By Dan Steinbock
The recent Washington summit took the US-China bilateral relations onto a new level, while President Xi’s UN visit gave a glimpse of China’s new global role.
China’s New Global Role: President Xi in Washington and the UN
By Dan Steinbock
How Asia Works: Finance: The Merits of a Short Leash
By Joe Studwell
“Demonstrating that an exchange economy is coherent and stable does not demonstrate that the same is true of an economy with capitalist financial institutions … Indeed, central banking and other financial control devices arose as a response to the embarrassing incoherence of financial markets.” 1 – Hyman P. Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
Interview with Dan Steinbock on the Chance of the RMB to Join the SDR Basket
1. In your opinion, what is the chance of the RMB to join the SDR basket this year? Has it met all the criteria? What is the biggest barrier preventing it from joining?
The Fallacy of Measurement
By Mark Esposito and Terence Tse
In the past two decades, the number of performance indices has proliferated substantially. There are good reasons why performance indices have blossomed: they catch attention and they make information easily understandable. In this article, Terence Tse and Mark Esposito discuss the abilities of indices and glean insights into how they work by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
Regulation and Culture Change in Banks
By John Mellor
Responses from regulators to the failures in bank governance and standards of conduct revealed by the crisis of 2007-2008 will fall short of what is needed to restore credibility and trust in financial services. Besides regulation, a change in bank culture that embeds appropriate values and behaviours is needed. But what does this mean in practice? Research on governance and culture of banks, underway at the University of Leicester, has already identified the several key influences that bear on the “soft” issues, and which will require serious consideration by bank leaders of today and those who will assume governance responsibilities in the future.
On Economic Inequality
Economic inequality is one of the most divisive issues of our time. In this article, Harry Frankfurt, one of the most influential moral philosophers in the world, argues that we are morally obligated to eliminate poverty – not achieve equality or reduce inequality, and how focusing instead on inequality is distracting and alienating.
Building the Best-Practice Engagement Bank
By Brett King, Alex Sion and Michael Degnan
If you were building a bank from scratch today to optimise customer experience and engagement, what would it look like? Is there a set of benchmarks or best-practices that we could bundle together to create the world’s best bank for customers?
Value Creator or Destroyer? Keys to Profitable Outcomes
History is littered with examples, from AOL and Time Warner to Daimler and Chrysler, Kmart and Sears to Bank of America and Countrywide. Although there is a wealth of empirical evidence that shows an 80 percent failure rate for mergers and acquisitions, organizations just can’t seem to stop themselves from trying.
The Role of Ethical Finance in the Well Being of the 21st Century Societies
By Sofia Santos
According to the Report produced by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, it is acknowledged that “…GDP is an inadequate metric to gauge well-being over time particularly in its economic, environmental, and social dimensions, some aspects of which are often referred to as sustainability.” Since Ethical Finance, in the shape of ethical banks or responsible investments, clearly state their lending policy which is related with their mission, which in turn is associated with a set of values that go beyond shareholder maximisation profit, then one can see the ethical finance sector as a tool to promote the new well being defined above. In fact, ethical bank’s values are instead associated with the maximisation of society well being, since economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects are all taken into consideration in a transparent way. Therefore, this article argues that the main role of ethical finance in the 21st century is to be able to promote and improve local well being by providing finance to local entrepreneurs that are able to develop businesses with positive environmental and social impact.
EDITOR'S PICK OF THE WEEK
China’s Challenging Search for a New Model of Economic Growth
By Danny Leipziger
China cannot continue to rely on exports to drive its growth, but what are the alternatives?
China ran a $1.2 trillion trade surplus last year, and despite admonitions from the IMF to rely...
