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Slovenia - The Star Pupil This Article is About: Sage Financial Services The most exciting event in Slovenia last week was when a group of young army recruits spat on the national flag and sang the anthem of the now defunct former Yugoslavia. They were sent to a military psychiatrist for observation. Indeed, economically...
The Second Coming in Albania This Article is About: Business Plan Financial Blessed with Chinese GDP growth rates (7-8% annually in each of the last 3 years) and German inflation (4%, down from 32% in 1997, mostly attributable to increases in energy and housing costs), it is easy to forget Albania's Somali recent past.
In...
Monitoring Macedonia This Article is About: Financial Planning Advisor Close to 500,000 people - one in four - live under the poverty line in a country where the average monthly salary is less than 150 US dollars. More than one in three members of the workforce are chronically unemployed. With inflation up 5.5% in the...
Hawala, or The Bank That Never Was This Article is About: Bmw Financial Service I. OVERVIEW
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA, attention was drawn to the age-old, secretive, and globe-spanning banking system developed in Asia and known as "Hawala" (to change, in Arabic). It is based on a short term,...
The Macedonian Lottery This Article is About: Bmw Financial Service Every conflict has its economic moments and dimensions. The current conflict in Macedonia perhaps even more so.
The USA and its Western allies regard Macedonia as a bridge between Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania. Hence the EU's plans for the...
The European Bank for the Retardation of Development This Article is About: Financial Planning Analyst In typical bureaucratese, the pensive EBRD analyst ventures with the appearance of compunction: "A number of projects have fallen short of acceptable standards (notice the passive, exculpating voice - SV) and have put the reputation of the bank at...
The Myth of the Earnings Yield This Article is About: Financial Planning Firms Abstract
A very slim minority of firms distribute dividends. This truism has revolutionary implications. In the absence of dividends, the foundation of most - if not all - of the financial theories we employ in order to determine the value of...
Lessons in Transition This Article is About: Christian Financial Services Q: What have been the most successful approaches to attracting direct foreign investments: offering prospective investors tax breaks and similar benefits, or improving the overall investment climate of the country?
Empirical research has...
Economic Free Zones in Macedonia This Article is About: Free Financial Planning Question: Dr. Vaknin – is it true that you are the father of the Law of Free Economic Zones?
Answer: I participated in the dedicated and professional team, from many ministries and state organs, which prepared the law. The initiative –...
The Predicament of the Newly Rich This Article is About: Christian Financial Services They are the object of thinly disguised envy. They are the raw materials of vulgar jokes and the targets of popular aggression. They are the Newly Rich. Perhaps they should be dealt with more appropriately within the academic discipline of...
Is My Money Safe? On The Soundness Of Our Banks This Article is About: Christian Financial Services Banks are institutions wherein miracles happen regularly. We rarely entrust our money to anyone but ourselves – and our banks. Despite a very chequered history of mismanagement, corruption, false promises and representations, delusions and...
Dividing The Loot This Article is About: Fairfield Financial Services It is when the going gets better, that the going gets tough. This enigmatic sentence bears explanation: when a firm is in dire straits, in the throes of a crisis, or is a loss maker – conflicts between the shareholders (partners) are rare. When...
Public Sector Economies in Transition This Article is About: Financial Planning Firms In the previous article, we described the various methods developed in the West to cope with the ever-burgeoning public sector.
Yet, economies in transition everywhere in the world have learned a lesson the hard way: not everything that is Western...
The Criminality of Transition This Article is About: Financial Planning Manager Lecture given at the Netherlands Economic Institute (NEI) on 18/4/2001
Human vice is the most certain thing after death and taxes, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin. The only variety of economic activity, which will surely survive even a nuclear...
Market Impeders and Market Inefficiencies This Article is About: Fairfield Financial Services Even the most devout proponents of free marketry and hidden hand theories acknowledge the existence of market failures, market imperfections and inefficiencies in the allocation of economic resources. Some of these are the results of structural...
Immortality and Mortality in the Economic Sciences This Article is About: New England Financial Services Roberto Calvo Macias, a young author and thinker from Spain, once wrote to me that it is impossible to design a coherent philosophy of Economy without accounting for the (sad?) fact that we are mortals. This insight is intriguing. It is not that we...
The Distributive Justice of the Market This Article is About: New England Financial Services "(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
(2) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the...
The Fabric of Economic Trust This Article is About: Oasis Financial Services Economy is called the dismal science because it pretends to be one, disguising its uncertainties and shifting fashions with mathematical formulae. Economy describes the aggregate behaviour of humans and, in this restricted sense, it is a branch of...
The Revolt of the Poor: The Demise of Intellectual Property? This Article is About: Peak Financial Services Three years ago I published a book of short stories in Israel. The publishing house belongs to Israel's leading (and exceedingly wealthy) newspaper. I signed a contract which stated that I am entitled to receive 8% of the income from the sales of...
The Inferno of the Finance Director This Article is About: Financial Planning Software Sometimes, I harbour a suspicion that Dante was a Financial Director. His famous work, "The Inferno", is such an accurate description of the job that it cannot be otherwise. He is fervently hated by the workers. He is thoroughly despised by the...
The Blessings of the Black Economy This Article is About: Certificate Financial Planning Some call it the "unofficial" or "informal" economy, others call it the "grey economy" but the old name fits it best: the "black economy". In the USA "black" means "profitable, healthy" and this is what the black economy is. Macedonia should count...
To Grow Out Of Unemployment This Article is About: Peak Financial Services There is a connection between economic growth and unemployment. There is a connection between growth and inflation. Therefore, commonsense (and financial theory) goes, there must be a connection between inflation and unemployment. A special measure...
Liquidity or Liquidation This Article is About: Peak Financial Services Large parts of the world today suffer from a severe liquidity crisis. The famed globalization of the capital markets seems to confine itself, ever more, to the richer parts, the more liquid exchanges, the more affluent geopolitical neighbourhoods....
The Value of Stocks of a Company This Article is About: Financial Planning Firm The debate rages all over Eastern and Central Europe, in countries in transition as well as in Western Europe. It raged in Britain during the 80s: Is privatization really the robbery in disguise of state assets by a select few, cronies of the...
