Research Areas

  1. Home
  2. Research Areas
All Africa Defense & Security Domestic Affairs Economy Education Energy Global Affairs Health Technology Issues

Green Economy Tomorrow, Climate Adaptation Now
December 6, 2024 - The outcome of the turbulent COP 29 climate gathering which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan prompts a couple of important considerations. One, the world community is not making any considerable progress on its declared goal to engineer a quick transition to non-carbon energy. Two, rich countries are reluctant to hand over billions of dollars to poor countries, so that they can invest in green technologies. Meanwhile, emissions go up, and so do world temperatures.
December 6, 2024
Strike at Boeing Hits USAF KC-46 Tanker, Supply Chain
October 16, 2024 - With the strike at Boeing entering a second month, what about the impact on national security?  On Monday, President Joe Biden dispatched Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su to Seattle for the first in-person meeting between a government official and the two parties.  Su’s mandate was to “encourage both parties to move forward in the bargaining process,” according to a Labor Department spokesman.
October 16, 2024
Solar Electrical Power from Fabrics?
October 7, 2024 - How about a tent that produces the electricity necessary to satisfy the needs of campers or field hospitals? Pvilion, a U.S. company based in Brooklyn, New York, can make them for you, following your specifications in terms of size and preferred material. Is this the new frontier of solar energy applications?
October 7, 2024
Electric Airplanes for Short Flights in America?
October 3, 2024 - Unlike in Europe, Japan or China, in America passenger railways have been neglected. While this may change in the future, at this time there are no fast trains networks. The only exception is the “Eastern Corridor” (Washington, DC – New York City – Boston) that is served by semi-fast trains. For the rest of the large country, to travel from point A to point B Americans have essentially two choices: drive or fly. However, large commercial carriers do not fly to small cities.
October 3, 2024
Water Used in Hydraulic Fracturing is Now Recycled
October 1, 2024 - Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is the phenomenal technological innovation that unleashed a U.S. boom in the production of oil and gas. Until a couple of decades ago, most energy experts agreed that America had practically exhausted most of its known oil and gas reserves.
October 1, 2024
U.S. Venture Capital is Now in the High Tech Weapons Business
August 29, 2024 - The Wall Street Journal recently featured Anduril, a defense start-up company and its founder Palmer Luckey, as an illustrative example of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists’ new focus on new defense companies working on futuristic weapons systems.
August 29, 2024
South Africa’s Solar Boom
August 14, 2024 - The African National Congress, South Africa’s governing party since 1994, is a sad illustration of African corruption and incompetence. Mostly for these reasons it lost its absolute majority in parliament in the recent May 29, 2024 elections. The most glaring example of this deadly combination of graft and inefficiency is Eskom, the state owned electricity provider. For decades, there has been no coherent investment strategy in new capacity, poor maintenance of existing power plants and transmission lines, and colossal thievery. All this resulted in what became a multi-year protracted electricity crisis that until recently appeared to be unsolvable.
August 14, 2024
The Vertical Urban Farming Revolution
August 2, 2024 - Soon enough the lettuce or kale that you buy at your favorite supermarket will be grown next door to it, in a high rise building. It will be reasonably priced and it will have great taste, just like the produce you are used to that is now grown far away, in large farms and then transported in refrigerated trucks to your market.
August 6, 2024
Uber Driverless EVs: The Urban Transportation Revolution
August 1, 2024 - The promise of electric vehicles, EVs, is that they will do away with internal combustion engines powered by oil derived gasoline. The elimination of internal combustion engines will translate into a dramatic reduction of harmful emissions caused by burning gasoline, this way helping mankind to reduce the greenhouse gases that trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere. As we all know, the greenhouse effect causes higher temperatures, global warming, and down the line climate change.
August 2, 2024
Africa Will Miss the AI Revolution
August 1, 2024 - The Economist recently noted that The Netherlands, with a population of only 18 million, has more data centers than the entire African Continent, population about 1.4 billion. Africa will not have an AI revolution mostly because it lacks the physical infrastructure for AI –fiber networks and data centers– and sufficient electric power generation and distribution to run it. Unless this state of affairs changes —rapidly— the Continent will miss out on the enormous education and economic development opportunities that exist for those who can easily access AI.
Corporations Must Provide Job Security
May 29, 2024 - The United Auto Workers’ success in unionizing a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee suggests that the reported death of private sector unions is not imminent. Fifty years ago, even in cyclical industries US unionized workers were close to Japan-style lifetime employment, with any layoffs in business downturns allocated by inverse seniority, so that after a few years a worker’s position was guaranteed. In white-collar activities, long careers were predominant and layoffs were scarce. Yet in today’s knowledge industries and elsewhere, the social contract between large corporations and their employees has become one-sided, with layoffs commonplace and lifetime employment a distant dream. This places excessive costs on employees. As the recent history of GE, Boeing and other faltering behemoths shows, it also eliminates the workforce’s knowledge and skills and destroys shareholder value.
May 29, 2024
Morocco’s Road to Development
August 08, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – Morocco: here is a North African economy working hard to promote domestic economic development by attracting foreign investments. What are the tools to achieve this strategic goal? Create and sustain a business friendly investment climate. According to the US State Department, 2021 Investment Climate Statements, here are the building blocks of this strategy:
August 9, 2022
Business in Africa goes through Morocco
July 22, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. MARRAKECH – Thanks to a partnership agreement between the Corporate Council on Africa and the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, the city of Marrakech this year hosted the US –Africa Business Summit, the flagship yearly event organized by the Council. Why hold this US-Africa Summit in Morocco, a country that most people would place at the western edge of the Arab world, more Middle Eastern than African?
July 23, 2022
1930s, here we come!
May 29, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. Pundits all over the media are proclaiming gloomily that we are in for a re-run of the 1970s. They are far too optimistic. If you look at the world with an unprejudiced eye, we currently have aggressive power blocs, rapidly escalating protectionism, overpriced stock and real estate markets and a huge mass of malinvestment from the last decade that will need to be written off. Guys and girls: that is not the 1970s, it is the 1930s, albeit with rather more inflation.
May 30, 2022
Win-Win Globalization Was a Dream
May 07, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON — On February 24, at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, not many observers had any idea that this European conflict would cause famine and high inflation in Africa, sky high energy prices in the US and Europe, and even cooking oil shortages in Indonesia. If this Russian invasion had taken place 50 years ago, probably the impact of what is and remains to this day a regional conflict
May 22, 2022
End Of The Green Illusion? Not Yet
April 13, 2022 - Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Now it is fairly clear. Getting to a green, decarbonized economy in order to stop global warming is a worthy aspiration; but realistically not an achievable goal, at least not in the next 5 to 10 years. It is an unachievable goal simply because we do not have cost-effective, scalable renewable energy technologies capable of reliably delivering all the energy we need to run complex economies at a reasonable cost.
April 17, 2022
Financial engineering fuels U.S. weakness
January 04th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. The sale to a Chinese company in 2016 of one of the world’s largest cobalt sources, controlled by a U.S. company Freeport McMoran (NYSE:FCX), is emblematic of U.S. national weakness, “wokeness” and decline. However, one underlying cause of that sale was the blizzard of stock buybacks and unsound acquisitions made by FCX in the years preceding its hurried liquidity-seeking selloff.
January 9, 2022
The U.S. and the world passed peak productivity
December 28th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week that U.S. non-farm business sector productivity unexpectedly fell 5.0% in the third quarter of 2021 and was 0.5% lower than its level in the third quarter of 2020. This returns the U.S. economy to a pattern of ultra-low productivity growth that first became evident in the Obama years, a dismal trend which seems likely to intensify in the next few years
December 29, 2021
Engage Big Oil For Lower Emissions (From RealClearEnergy)
November 12th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Paul Steidler. These are heady days for bashing U.S. and European multinational oil corporations while also begging OPEC to increase oil production. While the U.S. House of Representatives is excoriating oil company CEOs, the Biden Administration is pleading for more oil from abroad. Talk about bizarre and mixed messages. A better course is to hold Big Oil accountable to its bold promises for cleaner energy production and to track how it is doing.
November 15, 2021
Wobbly Germany In Wobbly Europe
October 24th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – The inconclusive outcome of the recent German political elections does not move the needle of Germany’s probable future directions by much. Under the long reign of Chancellor Angela Merkel Germany was wobbly and unable (in fact unwilling) to define and take a clear stand on its (and Europe’s) national security interests. After these elections, with Merkel now gone for good, expect no major changes.
October 25, 2021
The palsied hand of capitalism
October 04th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. “Every individual… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention”
October 6, 2021
