J.J. Gould

With the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre coming up -- or as the Chinese government likes to call it, the "June Fourth Incident" -- yesterday's New York Times features an absorbing account of contemporary Chinese university students' complex relationship with the 1989 uprising. Two things stand out: a pattern of apolitical focus among the students on their future in China's economy, and a general lack of access to government-independent…… More »

The current issue of The Economist looks at how the idea of "corporate social responsibility" is faring in the downturn. The answer is mixed: Corporate giving is down, but companies and their customers seem to be keeping up their interest in sustainability.Take candy makers Mars and Cadbury: Both have committed to making their cocoa production environmentally sustainable by 2020. Why? Because they're worried about environmental degradation ruining their cocoa…… More »

Russell Shor, a senior industry analyst with the Gemological Institute of America, relates a story over at Foreign Policy -- possibly apocryphal, possibly even from a John le Carré novel I've yet to read -- of a Soviet plan back in the early '60s to disrupt DeBeers, still today South Africa's largest diamond firm, by manipulating the world diamond market via the Soviets' own Russian diamond supply. "The plan proceeded apace until someone in the government…… More »

At the WSJ's Real Time Economics blog today, Bob Davis relays a new assessment from the Cambridge, Mass. consulting firm Monitor Group that the recession's drop in asset prices has seriously diminished the size of oil-rich countries' and Asian exporters' once-feared sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). SWFs -- i.e., state-owned investment funds -- were until now thought to hold around $3 trillion in assets and to threaten growing in short order to more than $10 trillion…… More »

Charles Munger talks about the the Ponzi model in American business; perverse incentives in the regulatory system; chronic, fatal mistakes among execs; and the role of accountants in creating the mess we're in now… More »