"This is a statistical recovery and a human recession." -- Larry Summers

It was the best one-liner I heard come out of the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Of course one week later, speculation rife in sessions entitled, "Will there be a double dip?" were overtaken by the Double...

Barney Frank is the gruff and powerful Chair of the Financial Services Committee in the House of Representatives. He spearheaded the passage of stern financial and banking reforms which are before the Senate for passage, but, due to delays, have already been implemented by regulators.

But Frank's next target is...

The war of words between China and Google escalated this week into a full-blown diplomatic flap.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked China to investigate cyber-sabotage incidents against Google that led the search giant recently to threaten to leave unless Chinese censorship requirements were scrapped.

She lectured: "Countries that...

American oil, businessmen, Canadian mining companies, and now the rule of law are being attacked by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Anyone thinking of going there or doing business, think again.

Here's the latest injustice. On December 16, United Nations judicial experts condemned Venezuela's arrest...

The solution to the end of the world
The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global...

The best thing that ever happened to America is the ascension of Sarah Palin to star status. She is the reigning queen of the political freak show where candidates are invaded, ogled, sliced, diced and spliced by a public hungry for human train wrecks.

Palin, former Republican vice presidential candidate,...

The business case for a national health plan in the US of some kind has been overlooked; but the numbers are conclusive. There are two reforms needed: universal coverage and cost controls.

You cannot control costs as long as you have a private-sector dominated medical system based on profitability, conflicts...

Health care reform in the U.S. appears to be more than halfway home and even a watered-down version will boost its beleaguered economy.

Americans this weekend began crossing their biggest psychological Rubicon: opposition to universal health care. Once on the other side, they will eliminate the single biggest fear among...

Property and casualty insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. of Toronto not only weathered the greatest financial storm since the Depression, but profited mightily and continues to do so. Its 2009 third-quarter results, released Thursday -- it earned US$562.4-million, up from US$467.6-million a year ago, while revenue increased to US$2.21 billion...

The world desperately needs Glass-Steagall on steroids. Banking must be atomized -- a la America's 1933 Glass-Steagall legislation -- in order to separate high-risk investment banking from taxpayer-insured deposits. Canada does a reasonably good job of sequestering these businesses, but the facts are that excessively big banks like ours contributed...

World: step aside for Canada.

Commodities, the Canadian dollar and Toronto Stock Exchange are headed onward and upward despite the world economy appearing to be only halfway through this Great Recession.
The U.S. is undertaking a managed devaluation of its currency to overcome the damage caused by the decades...

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University professor, author and special advisor to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and other global organizations examined the causes of the meltdown and proposes reforms to prevent catastrophic bubbles from being created and then bursting.

Q: What allowed the derivatives to...

It's about taxing them, stupid.
Free trade advocate Jagdish Bhagwati believes that windfall profits taxes on the financial sector and the creation of an independent global risk management board are necessary reforms to shore up capitalism and globalization.

In a wide-ranging interview in Toronto recently, Dr. Bhagwati fleshed out...

I love David Letterman and I love the way he handled the blackmail attempt recently by coming "clean" about his office sexual exploits.

But I have one problem.

It's lousy, probably fire-able, workplace practice. Technically, Letterman is like a CEO and in some places, like Israel for instance, screwing around...

I sat down recently with Peter Kraus. In December, at the height of the market turmoil, he became Chair and CEO of Alliance/Bernstein of New York, one of the world's largest asset management firms. His predecessor had bet heavily on financial stocks and Kraus was brought in because of his...

The G20 in Pittsburgh issued an accord last week that was the financial equivalent of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The governments agreed to collaborate, to devise early-warning systems, to force banks to be open to inspection and to crack down on the type of malfeasance that brought the global economy...

A world expert on economics delivered a cogent and optimistic analysis of the meltdown, its causes, its cure and its effect on the future at the recent Global Business Forum in Banff, Alberta.

Dr. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist with IHS Global Insight, blamed twin "addictions" for 2008's financial catastrophe:...

Oil company CEOs and Canadian, U.S. and British government officials attending the Global Business Forum in Banff last week heard a chilling forecast of military clashes if there is an environmental meltdown due to climate change.

The world's military leaders have been secretly studying the geo-strategic implications of climate change...

The turmoil since August 2007 has not been blamed directly on oil prices but there's a link.
"The US has experienced six recessions since 1972. At least five of these were associated with oil prices. In every case, when oil consumption in the US reached 4% percent of GDP,...

Canada's banking system is one of the best regulated, and modulated, in the world, which is why no Canadian financial institution went bust during the 1930s Depression, nor did any even seriously wobble during this year's meltdown.

The result is that Canada's five biggest banks, with their investment banking subsidiaries,...