A Cleaner Oil Industry: Driven By Data And Common Sense (From RealClearEnergy)
September 01st, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI fellow Paul Steidler. The world is going to need 50 percent more energy by 2050, including a large amount of oil. This challenge can be met while also addressing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Through data analytics, U.S. oil companies are taking many steps to significantly cut their emissions soon. Policymakers should encourage these actions as the U.S. oil industry is large
September 5, 2021
Cold Wars can be good for business
August 06th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. The chilling in relations with China since 2017 and the discovery that China may well have been responsible for the release of the COVID-19 virus is forcing the world to accept that the globalization and free trade world of 1991-2015 is no more. Instead, with China an authoritarian Communist society that seeks domination and does not play by the rules of international trade, we are back in a Cold War like that of 1945-91.
August 9, 2021
Biden Tough On China
August 03rd, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – A recent White House Executive Order put all American investors on notice. From now on, they are forbidden to place American money into a large number of Chinese companies that are involved in building or strengthening the Chinese military and national security apparatus. This is an additional signal from the Biden administration that its “get tough on China” policy is not a momentary turn, a tactical move that could be easily reversed.
August 6, 2021
Davos and China offer the same grim destiny
July 16th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. The World Economic Forum, sponsor of the annual Davos meeting, proposes a “Great Reset” of the capitalist system. The People’s Republic of China nominally adheres to the Communism of its founder, Chairman Mao Ze-dong. Yet in practice, the societies each advocates bear a remarkable similarity to each other and share two overriding characteristics: they are not regimes under which any free man or woman would want to live, and their prescriptions will lead to increasing poverty in the long term.
July 18, 2021
After Globalization
June 06th, 2021 - Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson. As predicted in these columns a decade ago, globalization did not work, and has now gone the way of the dinosaur. It is not however clear what will replace it. The international institutions are still there, exerting their influence like stegosauri who missed the memo about the end of the Jurassic. Western “woke” governments are planning ever more elaborate schemes to combat climate change. That suggests that, to succeed, a country needs to be both well-run and isolated from international advice.
June 4, 2021
Can Washington Borrow and Spend Without Limit?
April 07th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – Parts of the US are still suffering from the devastating consequences of the economic freeze enforced because of the ongoing pandemic that began in January 2020. Millions of Americans are still out of work. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with Washington directing emergency funds to the millions of unemployed Americans who lost their jobs because of draconian restrictions caused by the Covid emergency.
April 26, 2021
Big Oil Is Cutting Emissions. With Big Data It Will Do It Quicker. (From RealClearEnergy)
April 1st, 2021 - Issue Brief by Paul Steidler. The world’s largest oil and natural gas companies are sprinting to cut greenhouse gas emissions and making significant progress. By reengineering many operations through digital technology and cloud storage – Big Data – emissions will be cut sooner, and without unnecessary, drastic steps that will drive up the price of oil and gasoline, thereby imposing a de facto, regressive tax. While the oil and natural gas industries have been slow to adopt data analytics, cloud computing, and related practices, there are compelling reasons to do so now. Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler discusses these matters
April 5, 2021
Return of the Whig Economy
March 24th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. The British Industrial Revolution was a Tory Story! It began with the scientific exuberance of the Tory-dominated Restoration period, then slowed as the Whigs diverted the country into war and financial excess from 1689 to 1720. Even though the key inventions of the steam engine and coke-fired ironworks came during that period, they were not developed further. Forty years of Whig financial capitalism and social repression followed, before a Patriot King and a series of Tory governments unleashed the greatest boost in living standards the world has ever seen. Alas, since 1991 we have returned to Whiggery and worse.
March 25, 2021
The Post Oil Economy Just Began
January 29th, 2021. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – President Biden has been heavily criticized by conservatives for issuing a raft of executive orders aimed at restricting activities of the US fossil fuel industry. Many critics described these as deliberate frontal attacks on the American oil and gas industry, motivated by nothing more than ultra leftist ideological animus. Other analysts concluded that these executive orders are the price a pragmatic Biden (who knows better) needs to pay in order to keep the troublesome green left of his party quiet.
February 5, 2021
Pentagon Report Paints Grim Picture Of America’s Industrial Decline (From Forbes)
January 13th, 2021 - Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. On January 12 the Department of Defense released its 2020 assessment of U.S. industrial capabilities. It is alarming compendium of decay that signals FDR’s arsenal of democracy is on its last legs. From shipbuilding to machine tools to semiconductors, the sinews of American economic and military strength are gradually draining away to other nations, particularly those in East Asia. The notion that America could surge military production in response to an emergency today the way it did in World War Two is a fantasy: too many skills have been lost, too many offshore dependencies have accumulated. It seems that President Trump was right to put industrial policy back on the national agenda, and that President Biden will need to do the same thing.
January 20, 2021
America Should Be An Opportunity Society
December 30, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – Come January 20, 2021, Joe Biden will be unable to effectively govern America without at least a modicum amount of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. While we will not know until the Georgia January 5th vote which party will be in control of the Senate, for Biden the very best congressional balance scenario is that the Democrats will keep their very thin House majority, while they will gain control of the Senate with a one vote majority, thanks to the tie breaker vote that will be cast by Vice President Harris. This not so rosy scenario is based on the rather optimistic assumption that the two Democratic candidates will win both Georgia Senate seats on January 5th, a possible but rather improbable outcome.
Geospatial Intelligence–‘Geoint’–Becomes A Focus Of Military & Economic Competition (From Forbes)
December 11th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson. After dominating the use of geospatial intelligence for decades, the United States is beginning to fall behind other nations, particularly in fostering a commercial ‘geoint’ industry. The science of using satellites to relate human activity to geography is equally useful for national security and economic purposes, but other nations in Asia and Europe have done far more to make the commercial side of the business attractive to investors. Existing federal policy makes it easier for China to dominate this and other facets of space activity, a goal that Beijing has set for itself by mid-century. If the U.S. wants to continue leading in space, and geoint in particular, it needs to do a better job of relating national security space policy to national economic goals.
December 14, 2020
The End of Oil?
December 05th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. WASHINGTON – The Wall Street Journal reported on December 4th that “Denmark is to end all new oil and gas exploration with immediate effect as part of a plan to phase out fossil fuels by 2050, one of the most drastic moves by a crude-producing nation to curb carbon emissions.” Of course, given the small size of the Danish economy, and Denmark’s modest role as a crude producer, (about 100,000 barrel per day), this news will not move markets.
The emerging global one-party state
October 12th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. Twenty years ago, I was strongly in favor of globalization. I recognized the theoretical benefits it could bring and believed that poor countries could get richer while rich countries and their inhabitants did not get poorer. Alas, I favored a globalization that we did not get, and that maybe does not exist. Politics, as always, messes up the process. Once you take account of politics, it becomes clear that extreme globalization must be fought tooth and nail.
October 19, 2020
California, China and Belarus
October 04th, 2020. Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson. The world economy has come a very long way from the small-government, unregulated free-market model so celebrated by Adam Smith and other classical economists. Today, even in countries that claim to be committed to capitalism, taxes, monetary policy, regulations and state spending have produced huge distortions. To illustrate how huge, I thought I would compare the economic models of three jurisdictions: California, the high-tech Mecca supposedly a beacon of freedom, China, the state-controlled behemoth that claims to have a new and better economic model, and the universally despised “Communist” dictatorship of Belarus.
October 4, 2020
When Data Cannot Be Trusted
September 7th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Economics is a very imperfect science. Still, it has some shot at credibility because calculations, assumptions, assessment and scenarios worked on and presented by economists are based on the analysis of hard data. I am talking about solid numbers on the size and variations of economic sectors, public spending, GDP growth, unemployment level, tax revenue, electricity consumption, balance of trade, and a lot more.
September 12, 2020
The Arrogant: “Rules Do Not Apply To Me”
August 29th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. A commentator who apparently knows Steve Bannon quite well, (Bannon is a conservative politics strategist who advised Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign), expressed surprise when the news broke that Bannon and others had been arrested and charged with the crime of defrauding donors who had given money to a symbolic project about building a piece of the “famous” US-Mexico border that Donald Trump campaigned on. (The Trump administration has no part in this project). Well, if the charges can be proven, it appears that Bannon and other associates misappropriated part of the money donated and illegally diverted it to other pursuits, this way betraying the donors and breaking the law.
