Archives
By year and month
2026
September 2026
Greenland: Europe Moves from Aid to Strategy
For years, the relationship between the European Union and Greenland largely reflected its institutional architecture: cooperation with an associated territory, focused primarily on education, fisheries and economic development. On September 7, 2026, in Nuuk, that relationship began to change in nature.
Luxury: The Economics of Scarcity
There are few industries in which selling less can be a sign of strength, raising prices a way of protecting demand, and refusing a customer an instrument of value creation. Luxury belongs to this peculiar category.
Europe in Space: A Private Victory in a System Still Searching for Autonomy
On September 5, 2026, a German rocket lifted off from Norway and reached orbit. The achievement was historic. It does not, however, mean quite what Europe would already like it to mean.
Morocco–Spain: Old Demons Return
There are international relationships that can be broken. The one between Morocco and Spain is probably not among them.
Japan: Defending the Yen Moves to a New Scale
For a long time, Japanese interventions in the foreign-exchange market followed a relatively familiar script. The yen weakened too quickly, the Ministry of Finance issued increasingly explicit warnings, and Tokyo eventually bought its own currency to remind markets that some trajectories were not entirely unconstrained.
Capital: Those Who Finance the World
The global economy is usually described through those who produce. Companies manufacture, workers work, consumers spend, governments tax and invest, entrepreneurs innovate. We look at factories, technologies, markets, infrastructure and states because that is where economic activity becomes visible.
Alphabet: The Empire of Interfaces
Google began with an ambition that now appears almost modest in light of what it became: organizing the information available on the Internet. A quarter of a century later, Alphabet no longer merely organizes that information. The group helps design the processors that compute it, owns the infrastructure that carries it, trains the models that interpret it, controls several of the software environments through which it is accessed, and operates some of the largest systems through which it is monetized.
Germany: When the Firewall Becomes the System
For years, Germany’s political firewall had a relatively simple function: prevent Alternative für Deutschland from entering government without fundamentally changing how the rest of the political system operated.
Central Banks: The End of the Interlude
For nearly fifteen years, advanced economies learned to live in a world where money cost almost nothing. Inflation was low, sometimes too low, interest rates hovered near zero, and central banks worried more about deflation than rising prices.
Hong Kong: The New Route for Russian Gold
For a long time, sanctioning a commodity essentially meant shutting it out of the major markets where it could be sold, financed and converted into liquidity. Russian gold is now exposing the limits of that logic.
The Power of Standards
A company may manufacture a good product, sell it at a competitive price and still find itself locked out of a market. It may lack a recognised test, sufficient traceability, financial statements prepared under the expected framework or evidence that its suppliers meet certain requirements.
Vietnam: The Doctrine of Growth
Some countries seek power through arms, others through natural resources, finance or technology. Vietnam has followed a quieter path.