It was a bad year for the world’s stock markets. According to the Financial Times today, global stock market capitalisation dropped 12.1 per cent to $45.7 trillion. Asian stock markets were hit quite hard, with “Japan’s Nikkei index losing 17.3 per cent this year, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index 20 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 22 per cent.” Losses in stock markets are not unusual, and most investors accept them as a matter of course. But these losses have to be made up somehow, or productive investments will suffer. What is unusual about these losses is that there aren’t many markets that offer any promise of long-run profitability so investments will likely stagnate. If that happens, then a return to robust economic growth any time soon is highly unlikely. The best returns for the were in US Treasuries–a good thing for the US government.
The Obama Administration has waged an aggressive war against those it regards as terrorists using drone strikes. We don’t know very much about the drones or how they are used, but many are beginning to question how drone warfare is changing American foreign policy. Joshua Foust asks some very important questions about drones in an article in The Atlantic.
There has been a continuing protest in the village of Wukan in China. The protest is unusual in that there has been a vigorous internet discussion of the issues, a somewhat counterintuitive event in China. Here’s an interesting essay on why the Chinese government has been so willing to allow open discussions of the protest. The essay suggests that open discussions are the way that the government gets “real” information about what is going on in the country. Obviously, there are limits to this openness.
World Politics News 
Leave a comment