August 30, 2020
The Demise of Brooks Brothers and Lord & Taylor
August 12th 2020. Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson. Lord & Taylor’s bankruptcy closely followed on that of Brooks Brothers. That suggests a common trend, a Götterdämmerung of the preppie WASP. Certainly, other factors, the COVID-19 lockdowns and the ineptitude of private equity, played a role also. But there is an overall zeitgeist at work, social as well as economic, and it portends a scruffy, style-less down-market future.
August 13, 2020
The long-term economic effects of Covid-19
July 30th, 2020. Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson. Five months after the Chinese-origin coronavirus impinged in a big way on our lives, it is finally becoming clear that it is not going away, and that the world will have to take account of it and its future cousins for many years to come. Accordingly, the world economy and life in general will suffer some major changes. The future will be very different from what we had imagined, obviously for the worse but in just a few respects for the better. The quicker we adapt, the better.
July 31, 2020
How bad government actions prolong recessions
June 24th, 2020. Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson. Governments and central banks worldwide have responded to the Covid-19 epidemic by massive doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus. Little of the money thrown at the problem has done any good. However, the further economic distortions governments have caused will have one long-term effect: they will delay and enfeeble recovery. Ever since 1929, government actions have prolonged depressions; you would think by now they would have learned better.
June 24, 2020
Into a De-Globalized World
June 04th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson. This column has been predicting de-globalization for almost a decade – the June 2010 piece “Back to the Kaiser’s World” was its first example of this theme. Now that the coronavirus has caused everybody else to leap onto this bandwagon, it is worth examining what the new de-globalized world might look like. While it has its downsides, it is overall not an unattractive prospect.
June 5, 2020
Another Critical Supply Chain America Must Bring Home
May 27th, 2020. Issue Brief by Paul Steidler. In recent weeks, Americans have been aghast and disgusted to see the dangerous extent to which we rely on China for personal protective equipment so vital to healthcare workers. The United States electric system has also become increasingly dependent on foreign suppliers for essential items, including software components that can easily be attacked. A smooth functioning electric grid is essential to our way of life, as well as America’s health and safety.  As such, it is encouraging that a May 1 Executive Order begins the process to strengthen the bulk-power system by ensuring that critical components are made in the United States.
May 29, 2020
Tesla Batteries and Climate Change
May 20th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Notwithstanding solemn pledges issues by many governments, no country that really matters is taking the fight against climate change seriously. Headline grabbing global agreements detailing ambitious emission reduction goals mean almost nothing, as they are purely voluntary, and therefore non verifiable, and certainly not enforceable.
May 22, 2020
Private Companies Getting Us Through the Lockdown
May 02, 2020. Issue Brief by Daniel Goure. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught all Americans about the importance of critical infrastructure and essential workers to our survival, as individuals and as a nation. Clearly, our health care system, encompassing hospitals, medical supply providers, pharmaceutical companies, scientists, doctors, nurses, technicians, support staff, and emergency response personnel, is at the top of the list. So too are the companies and people involved in the food supply chain from farm to table. Related to these two sectors is the transportation network: roads, rails and air transport, certainly, but also the delivery companies and truckers that continue to bring orders to our front doors throughout the crisis. Likewise, our communications infrastructure, particularly internet companies, cloud providers and content producers. A company that bridges virtually all of these critical infrastructure sectors is Amazon. Along with a unique class of private companies such as UPS, Walmart and Microsoft, they have been an essential part of the infrastructure that has held this country together.
May 9, 2020
Coronavirus Highlights U.S. Strategic Vulnerabilities Spawned By Over-Reliance On China
March 30, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren Thompson. The coronavirus crisis has renewed concern about whether the U.S. has become too dependent on China for manufactured goods, particularly goods with potential defense applications. The most immediate concern is drugs such as antibiotics; even when they are not made in China, the drugs may require active ingredients from China.
April 4, 2020
US Oil and Gas Sector Hit Hard By Virus, Price War
March 18th, 2020-Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Sadly, coronavirus is here in America. All the restrictions announced and feared on most economic activities have created huge disruptions and panic. The entire travel, entertainment and restaurant industries are comatose. Airlines bookings literally collapsed. And now, with most economic activities frozen, there is widespread fear that this may be just the beginning of a massive health and economic crisis –with no timeline.
March 27, 2020
Coronavirus Threatens To End America’s Long Run As A Leader In Commercial Aviation
March 19th, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. U.S. companies participating in the production of jetliners are facing a liquidity crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. Aircraft deliveries have ceased, the supply chain is breaking down, and many companies face the near-term prospect of bankruptcy. Without federal assistance, they will need to lay off many thousands of employees. This is not just about Boeing and its 10,000+ domestic suppliers
March 26, 2020
Wanted: A Coronavirus Manhattan Project
March 22nd, 2020-Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Regarding coronavirus, so far public policy in most Western countries focused on monetary and fiscal interventions. They are aimed at mitigating the disastrous economic impact of the government-mandated freezing of most activities and people to people interactions in order to stop contagion. But it should be clear to all that even vast amounts of money thrown at the US and other major economies will not be enough to stabilize a catastrophic situation caused by the “closing down”, for an indefinite period, of most advanced countries.
The EU Will Not Create Its Own Armed Forces
February 17th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. French president Emmanuel Macron said it right. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference he argued that “We need a European strategy that renews us and turn us into a strategic political power.” Indeed, there is no reason why Europe should not be a world power.
March 13, 2020
Five Reasons The U.S. Army Deserves To Be First In Line For More Modernization Funding
February 25th, 2020. Issue Brief by Loren B. Thompson. The Trump defense increases are over, and competition for scarce budget dollars among the military services therefore is likely to grow more intense. They all are facing a shortfall in modernization funding, but the Army arguably has the most compelling case for getting a boost.
How Jack Welch destroyed Sloan’s Century
March 9th, 2020. Issue Brief by GPI Senior Fellow Martin Hutchinson. Jack Welch, former GE Chairman (1981-2000) who died last week, was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine in 1999. Twenty years later, we can see clearly that the Manager of the 20th century was not Welch but Alfred P. Sloan, CEO and then Chairman of General Motors (1920-1963). Welch’s main achievement was destroying the management model that Sloan had built, causing GE’s subsequent near-collapse.
March 12, 2020
Can Tesla Make It?
March 1st, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. Tesla’s recent massive stock price rise has no rational explanation. Believe it or not, electric vehicles (EVs) manufacturer Tesla now is worth more than the combined value of General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. It is worth almost the same as Volkswagen and BMW combined. And yet the company produced only 500,000 cars last year, and has yet to be consistently profitable for at least a year.
March 9, 2020
The Economic Damage Of Coronavirus
March 1st, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach. The spreading coronavirus epidemic has already created an enormous challenge for the global economy. This epidemic is caused by an unknown new virus for which human beings have no immunity. For this reason, while this illness is very similar to a seasonal flu, its mortality rate is significantly higher. Hence the global scare.
March 7, 2020
How can we explain irrational economic decisions?
February 7th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, Classical economics holds that economic decisions are made by rational decision makers, using solid information and reason. Behavioral economics holds that many economic decisions are based on “cognitive biases” such as an aversion to losses that is stronger than the desire for profits. Richard Robb’s new book “Willful” holds that many decisions are made without rational justification or behavioral motivation, but simply “for-themselves” based on whims or deep-seated irrational beliefs. It’s an interesting, plausible thesis that has implications well beyond investing.
February 7, 2020
To Defeat Hypersonic Weapons, Pentagon Aims To Build Vast Space Sensor Layer
February 6th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson, The Trump Administration is pursuing a series of secret military space projects that collectively will cost tens of billions of dollars. At least one of those projects is too big to hide: a Space Sensor Layer that would place hundreds of satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to track hostile hypersonic missiles, and many ballistic threats too.
February 6, 2020
Three Huge Defense Threats For Which Washington Is Woefully Under-Prepared
February 3rd, 2020- The United States outspends every other nation on defense, and as a result has the best trained, best equipped military in the world. The joint force regularly undertakes missions that no other country’s military would be capable of executing.

