It’s a small open-air factory, impossible to spot from the road. You have to go into Thabong, the township in Welkom, three hours south of Johannesburg, to discover it in an old mining town in the G-Hostel, where a dozen workers are clustered, busy transforming rocks into gold. Behind the apparent disorder hides a…
The man who broke the Bank of England George Soros. He’s the investor’s investor—the man who still holds the record for making more money in a single day’s trading than anyone. He pocketed $1 billion betting against the British pound on “Black Wednesday” in 1992, when sterling lost 20 percent of its value…
– A convoy of hearses left the cemetery in Thessaloniki, Greece and made its way to the government’s nearby regional headquarters. To the relief of the civil servants watching from the windows, the vehicles were empty – except for the drivers, who arrived en masse to protest a recent tax hike. Hearse costs…
Skyscraping Triumvirate SHANGHAI – Shanghai Tower will eventually be a sight to behold. But right now it’s nothing more than an ugly concrete cube – 15 floors’ worth, surrounded by steel girders. Hundreds of workers mill about the construction site, which is tucked in amid freeways. Passersby – women clad in pretty ensembles and elegantly…
Cheap Money will Help European Banks But Not The People Boris Roessler / AFP / Getty Images A home-made euro sign is attached to the tip of a Christmas tree in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on December 21, 2011. Might the world be witnessing the first…
There was a time, just a few months ago, when David Cameron was the toast of Brussels. Those who fretted about Britain’s new Conservative prime minister, a declared Eurosceptic, were surprised by how accommodating he could be. He did not stand in the way of the euro zone’s new treaty to create a permanent…
Understanding the Occupy Wall Street movement: A primer Occupy Wall Street, the amorphous series of demonstrations that are reshaping the political debate in many major American cities and in countries around the globe, entered its second month on Monday. Here is a primer to understanding the movement that has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people…
How the West became China’s willing servant Eurozone leaders have brought their begging bowl to China, looking for help in boosting their bailout fund. So what does this say about the shift in the global balance of power? In October 1911, China rose up in revolution. Four months later the last emperor had fallen and…
FROM Seattle to Sydney, protesters have taken to the streets. Whether they are inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York or by the indignados in Madrid, they burn with dissatisfaction about the state of the economy, about the unfair way that the poor are paying for the sins of rich bankers,…