Colombia is 8th best country for retiring: Forbes … US economy magazine Forbes has placed Colombia 8th in a list of 25 global destinations for foreign retirees. Colombia was bettered only by Ecuador in the South America region. The influential US publication recommended 25 countries to retire to based off the annual International Living "World's Best Retirement Destination for 2015&...Read More

Much more than digital cash … The rise and fall of the crypto-currency is good news for authors at least … BITCOIN may well be the world's worst-performing currency. In 2014 it lost more than half of its value against the dollar, beating even Ukraine's hryvnia and the Russian rouble. But measured by the number of new books it has inspired, bitcoin is top of the pile. Nearly 200...Read More

Inflation Doesn't Hurt So Much, Does It? … There might be better ways to generate more inflation. The first would be for the Fed to stop paying interest on reserves. As things stand, when banks hold reserve accounts at the Fed — which we normally call "cash" — they get paid 0.25 percent annual interest. As insignificant as it might seem, that provides an incentive f...Read More

Even Britain may be falling prey to Europe's deflationary vortex … On the face of it, Britain is much better placed to weather deflationary threats than the eurozone … Rejoice! UK inflation has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 15 years, and is heading lower still – down close to zero, according to some forecasts. That's a good thing according to the Chancellor, George...Read More

2015 forecast: What's in store for the global real estate sector? Foreign ownership restrictions relaxed, increasing interest from international investors, property industries going mobile – these are just some of the developments that are on the cards for frontier real estate markets in 2015. As 2014 draws to a close, global property portal Lamudi looked at five key trends to watch out...Read More

America's Going to Lose the Oil Price War … The financial debacle that has befallen Russia as the price of Brent crude dropped 50 percent in the last four months has overshadowed the one that potentially awaits the U.S. shale industry in 2015. It's time to heed it, because Saudi Arabia and other major Middle Eastern oil producers are unlikely to blink and cut output, and the price is...Read More

Monsanto earnings fall 34% after a year of global protests … Company that has come under fire for its genetically modified seeds said its earnings fell 34% in its first fiscal quarter … Monsanto its earnings fell 34% in its first fiscal quarter, as South American farmers cut back on planting corn, reducing demand for the company's biotech-enhanced seeds. – GuardianDominant So...Read More

Teaching Economics After the Crash … At universities from Glasgow to Kolkata, economics students are fighting their tutors over how to teach the subject in the wake of the crash. The Guardian's senior economics commentator, Aditya Chakrabortty, reports from the frontline of this most unusual and important academic war. – 9/11 Forum/UK from BBC Radio 4Dominant Social Theme: Economic...Read More

Why we can now be sure that interest rates won't go up this year … The Government clearly would like to keep interest rates low as possible for as long as possible, even though many of its supporters are net savers who are losing out … Interest rates are not going to be hiked in 2015. That is a forecast, rather than a certainty, of course, but virtually every piece of recent data s...Read More

Why the Fed Won't Tank the Stock Market … Investors in the U.S. seem fixated on a gloomy outlook for 2015, in which the Federal Reserve's efforts to remove economic stimulus cause stock and bond prices to fall. They're missing an important detail: If the Fed raises short-term interest rates above those in other major economies, U.S. markets may actually benefit. – Bloomberg...Read More

GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH) Falls as Cannabis Drug Fails Key Cancer Pain Study … GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH), a British biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing therapeutics derived from marijuana, released news today pertaining to its first Phase III trial for cancer pain drug Sativex. The product was used as an adjunctive treatment to optimized chronic opioid therapy during experiment...Read More

Germany's Angela Merkel needs a dressing down, not the red carpet treatment… Angela Merkel, who visits Britain this week, is a huge success in Germany, but in Europe she is a destructive failure who is damaging her own country as much as others … – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: Angela Merkel is a leader who can deliver.Free-Market Analysis: This article is a good example...Read More

The Atlantic Suburbs and the New American Poverty … More people with low incomes now live outside of cities, and some areas are ill-equipped to deal with the influx of the poor … Between 2000 and 2011, Atlanta's suburban poor population grew by 159 percent. But the suburbs of Atlanta no longer hold just the promise of good schools, clean streets, and whitewashed homes with manicure...Read More

A grand Tory-Labour coalition might be good for British business … A Conservative-Labour government is unlikely. But, were it to happen, the worst excesses of the two main parties might cancel each other out … – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: What we need mostly is wise leaders, not party politics.Free-Market Analysis: The technocracy meme constantly reemerges. In this case w...Read More

When is insider trading against the law? It's a trick question: There is no actual law against insider trading. This became painfully clear last month when a federal appeals court tossed out the criminal convictions of two Wall Street hedge-fund managers who had been found guilty of the offense about two years ago. The court not only exonerated the traders, but also called into question the en...Read More

It Was a Pivotal Year in TPP Activism but the Biggest Fight Is Still to Come … A draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's (TPP) Intellectual Property chapter from May 2014 leaked this past fall, confirming what previous leaks had suggested: this so-called trade agreement would bring copyright enforcement provisions that threaten users' right to free expression, privacy, and unfettere...Read More

World faces low inflation threat not seen since before WWII … Analysts are predicting that inflation will fall below 2pc in all of the countries that make up the G7 group of advanced nations this year. Central banks need to work fast to stop the world falling into a deflationary spiral … If inflation falls as low across the G7 as economists expect it to, this year will bring one of the...Read More

How can we make capitalism more popular? Individual investors should have access to tech start-up IPOs, giving the public a stake in capitalism, says Xavier Rolet, the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange … Capitalism has taken a pummeling over the last few years. From the global credit crunch to the banking failures, the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) and beyond,...Read More

The Rise and Fall of Gold … King Midas lusted after it. The Incas worshipped it. Shiny flakes of it set off a 19th-century rush to California and ship captains never stop looking for it at the bottom of the sea. While gold has ignited passions for centuries, for today's investors, it seems, the metal has been losing its allure. After surging sevenfold during a 12-year bull market —...Read More

So high expectations, so few riders … Criticizing economics for not being scientific enough is a crime of which many of us – I've done it – are guilty. But there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain, writing in the New York Times, have done it the wrong way. – BloombergDominant Social Theme: Economics is a great tool for...Read More