However, there are existential defense threats for which the nation is not prepared—existential in the sense that they could make the continued functioning of democratic government within U.S. borders nearly impossible.

These threats get short shrift in national strategy, either because they have never occurred before or because there are no easy remedies. Unfortunately, the vulnerability of the U.S. to the threats could make them attractive options for America’s enemies in the future.

February 3, 2020
Cyber War Happening Now – We Are Not Ready
January 16th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, We are at war. Aggression which one day can take devastating dimensions is targeting America on a daily basis. I am talking about cyber warfare. Unfortunately, it is very hard to label cyber war as “war”, simply because it is vastly different from the “conventional war” we are used to study, discuss and prepare for.
January 16, 2020
Back to the economics of 1792
January 16th, 2020- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, When William Pitt the younger made his great and optimistic Budget speech of 1792, he attributed Britain’s increased prosperity not to technological improvement but to the wealth-enhancing effect of the compounding increase in the country’s capital stock. 

Only a generation later, in the administration of Robert, Earl of Liverpool, was technological change given credit for the country’s growth and prosperity. Today, as productivity growth slows or even halts, we may be returning to the economics of 1792, in which only capital increase brings greater wealth. This has uncomfortable implications.

Europe’s Dreams
January 13th, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, We heard from Ursula von der Leyen, the new President of the European Commission, that she will lead a “geopolitical” Commission. So, we are led to believe that, under her leadership, there will be deep thinking and strategizing about how to effectively combine the significant European economic, business, investments and military assets so that the EU will play a leading role on the world stage.
January 13, 2020
War With Iran?
January 10th 2020- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The killing of General Qassem Soleimani, the legendary head of the Iranian al Quds force, is a game changer in America’s creeping hostilities with Iran. I wrote recently that unless the US wants to engage in a conflict over Iraq, this poor, war-torn country is lost to us, on account of the solid Iranian grip on it.
January 10, 2020
Brexit 2020
January 8th 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon, at the end of this month, Britain is to leave the European Union, 47 years after it joined what was then the Common Market. It will be a shock – although long anticipated – for the other 27 members. No country has ever left the EU, and this spectacular no-confidence vote will test the hopes of the remaining members to stay committed and united.
January 8, 2020
Raising The Temperature In The Middle East
January 6th 2020- Issue brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, After the unexpected airstrike that killed IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, right outside the Baghdad airport, analysts began speculating what Trump’s end game may be. In other words, is this just an ill-conceived, spur of the moment decision? Or is this targeted assassination of the master mind of all the Iran-led irregular forces operating with impunity in the Middle East part of a carefully orchestrated US “plan”?
January 6, 2020
Towards a Working-class Tory Britain
January 6th, 2020- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, By definition, all substantial election victories involve winning seats that had not previously been held. However, in this case, because of the interaction of the election with the Brexit decision, many industrial and mining constituencies in the north of England and north Wales, that had been Labour heartlands for generations, were taken by the Conservatives. By and large the big-city constituencies in the region remained Labour; it was the less concentrated urban areas, albeit still mining/industrial, that switched to the Conservatives. As one Labour leader said on the BBC’s Election Night program: “we haven’t lost the big city working classes, but we do seem to have lost the small-town working classes.”
Good Values at the Root of Utah’s Success
December 12th, 2019- Issue brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, A recent article pointed out how, year after year, Utah is on top of the national list of the best states to do business in America, not to mention that the state gets very high marks on good governance, while in Utah there is very low unemployment. And in Utah kids attending public schools on average do rather well compared to the rest of the U.S., notwithstanding the fact that in Utah spending per pupil is quite below the national average. Well, what is the secret of this success?
December 20, 2019
The Fake Aramco IPO
December 18th 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, There were great expectations about the Aramco IPO. It was announced long ago by Saudi authorities, and then postponed several times. Well, now we know why it took so long, and why in the end the IPO did not take place in New York or London. Indeed, the Saudi government, the sole owner of this energy giant, could not be sure about the response of savvy international investors. Would they really buy shares at a price that implies an overall $ 2 trillion valuation for Aramco? May be not. And so the Saudis, decided to play it safe. They would do this at home, in an environment and with investors they could control. And so they used the Riyadh Tadawul stock exchange (where less than 200 stocks are traded) as the venue for this “historic” IPO.
December 19, 2019
Yale Model Goes Whiffen-Poof
December 12th, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, All 60 of the United States’ leading university endowments underperformed a cheap “tracker fund” over the past decade, according to a study reported in the Financial Times. The culprit is the “Yale Model” of university endowment investment, whereby they focus on private equity, hedge funds and unquoted investments rather than on ordinary stock markets. From this data, the Yale Model clearly has not worked, at least in the last decade. It is worth examining what went wrong.
December 16, 2019
Stunning Victory for Boris Johnson, Yet Major Challenges Ahead
December 12th, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon, To the astonishment of pollsters and voters, Boris Johnson, Britain’s embattled prime minister, has won a resounding election victory, giving the ruling Conservative party their biggest majority for more than 35 years and ending three years of argument over Brexit. He now has a clear mandate for Britain to leave the European Union within the next six weeks.
How A Dangerous Court Ruling Could Give China The Lead In 5G Technology
December 12, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, Despite a chronic trade deficit in advanced technology products, the United States remains a global trendsetter for networking and telecommunications. U.S. companies are currently in a battle with Chinese state-influenced enterprises like Huawei that will determine whether American dominance continues into the era of 5G communications.
December 12, 2019
The Case for Gold Grows Ever Stronger
December 11th, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, In 1982-2000, I avoided large losses by completely ignoring gold as an investment vehicle — I started thinking about it again when in July 2000 I noticed that Vanguard’s precious metals fund was its only loser over the preceding 5 years. Since 2008, I have invested consistently in gold mining stocks, and enjoyed good years (2009-10, 2016-19) and bad years (2011-15). Yet the intellectual case for gold, as a store of reality in an increasingly unreal world, grows stronger by the day. Let me explain
December 11, 2019
$22B Navy Contract Highlights Why GD’s Electric Boat Is One Of The Most Valuable Franchises In U.S. Defense
December 10, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, This week’s announcement that the Electric Boat unit of General Dynamics will receive the biggest shipbuilding contract in Navy history underscores the unique role that “EB” (as it is often called) plays in U.S. defense. The contract provides $22 billion for construction of nine Virginia-class attack submarines, an amount that could increase to $24 billion if the Navy exercises the option for a tenth sub.

This isn’t the first time Electric Boat has received the biggest naval shipbuilding contract ever. The $17 billion contract for the last “block” of Virginias, awarded in 2014, was also described at the time as unprecedented in size.

December 10, 2019
President Trump Should Offer to Sell M-1 Tanks to Poland
December 4th, 2019- Issue brief by Daniel Gouré, When Poland joined the NATO alliance in 1999, its military was saddled with rapidly obsolescing platforms and equipment largely of Soviet design. In response to the Russian seizure of Crimea and its massive military buildup, Warsaw initiated a major modernization program intended to provide its military with advanced capabilities. One key element of that effort is to upgrade or replace the Polish army’s fleet of old armored fighting vehicles, particularly its battle tanks.
December 5, 2019
Should Washington Sell The B-21 Bomber To Australia?
December 4, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Advisor Loren Thompson, the U.S. Air Force is developing a long-range bomber that will be able to hold any target at risk, anywhere in the world. It is called the B-21 Raider, and will be the most survivable, versatile strike aircraft ever built. It is likely to eventually replace all the heavy bombers in the current U.S. fleet. On November 6, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published an article in its journal The Strategist arguing that Australia should buy 12-20 B-21s from the United States. The article was written by senior analyst Marcus Hellyer, who convincingly laid out the geopolitical, operational and budgetary logic of such a move.
December 4, 2019
How Poor Countries can Beat De-Globalization
December 2nd, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, The outstanding winners from the 1991-2016 policies of globalization were dwellers in poor countries. With international sourcing much cheaper and easier and foreign investment flows soaring, well-run poor countries could attract capital, jobs and export-producing industries in profusion, producing revenues that could educate their workforce and hugely raise their living standards. Overall, for poor countries, the world has now become harder. Yet even without globalization, well-run poor countries can still become middle-income and then rich.
December 2, 2019
After Decades Of Warnings, U.S. Gets Serious About EMP Dangers
November 21, 2019- Issue brief by Paul Steidler, For decades government policy experts and scientists have known about the dangers of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events which could cripple large sections of the power grid for long periods of time. EMP disturbances occur naturally, through solar storms. They could also happen due to high-altitude nuclear bomb detonations or through on-the-ground attacks by terrorists or saboteurs.
November 21, 2019
Can Boris Johnson win the UK elections?
November 15, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon, Not since 1923 has Britain held a general election in December – a month most politicians want to avoid as voters are more preoccupied with Christmas shopping than politics. But this time there was little choice: Boris Johnson’s government had lost its majority, Parliament was deadlocked over Brexit, splits and tensions were destroying both main parties, and voters had lost patience with the political wrangling and with all politicians. They will now have a chance to sweep out hundreds of MPs and vote for a whole range of different faces on December 12th.
November 15, 2019
Once It Gets Green Light From FAA, Boeing Still Faces Complicated Task To Get 737 MAXs Off The Ground
November 13, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, "Consider, for instance, the basic steps involved in returning the plane to service. First the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to approve a software update to the MCAS flight control system and a redesign of the plane’s twin flight control computers so that the MAX can be recertified as airworthy. Then the FAA needs to approve revised training requirements and supporting documents for crews who will be flying the plane. Then the grounding order is lifted, after which each carrier must submit proposed training programs to regulators for approval, training is conducted, and the MAX can finally begin carrying passengers again".
November 13, 2019
Congressional Dysfunction Threatens To Halt Trump Defense Buildup
November 11, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, Over the last several weeks, there has been growing concern on Capitol Hill that Congress might not pass a budget for the 2020 fiscal year that began October 1. When these situations arise, as they almost always do at the beginning of a fiscal year, government shutdown is averted by passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) that maintains prior-year spending levels into the new year.
November 11, 2019
If President Trump Isn’t Reelected, What Will That Mean For The Military?
November 4, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, President Trump isn’t likely to be removed from office through the impeachment process. Even if every Democratic member of the chamber voted for removal in a Senate trial, 20 Republican senators would have to turn on Trump to expel him from office. That outcome looks exceedingly improbable today.

