May 28th 2026|5 min read Listen to this story AN IMPERTINENT SOUL once asked Paul Samuelson to name a social-scientific principle that was true but not trivial. The Nobel laureate’s answer was comparative advantage, which explains why two countries can both benefit from trade even if one is better than the other at everything. That principle has sadly fallen out of fashion. So here is another one…

May 27th 2026|SEOUL, TAIPEI and TOKYO|10 min read Listen to this story The numbers look staggeringly good. Taiwan, a rich economy that in a good year might be expected to expand by 3-4%, is growing at 14%. That is thanks to an explosion in exports, which, even after adjusting for inflation, rose by over 40% last year. In a similar vein, operating profits at South Korea’s biggest firms ballooned…

May 25th 2026|6 min read Listen to this story AI Narrated SINCE THE global financial crisis of 2007-09 the days of offshore finance have regularly looked numbered. In 2010 America passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which required foreign financial firms to disclose the assets of Americans. A year later Nicolas Sarkozy—who led both France and the G20 at the time—boldly declared…