Economy

  • Secure the Strait of Hormuz by Charging Tolls

    Navigation is becoming dangerous not only through the Strait of Hormuz, but also through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea. This is intolerable for both oil-producing nations and trading nations. Nor does the United States military appear to retain the ability to secure these waterways by force. . If military force cannot solve the problem,…

  • The Postwar World and the Shifting Currents Beneath It

    (This is a slightly revised version of my article to be published in Newsweek Japan on September 8.) . The Post-Cold War Era and the Expansion of American Power . The international situation today can broadly be described as the “post-Cold War” era. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which divided the world for decades…

  • Will China’s Humanoid Robots Replace the Chinese?

    Chinese humanoid robots that can run, jump, and perform all sorts of acrobatic feats have been attracting a great deal of attention lately. Watching them, one might even begin to wonder whether the day will come when China’s 1.4 billion people themselves are replaced by robots. Well, that is a joke. But what, then, has happened to Japan, a country…

  • Could U.S. Treasuries Take a Tumble in September?

    Simon and Garfunkel used to sing: August, die she must, The autumn winds blow chilly and cold, September, I’ll remember, A love once new has now grown old. Are the U.S. treasuries following a similar fate? . The amount of outstanding U.S. government debt has now grown to slightly more than one year’s GDP. When Treasury securities mature, the government…

  • Rethinking Japan’s Place in a Rising Asia

    (This article appeared in Newsweek Japan on August 18.) On August 8, news broke that both South Korea and Taiwan had surpassed Japan in exports during the first half of this year. Since the mid-1990s, I had already grown weary of hearing the world sneer that “Japan is finished—even in Asia.” This latest news felt almost like the final blow.…

  • Is America’s Consumer Market, the Largest in the World, a Mirage?

    What enables the United States, for all its current troubles, to throw its weight around as much as it does is the fact that it still has by far the world’s largest consumer market—more than twice the size of China’s. Many countries depend heavily on exports to the United States to keep their own economies going. . But there is…

  • Where the Space and AI Investment Frenzy May End Up: Lessons from Britain’s Railway Mania

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public on June 12, raising the equivalent of roughly $80 billion in a single IPO. Although its share price has eased somewhat since then, the company’s market capitalization still stood at about $1.8 trillion in mid-July, making it one of the seven to ten most valuable companies in the world. For comparison, the ten largest companies…

  • Why Are Environmental Activists So Quiet in This Heat?

    It’s been scorching hot day after day. People say that if you fall on the pavement, you can suffer serious burns from the heat of the asphalt. Even the cicadas seem to have disappeared. These days, their larvae may be cooked underground before they ever emerge, and summer arrives with hardly a chirp. . Come to think of it, it’s…

  • The history of the Warburg family

    (I lately came across this intriguing piece in my own email magazine, “The Kaleidoscope of Civilization”. Let me post this for fun.) . Akio KAWATO There are several banks around the world bearing the name Warburg. They form part of a global financial network connected to the Jewish Warburg family. . One member of the family, Paul Warburg, moved to…

  • What Happens If “Lehman 2.0” Hits?

    Akio KAWATO . Today, May 7, the Japanese stock market surged, with the Nikkei reaching historic highs. Hopes for a ceasefire involving Iran also helped push stock prices upward. Yet beneath the surface, the financial markets of both Japan and the United States are showing troubling signs. In both countries, long-term interest rates are rising—meaning confidence in government bonds is…