The more plausible scenarios for Trump’s departure would be either resignation or failure to win reelection. The president shows no sign of resigning, so next year’s election looms as the biggest opportunity for those who say the nation can’t stand another four years of Trump to seat a more congenial chief executive in the White House.

November 4, 2019
Towards a Low-Overhead 2020s
October 30, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, The Western world approaches the 2020s at the top of a boom, with asset prices and leverage at all-time highs and interest rates at all-time lows, yet with disappointing expectations when it comes to a higher standard of living. The extreme policies that have produced this state of affairs are unsustainable over another decade, even if we were mad enough to try. The solution will be unpleasant but inevitable: the overhead “fat” that has accumulated throughout the world economy must be eliminated — a process that will inevitably be painful.
October 30, 2019
The Blessed World of Low Asset Prices
October 2, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, After a decade of ultra-low interest rates, we have become used to ultra-high asset prices – in big city real estate, stocks, bonds, tech start-ups, art and collectibles, and pretty well everything else you can think of. It is too depressing to think of the damage that will be done by the inevitable bursting of this universal bubble. Let us rather look forward to say 2030, to a world of low asset prices and historically average interest rates, and remind ourselves of that world’s advantages.
October 2, 2019
Five Reasons The Air Force’s Digital Century Series Is Doomed To Failure
October 1, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Senior Adviser Loren B. Thompson, The Air Force has embarked on a revolutionary approach to aircraft, satellite and software development that it hopes will greatly compress the time required to bring major advances into the active force. Dubbed the “Digital Century Series” after a burst of early Cold War innovation, the new approach could reduce the time required to develop new combat aircraft to five years, with additional years of time saved in developing military spacecraft and major software advances.
October 1, 2019
Brexit Woes Continue in The UK
October 1, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett, Will U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pull a rabbit out of his Magician’s hat and get a new deal from the EU? Or is he determined to drive on over the cliff edge using Emergency Powers to thwart the law?

A vote of no confidence in the UK Government aimed at replacing Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is imminent, the Westminster leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Ian Blackford said Sunday 29 September. But its success relies, he said, on all opposition parties in the UK Parliament joining forces to prevent the Prime Minister allowing the country to crash out of the EU without a deal amid warnings of catastrophic economic consequences.

On October 15, Britain stops being a democracy
September 30, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, By a vote of 298 to 56 on September 4 and a second similar vote on September 9, the House of Commons voted to approve an election on October 15, yet because of a supermajority provision unknown to the British constitution, Parliament was not dissolved. A Parliament you cannot dissolve is no longer a democratic institution, any more than was the Rump Parliament after Pride’s Purge. On October 15, therefore, Britain will turn the clock back 370 years, into the world of Praise-God Barebone. It will then need a Cromwell, or better still a Restoration to return it to democracy and legitimate rule.
September 30, 2019
The Universal Postal Union: Why Its Upcoming Extraordinary Congress Is A Big Deal
September 25, 2019- Issue Brief by Paul Steidler, The Universal Postal Union sets the rates and regulatory requirements governing the shipment of packages internationally. The Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler spoke with postal expert Jim Campbell about the organization’s September 24-26 Extraordinary Congress at which the U.S. is pushing for major reforms and threatening to leave the organization if these reforms are not enacted. Mr. Campbell has been an observer at Universal Postal Union meetings for decades. The U.S. delegation to the upcoming Extraordinary Congress will be led by Peter Navarro, Assistant to the President and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
September 25, 2019
Poland Is Becoming the Keystone of NATO’s Evolving Security Architecture
September 18, 2019- Issue brief by Dan Gouré, The Republic of Poland is rapidly becoming the critical member of the NATO Alliance in its increasing efforts to deter Russian military threats and counter Moscow’s attempts to subvert European democracy. Poland is no free rider when it comes to European security. It is spending more money in terms of a percentage of GDP than other NATO countries. The Polish military has a serious modernization program underway that over time promises to make it a serious counterweight to the Russian Army.
September 18, 2019
The President Is Right — China’s Fentanyl Is Killing Too Many Americans
September 17, 2019- Issue Brief by Paul Steidler, Kudos to President Trump for tweets tearing into China and President Xi Jinping on Friday for not stepping up to stop fentanyl shipments to the United States. With 47,600 opioid deaths in 2017 alone, this crisis must end.

The president should double down while sharpening and refining his messaging. And he should do so regardless of the ups and downs of tariff negotiations.

China has become the worldwide manufacturing hub of opioids, and with that has arisen criminal businesses that export fentanyl and other deadly narcotics to the United States. These businesses are sophisticated and slick: they operate through well-designed websites that include online chats, negotiate for bulk purchases, take bitcoin payments and even specify shipping preferences.

