Do others agree? We should not gang up on Toshiba so much as ask the question, what are the commonalities?, - if any. "Nicholas Benes, head of the Board Director Training Institute of Japan and one of the architects of Japan’s 2015 corporate governance code that sought to make the country’s companies more investor friendly, says Toshiba’s governance failures encapsulate broader shortcomings in corporate Japan.

In the great whirl of FinTech news, with daily reports on the potential of artificial intellitence, machine learning, bots, and blockchain, the power of present practices can be forgotten.

Most small and midsize businesses pay with paper checks: 62% according to a recent Javelin Strategy and Research survey. Because it's easier.

The “Border Adjustment Tax” (BAT) endorsed recently by President Trump is his administration’s first foray into international economics. It is an inauspicious start.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)[1] recently released its semi-annual economic outlook[2].  Three major themes emerge from the report. First, the global economy is gradually emerging from a five-year (2012-1016) low-growth trap, and global growth should pick up modestly in 2017and 2018 (Table 1).  Second, we are seeing a shift in economic policy from over-reliance on monetary policy to fiscal initiatives designed to boost growth. Third, we are not out of the woods and significant risks remain.

I am sharing my new monograph, "Indian and Chinese Engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Comparative Assessment."

Foreign Affairs ran my take on the Abe-Trump summit at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2017-02-16/trump-and-japan?cid=soc-fb-rdr .

Excerpts:

One of the oft-repeated themes of Candidate (then President) Trump is that the world has been taking advantage of us at every turn, and that China is the main culprit.  The evidence presented is that China has been systematically manipulating its currency to boost its exports and discourage imports, thus contributing to the massive U.S trade deficit.  However, the evidence is a dollar short and a couple of years late.  If anything, China has been struggling in the past 18 months to prevent its currency from depreciating too rapidly.