics such as “Trout Fishing in America.” This novel in particular has greatly influenced many other prominent writers, such as the celebrated Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. By the 1990s, Brautigan’s legacy was so strong that, in 1994, a young man named Peter Eastman actually changed his name to “Trout Fishing in America” and a young couple named their baby after the novel. F
[Noah Smith] Why the US economy is having a boom

Sept 4, 2018

There’s no doubt that the US economy is in a boom. The Conference Board is reporting the highest levels of job satisfaction in more than a decade. This is probably because of a tight labor market -- the ratio between the unemployment level and the number of job vacancies is at its lowest level in a half-century.　A broader measure, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, is back to 2006 levels. Meanwhile, real gross domestic product growth for the second quarter was just revised up to 4.2 p
[Sandrine Devillard, Anu Madgavkar] A woman’s place is in the digital revolution

Sept 4, 2018

Digital technologies are a double-edged sword for the world’s women. Men’s greater access to these technologies puts women at risk of being left even further behind economically and socially. But if women can tap the full power of digital technologies, vital new opportunities will open up for them.According to estimates by the GSM Association, women’s access to the internet and mobile phones is about 85 percent of the level for men, on average, and a total of 1.7 billion women in low- and middle
[Lee Jae-min] Striking a balance between data and privacy: A second try

Sept 4, 2018

Global trading norms have traditionally adopted a bifurcated approach: goods trade and services trade. These still constitute the two main pillars of trade agreements. Now, a fundamental change is in the offing. The arrival of artificial intelligence and the internet of things is now blurring the conventional line between goods and services. The two are now often combined, converged and integrated in one medium or product. Goods provide services, and services in turn put more goods for sale. Con
[John M. Eger] The new normal in education includes art, science

Sept 4, 2018

Well into the 1990s and certainly by 2000, any business that did not have the worldwide web or “dot-com” in its name was toast. We may have spent at least $2 trillion over three years to launch what is the internet of today. But this was only the beginning.　Outsourcing and offshoring soon followed. It’s cheaper, no question about it. We’ve seen a reduction in the cost of telecommunications; we’ve also seen a reduction in the cost of transportation. It doesn’t make sense to produce something your
[Eli Lake] Iran’s fake news is a fake threat

Sept 3, 2018

As if the free world didn’t have enough to worry about with Russian fake news, now the world leader in state-sponsored terrorism is getting into the act: Iran is running a disinformation campaign on social media, and it is bigger than previously believed.　A closer look at this propaganda, however, reveals a paper tiger. Iran’s network of Twitter handles, websites and Facebook fakes are amateurish and clumsy. Anyone foolish enough to trust information from something called the “Liberty Front Pres
[Joseph E. Stiglitz] The myth of secular stagnation

Sept 3, 2018

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, some economists argued that the United States, and perhaps the global economy, was suffering from “secular stagnation,” an idea first conceived in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Economies had always recovered from downturns. But the Great Depression had lasted an unprecedented length of time. Many believed that the economy recovered only because of government spending on World War II, and many feared that with the end of the war, the economy
[Mac Margolis] Latin America’s left needs better heroes

Sept 3, 2018

For a man behind bars, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been on a tear. In recent weeks, his followers have taken to the streets in his name. Foreign celebrities and world leaders including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate have sung his praises. Even Pope Francis reportedly sent him blessings. No other candidate comes close in the polls for the Oct. 7 presidential elections.　That’s not half bad for the political leader whom two Brazilian courts found guilty of graft and money
[Mitchell Schnurman] Best thing about Trump’s trade deal: ‘We didn’t blow it all up’

Sept 3, 2018

Maybe President Donald Trump has learned a better way to make deals in Washington: Negotiate instead of walking away.　Or maybe opponents have figured out how to sway the president: Present a strong united front with business and political leaders from across the spectrum.　On Aug. 27, Trump and officials from Mexico announced a breakthrough in trade talks that paves the way to refresh the North American Free Trade Agreement.　Many details are unclear and the process still faces a public review and