September 17, 2019
A leverage tax will solve funny money problems
September 17, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, We seem doomed to another round of monetary “stimulus” from the Fed and the European Central Bank, at a time when real interest rates are already substantially negative. This has caused crazy leverage all over the global economy, with such madness as Boeing (NYSE:BA) in a highly cyclical business, operating entirely without stockholders’ equity. Very well, if we can’t get the monetary madmen at the world’s central banks to raise interest rates to their proper level, let’s find a fiscal solution to the problem, which will also reduce the world’s yawning budget deficits. I propose a leverage tax.
Business Roundtable amputates Capitalism’s Invisible Hand
August 26, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, The Business Roundtable last week produced a 400-page publication claiming that its members should no longer look first to profitability but should follow the interests of stakeholders, including employees and the environment. This is pabulum we are used to from the titans of Big Business, who are no longer truly capitalist in our distorted low-interest-rate economy. The problem is, that by downplaying the central tenet of capitalism, they may, like the acolytes of central planning, produce hugely sub-optimal economic results.
August 26, 2019
No Brexit without a deal on the Irish Border
August 22, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett, Diplomatic relations between the Republic of Ireland and the UK Government appear to have hardened in relation to the increasing prospect of a “No Deal on Brexit”. In Dublin, the Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney, who is also the Republic’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, has said that Ireland would not be carrying out bilateral negotiations with the UK in relation to no-deal Brexit planning.
August 22, 2019
Type Two Diabetes Is Preventable, But Nobody Says It
August 22, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, I recently read a very well researched article on the growing cost of treating millions of diabetics in the United States. It appeared in a major national newspaper and it was written by a well-known public policy scholar. The writer  provided up to date data on the alarmingly large dimension of this disease and how much it costs to the affected individuals, insures and the US Government. The scholar in the end provided his thoughtful policy recommendations.
Is Britain getting ready for Brexit?
August 19, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett, Battle lines have been drawn at Westminster as the UK rapidly nears the 31 October exit from the EU after three years of national crisis that threatens the political union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. With Scotland pledged to go it alone to remain in the EU while Northern Ireland, part of the UK, looks set to have a hard border again 20 years on from the Good Friday Peace Agreement – in this the 50th anniversary of the start of the Troubles.
August 20, 2019
Use Small Ball to Help End Washington’s Gridlock
August 15, 2019- Issue Brief by Paul Steidler, Small ball is when a baseball team employs a strategy to grind out a run or two, through sacrifice bunts and other measures. It typically means low-scoring games as teams give up outs for a higher chance of getting a run or two. But low-scoring innings can win games and break teams out of slumps. The 2015 Kansas City Royals won the World Series because they mastered small ball. Exhibit A for a public policy slump in Washington is the current gridlock surrounding the U.S. Postal Service. Since 2009 the Postal Service has been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List of organizations needing major reform. Despite this, a December 4, 2018, Presidential Task Force report, and strong concerns from elected officials on both sides of the aisle, reform measures have been dead in the water, including the defeat of nine reform bills since 2011.
August 15, 2019
Global Gosplans Should be Shut Down
August 14, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, Kristalina Georgieva’s nomination as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, is entirely appropriate. She is a Bulgarian communist by background, for 14 years until 1993 she was a Professor at the Karl Marx Higher Institute of Economics, under that country’s communist government. The IMF itself and its sister institution, the World Bank, have since their foundation been anti-market forces of central planning. It is high time the Trump Administration and other believers in the free market acted to close down these clogs to the global economy.
August 14, 2019
US Fiscal Irresponsibility Will Lead to Bankruptcy
August 12, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo Von Schirach, The Democrats in Congress and Republican President Donald Trump agree practically on nothing. Therefore, it is impossible to think of any major piece of legislation that can be passed between now and November 2020, when Americans will go the polls to pick a new President and a new Congress, and new political majorities may be formed. Since the Democratic control the House of Representatives, while the Republicans control the Senate and the White House, and considering the increasingly toxic political climate that makes compromise impossible, we have not just a divided government. We have a sharply divided government. So, do not hold your breath. No significant legislative changes between now and the next presidential and congressional elections in November 2020.
August 12, 2019
The global tax system begins to resemble the French ancien regime 
August 9, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, Modern “big data” systems are allowing tax authorities to gain full knowledge of sales transactions in their jurisdiction, thus pushing VAT tax collection rates close to 100% on small businessmen and the middle class in general. Meanwhile, Western income tax systems collect steadily less tax from large corporations and the very rich. They use loopholes and tax havens to minimize their tax liability. We have seen this type of tax system before: namely in the pre-revolutionary French ancien regime, where the nobility benefited from tax exemptions and the poor paid through the nose. That didn’t end well, and nor will this.
August 9, 2019
Aerojet Rocketdyne Cuts Costs, Builds Infrastructure To Compete For Engines On Future ICBM
August 8, 2019- Issue brief by GPI senior adviser Loren B. Thompson, Last month’s revelation that Boeing may not bid to develop the Air Force’s next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile surprised many. If the company’s concerns about how the program is being competed are not resolved, rival Northrop Grumman may be headed for lucrative monopolies on all three legs of the nation’s nuclear “triad.” The unsettled state of the program, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), doesn’t just impact the big aerospace integrators who want to be prime contractor. It also affects a highly specialized supply chain of domestic contractors whose ranks have thinned dramatically since the end of the Cold War.
August 8, 2019
Congress Should Fully Fund The Air Force’s Long-Overdue Competition For A Safer Ejection Seat
August 1, 2019 issue Brief by Senior Adviser at GPI Loren B. Thompson, When a fighter pilot’s plane is hit by enemy fire, he or she may have only seconds to escape the doomed craft. Similar situations can arise in peacetime because fighters are designed to operate at extremes of speed and maneuverability, so training accidents are a hazard of the profession.
August 1, 2019
TRANSCOM’s Plan To Reform The Movement Of Household Goods Will Benefit All Stakeholders
July 26, 2019- Issue Brief by By Daniel Gouré, U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) is responsible for the global movement of military personnel, equipment and supplies across the United States and around the world. It is also the largest shipper in the world of household goods (HHGs) for military families. Currently, TRANSCOM runs the Defense Personal Property Program (DP3) to manage HHG movements. This program relies on a disaggregated and inefficient system based on dozens of separate offices awarding individual contracts to hundreds of private transportation service providers (TSPs, or movers) for the packing, movement, storage and unpacking of HHGs. 
July 26, 2019
What Lord Liverpool Could Teach Today’s Fed
July 23, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, said it best, in a House of Lords speech of May 26, 1818: “The tendency of an inconvertible paper money is to create fictitious wealth, bubbles, which by their bursting, produce inconvenience.” His phrase “fictitious wealth”, or better “fictitious capital” has a similar (but not, as I shall explain, identical) meaning to the Austrian economists’ “malinvestment” a century later, yet it is in eloquent English, not the made-up word of droning German-speaking professors. We should recognize Liverpool’s priority, and follow his economic thinking.
July 24, 2019
Corn Laws beat farm subsidies
July 18, 2019 Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, British farmers are concerned about a “no-deal” Brexit, under which they would lose access to bounteous EU farm subsidies. U.S. farmers have had their subsidies increased by President Trump because of the China trade dispute. Agriculture subsidies burden national budgets and almost exclusively benefit large corporations and the very rich. There is a better model for supporting agriculture: the 1815-46 Corn Laws, reviled by Whig historians, but much cheaper and infinitely less corrupt.
July 18, 2019
Behemoths Should Give up Merchant Banking
July 15, 2019- Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson “The mood’s always depressed in Deutsche” said one of that bank’s Singapore traders (not being laid off that day) to the FT. That reflects my experience at Citigroup and it is in contrast to my experience at the genuine merchant bank Hill Samuel where we were pretty cheerful. Surely now, a quarter century after the demise of the London merchant banks, it has become utterly clear: the behemoths like Deutsche, Barclays and Citi simply can’t do merchant banking competently, and should abandon it to smaller, nimbler houses.
July 16, 2019
The Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply
June 28, 2019- Issue brief by GPI Fellow Jonathan Chanis According to the calculations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the cost to the United States of defending the global oil supply is zero. Failure to accurately assess the true military cost of protecting the global oil supply underestimates the value of the Fuel Economy Standards (FES) program to U.S. national security The zero-cost estimate comes from the way the U.S. government budgets for national defense. Since it is difficult to assign a cost to the oil protection mission—and since the Department of Defense (DoD) would realize no savings if this mission were not pursued—EPA and NHTSA conclude that it is pointless to assign any value above zero for this activity. This approach fails to account for the large opportunity costs of protecting the global oil supply.
June 28, 2019
What will be the hot IPOs of 2029?
June 3, 2019 - Issue brief by Martin Hutchinson: "Investment bankers are very slow learners. That’s the only lesson that can be drawn from the catastrophic failure of the Uber Inc (NYSE:UBER) initial public offering. As this column has been writing for years, it was perfectly obvious that a loss-making taxi service with software attached was never going to be worth $100 billion. Frankly, despite all the cheap money thrown at venture capital, the IPOs in this cycle (which I take to be more or less over) have been very dull indeed. Will we get something more interesting next time around?"
June 3, 2019
The decline of good economics
January 29, 2019 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "There are many reasons why the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain in 1775-1850, but among the most important is the high quality of economic thought among British policymakers of that period. Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo gave them an excellent grounding in free market economics, and few statesmen of that period opposed their doctrines. Alas, over the last two centuries the quality of economic discourse has steadily declined. Spurious economic theories have appeared, and statesmen seem determined to avoid the correct ones."
January 29, 2019
The Decay of Property Rights
January 28, 2019 - Issue Brief by GP Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "New York Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed last week that there was plenty of money for his pet projects, but it was “in the wrong hands.” In response, The Wall Street Journal, supposedly the voice of capitalism, gave a turgid list of rich New Yorkers’ charitable donations, while blasting the inefficiencies of de Blasio’s administration."
January 28, 2019
UK Prime Minister determined to get Brexit deal
January 17, 2019 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett: "Despite a crushing defeat on her Brexit Treaty Deal UK Prime Minister Theresa May has been meeting party leaders to find a compromise. And after clinging onto power by a majority of only 19 in the 306 to 325 No Confidence Vote  Labour's Jeremy Corbyn called the talks a "stunt" and said he will not take part unless a "no deal" Brexit is ruled out. "
January 17, 2019
Looking forward to Dow 11,000
January 2, 2019 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "It has been a bad December for the stock markets. But pundits across the land are predicting a recovery in the New Year from this terrible drop. They are probably right, if the underlying monetary policy fundamentals remain unchanged. Short-term market fluctuations are unpredictable. But the reality remains: owing to decades of funny money, made possible by unprecedented US Fed low interest policies, the market has got far ahead of its equilibrium value, which is now around 11,000 on the Dow that is half the present level. If the current trend leading us back to normal interest rates comes to fruition, it is worth examining what a world with Dow 11,000 will look like."
January 2, 2019
No, Mr. President, there isn’t a Santa Claus
December 27, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "President Trump’s economic policies are mostly very sensible. Yet in two areas he has indulged in wishful thinking, proclaiming essentially that Santa Claus will bail out the United States. One is fiscal policy, where he has not restrained spending, nor produced any plan beyond faster economic growth to solve the nation’s yawning budget deficit. The other is monetary policy, where he rails against the Fed’s attempts to restore sanity, and believes its job is to act as Santa Claus, bailing the U.S. out of recessions. Well, Mr. President, there is no Santa Claus."
December 27, 2018
Confusion in London as no deal Brexit crisis looms
December 19, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett: "Picture this: some British troops have now been put on standby, as the leaders of UK industry warn they are watching the unresolved Brexit crisis in horror. With just 100 days before Britain is due to leave the EU, the Defence Secretary of State Gavin Williamson told Parliament he had already placed 3,500 troops and reservists on standby to help in any contingencies."
December 19, 2018
The Madness of cities
December 18, 2018 - Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson: "Charles Mackay’s 1841 masterpiece asserted that the “madness of crowds” created “extraordinary popular delusions” that led to investment bubbles and crashes. Recent events suggest that when those crowds congregate in cities, rationality flies out of the window, and delusions infect the entire urban body politic."
The unending Brexit drama
December 14, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Graham Bardgett: "After surviving a Confidence Vote by her own MPs -- 200 to 117 was the Secret Ballot result -- the British Prime Minister has been in Brussels again for another EU summit."
December 14, 2018
UK PM May facing leadership challenge
December 12, 2018 - Issue Brief by Graham Bardgett: "UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced a vote of confidence in her leadership on December 12, as her own Conservative Party decides her future."
December 12, 2018
Britain’s Brexit crisis
December 19, 2018 - Issue Brief by Graham Bardgett: "Facing humiliating defeat over her Brexit policy, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May on December 10 called off the British House of Commons MP vote on the negotiated deal with the EU."
December 10, 2018
The costs of consensus
October 19, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "In many areas, such as monetary policy, the U.S. Supreme Court, corporate Boards of Directors and Cabinet government, decisions are made by arriving at a group consensus. If the group is sufficiently intellectually diverse, this works well. There is however a pernicious danger, which we have seen in action many times in economic policy, where an entire group forms a consensus around a generally held elite opinion."
October 19, 2018
Towards the asset-light economy
October 10, 2018 - Issue brief by Martin Hutchinson: "The last two decades of low interest rates have seen a vast increase in the world’s stock of assets, measured at market value, largely matched by a corresponding increase in debt. However, the increase has not raised global productivity growth, which has slowed as the asset glut has increased."
October 12, 2018
Learning the right lessons from 2008
September 21, 2018 - Issue brief by Martin Hutchinson "Learning the right lessons from financial crises is tough. The 1929 stock market crash was blamed for all the ills of the Great Depression that succeeded it and led to two decades of regulation and socialism. After the 1720 financial debacle, the British tried to stop all new company formations while the French gave up on finance altogether and started plotting revolution. So, it is unlikely that we have learned the right lessons from the 2008 meltdown; but it’s worth asking what lessons we should have learned, to avoid the same mistakes again.
September 21, 2018
The delusions of infrastructure spending
September 7, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "President Trump is wise in many things, but he has two economic beliefs that are irredeemably foolish: low interest rates and infrastructure. To the joy of die-hard Hillary-lovers, I now propose to criticize one of those two beliefs: that in infrastructure. By and large, it is thoroughly overpriced currently, and very often it yields far more costs than benefits, as examples around the world can show."
September 7, 2018
Trump Rides High After Victories for His Candidates in US Primary Races
September 6, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Sieff: "A wave of primary voting contests in the four US states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut to choose candidates for the November 2018 midterm election has confirmed President Donald Trump’s growing clout in the Republican Party. The voting continued the pattern of the previous round of primary contests on August 7 when GOP candidates supported by Trump also won their primary races against challengers within their own party, confirming the president’s enduring popularity and hold over Republican grassroots voters."
September 6, 2018
The New Immigrants And America’s Future Identity
August 8, 2018 - Issue brief by Paolo von Schirach: "We now know that the Australian government is openly concerned that, unless it can manage its immigration policies properly, there is a risk that Australia may soon lose its political and cultural identity. There is fear that there are now too many new economic immigrants who, while living and working in Australia, do not fully understand and embrace the core values that bind Australia together. If this were indeed the case, the country will soon lose its identity and become something else."
August 9, 2018
Germany must stop beggaring its neighbors
June 25, 2018 - Issue brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff published a photo taken at the recent G7 summit that showed Merkel glowering at a defiant President Donald Trump, suggesting that Trump was isolated and alienating America’s allies. Yet when we examine actual behavior, it is Germany that is beggaring its neighbors and failing to live up to international obligations."
June 25, 2018
The appalling seductiveness of Karl Marx
May 21, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "The 200th birthday of Karl Marx on May 5 passed with several indications, in both Europe and China that his appeal is not dead. Indeed, it is showing considerable signs of revival. China has significantly reversed its move away from Marxism, whereas elements in the EU High Command seem to be recognizing that something like a centralized “Marxist dictatorship” is what they are aiming for. “Big Data” possibilities bring forth the frightening chance that Marxism may actually work – better than it did, at any rate, when it comes to centralized resources management. If this is so, how can a freedom-lover fight this apparently inexorable trend?"
May 21, 2018
The world’s greatest need is fewer people
May 17, 2018 - Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson: "While we are in a brief period of decent global growth, the underlying productivity trends in rich countries are disquietingly low. What’s more, it now seems likely that, except in the United States, we will not get out of the zero-interest rate lunacy before the next downturn. And even more disquieting is a re-acceleration of global population growth, so that the United Nations’ 2100 projection has risen from 10.1 billion to 11.2 billion just in the few years since 2010.  The vicious combination, of foolish policy, low productivity growth and rapid population growth, seems likely to push large chunks of humanity back into poverty."
May 17, 2018
A Currency Board System would strengthen Turkey’s economy    
April 27, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Billur Guner Cohen: "Since the 1980s financial crises, developing countries have struggled with implementing effective exchange rate regimes. As a developing country, Turkey too has suffered from economic and financial crises since the transformation and liberalization of its economy in the 1980s. And deciding the optimum exchange rate system for the Turkish economy remains one of its most controversial problems."
April 27, 2018
The Movement to Delete Facebook
April 23, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Fazle Chowdhury: "Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook said the Delete Facebook campaign has had little impact. He is right. 4% loss in Facebook stock is hardly a hit for a company that has a revenue stream of more than $40 billion. Bear in mind that 98% of its income comes from advertisers."
April 23, 2018
The Toothless FAANGs
April 12, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "For several years, the stocks of the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) have been the way to make serious money. Over the five years to December 31, 2017, the FAANG stocks returned 41.6% annualized, compared with 18.6% for the S&P 500 Index, to trade at almost 70 times historic earnings by that point. Yet all five of the FAANG stocks have weaknesses in their business models that are becoming increasingly apparent, suggesting that they are just today’s equivalent of the 1999 dot-coms, the 1972 Nifty Fifty, the 1929 Investment Trusts, or the 1720 South Sea Company."
April 12, 2018
De-globalization Gathering Momentum
March 15, 2018 - Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson: "President Trump’s sudden announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum is by no means unprecedented – Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush took similar actions. Yet it emphasizes a reality I first pointed back in 2010: the globalization project, beloved of Whig economists and big-government types everywhere, is falling apart. De-globalization is here to stay and, contrary to Whig belief, it will be good for the world economy and for our living standards."
March 15, 2018
Debt and Taxes become more inevitable
March 9, 2018 - Issue Brief by Martin Hutchinson: "The White House 2019 Budget is pure fantasy. However, it assumes a deficit in the fiscal year to October 2019 of $984 billion. If this is not enough, Congress’s 2-year Budget deal has added at least $80 billion more spending, pushing the federal budget deficit well over $1 trillion. Since we are at the top of a business cycle, with unemployment around 4%, this is very disquieting. That said, the driver of current deficits is more a past lack of productivity than a burst in profligacy, and it is there that we must look for a solution."
March 9, 2018
An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of Failure
February 22, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "Theresa May’s negotiations for Britain’s exit from the European Union are not going well. Time and again, she has been forced to back down, notably over an outrageous EU demand for 40 billion pounds of exit money. Since that demand, negotiations have grown no easier, as the EU has attempted to impose further outrageous conditions, such as a veto over Britain’s trade treaties."
February 22, 2018
Cooperatives are a useful capitalist tool
February 14, 2018 - Issue Brief by GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "Britain’s Labour Party has now committed to re-nationalizing many of the utilities that were privatized to such fanfare under Lady Thatcher in the 1980s. Reluctantly, we should admit that in certain respects the Labour Party has a point. Monopolies owned by private equity groups, as have appeared in the water industry, offer no accountability to anybody. But there is a better alternative, bringing both accountability and a proper incentive structure, much used in capitalism’s earlier days: the customer-owned cooperative."
February 14, 2018
The “secular stagnation” that wasn’t
January 30, 2018 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson, "Rarely can two economists of such eminence have been made to look so foolish so quickly. In 2015, Robert J. Gordon wrote a book proclaiming that the lousy productivity growth that we had seen in recent years was the best we could expect now and in the future. In January 2016 Paul Krugman reviewed it enthusiastically in the New York Times. Low productivity is due, we were told, to “secular stagnation”. The U.S. economy simply run out of gas. Hence low GDP growth."
January 30, 2018
Gross Imaginary Product creates fake wealth
January 1, 2018 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "In the era of crypto-currencies, I propose a new economic statistic: Gross Imaginary Product, GIP. This can be defined as the total output at market prices of all products and services which do not actually exist. Contrary to popular superstition, not all the $350 billion value of crypto-currencies is imaginary. There are some real values there. Conversely, in the physical economy, in California, London, Japan and in other places distorted by “funny money” there are apparently “real” values that are in truth purely imaginary."
January 2, 2018
What is really happening in Iran?
January 2, 2018 - By GPI Fellow Fazle Chowdhury: "Those who damage public property, disrupt order and break the law must be responsible for their behavior and pay the price," stated Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli, Iran's Interior Minister. "The spreading of violence, fear and terror will definitely be confronted", he continued.
Tax Cuts Will Increase The U.S. National Debt To Unsustainable Levels
December 6, 2017 - By Paolo von Schirach: "It is really hard to properly assess the Republican tax reform proposal now discussed in Congress. Many details have yet to be ironed out. Sure, in principle we can agree that a basic reform leading to a simplification of the almost incomprehensible U.S. Tax Code would be much better than the confusing morass we have now."
December 7, 2017
Under Funny Money, We’re All Living in Vegas
December 4, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: " 'True investing is not the same as gambling' said Isabella Kaminska in The Financial Times recently. Yet in today’s world, I’m damned if I can spot the difference. Bonds are a one-way bet to losses; the stock market is at levels it should not have reached until 2075; London real estate is at levels it should never have reached at all; and only crypto-currencies appear to offer sound long-term value. Whatever the differences were between investing and gambling, they have disappeared. That reality has unpleasant implications for our future."
December 4, 2017
The disaster of negative productivity growth
November 21, 2017 - By Martin Hutchinson: "Capitalism requires capital. The process of industrialization is partly one of technological advance; but it is also one of increasing capital use in the economy. However, when the return to capital is forced below zero, as in the last decade, the capital base shrinks, the economy misbehaves and productivity declines, in spite of technological wizardry. Thanks to the world’s central banks, that is happening now in every advanced country. The rich world’s economy is thus in a death spiral, and it is not clear what forces can be used to get us out."
November 21, 2017
The Bottom Line on Electric Cars: They’re Cheaper To Own
November 16, 2017 - By Constance Douris of Lexington Institute: "The price of electric vehicles is coming down, but they still look expensive compared with many gasoline-powered cars. That comparison, though, is misleading. Once you figure in the cost of ownership, especially maintenance and fuel, electric vehicles are a bargain despite the up-front price tag".
November 17, 2017
Hollowed-Out Blue Chips Are The Next Subprime
November 13, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: " Subprime mortgages caused much of the 2008 financial crisis by defaulting in much greater concentrations than the experts expected. The next financial crisis is likely to be caused by a similar disaster that surprises the experts. I have an excellent candidate: Fortune 500 companies that have been repurchasing their shares like maniacs for a decade, and in many cases have left themselves with negative net worth. In a major recession, when their business drops off and their cash flow turns negative, they will only need a breath of adverse wind to default. Like the subprime mortgages, once a few major companies default, the rest, with fragile credit structures, will fall like dominoes."
November 14, 2017
Trade and Immigration Need Good Garden Fences
October 31, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: " 'Good fences make good neighbor' wrote Robert Frost in 1914. Those who have lived in both British and modern American suburbs can agree. High fences are not ideal; you can’t talk to people across them. But nor are a complete lack of fences, which allows gangs of neighborhood kids to race across your garden every afternoon, spreading destruction. The ideal is modest fences, low enough to communicate across yet sufficient to act as a barrier and a reminder of a private space. The metaphor is highly applicable to trade and immigration policy."
October 31, 2017
Trump Tax Reform Won’t Goose Growth
October 30, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: " President Trump’s proposed budget justifies its potential $1.5 trillion increase in the Federal deficit over ten years by claiming it will increase the anemic U.S. growth rate, thereby paying for itself. After the third quarter GDP growth figures released Friday, there can be no question that the U.S. economic growth rate has increased under Trump, with his relentless deregulation effort, (or simply ceasing to pile on additional regulation), as the main spur to boosting an economy that had been burdened with non-market interest rates and silly leftist regulatory efforts. But Trump’s proposed tax changes are a different matter; they are by no means clearly supply-side in their likely effect, and thus they may simply deprive the Federal government of much needed revenue."
October 30, 2017
“Mississippi Company” Economics
October 19, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: " We have seen today’s economics in action before. Not in the 1720 South Sea Bubble – that was a simple stock market frenzy, similar to that of 1999, with a debt conversion scheme buried in it, but no excessive leverage. However, the almost exactly contemporary Mississippi Company/ Banque Royale scheme, devised in Paris by the Scots financier John Law – that, truly, bears a hideous resemblance to today’s markets, sparked off by a very similar monetary policy. Its collapse and the denouement thereof is also instructive. "
October 19, 2017
Maybe Brexit Will Not Be So Hard: UK-EU Trade Overstated
October 3, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Gabriel Unruh: "As Brexit negotiations continue, much news has been swirling about the UK’s ability to economically rebound from the consequences of a potential “hard-Brexit.” Even a Brexit which still places the UK somewhat in the European Union will come with trade restrictions which will significantly limit UK trade volumes with EU states. But, what if some of this pain could be quickly diminished once UK imports and exports flow directly to and from UK ports, as opposed to passing through EU ports?"
October 3, 2017
The Politicization of Big Business
September 25, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "The collapse of President Trump’s business advisory councils had little to do with Trump’s policies, or even his way of presenting issues. After all, the business leaders had joined the councils after Trump became President, so knew what they were getting into. Traditionally, businesses have been careful to maintain political neutrality, so their strong opposition to President Trump appears surprising. Yet in reality, 22 years of funny money have corrupted businesses as they have economic life in general. In this age of crony capitalism, you can expect to find CEOs in the media friendly activist left."
September 25, 2017
Ukraine Bets on PPPs For Infrastructure Modernization
September 8, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Eugene Spiro: "While Ukraine’s state-owned seaport facilities labor under serious need of repair and modernization, the country’s Ministry of Infrastructure (MoI) is taking a “can do” approach in seeking to upgrade the country’s ports via concessions and public-private partnerships (PPPs)."
September 8, 2017
Low Skills Workers Needed in Order to Strengthen Productive Economies
August 25, 2017 - Martin Hutchinson: "Many of Maynard Keynes’ dreams were destructive to civilization. The euthanasia of the rentier, which central bankers worldwide are still trying to achieve, has hopelessly corrupted the capital allocation process and brought productivity growth to a halt."
August 25, 2017
Anyone but Gary Cohn for Fed Chairman
August 4, 2017 - Martin Hutchinson: "Nearly twelve years ago, on October 24, 2005, I reviewed the potential runners for Fed Chairman and came to the conclusion that the worst possible choice would be Ben Bernanke. Needless to say, President George W. Bush appointed Bernanke the following week. Since Donald Trump bids fair to be a considerably better President than Bush, I have some hopes that this column may not be a perfect negative indicator this time round. So, Mr. President, there are good choices and bad choices for the next Fed Chairman, but above all, avoid your National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn."
August 4, 2017
A Sailor’s Guide to Strategic Planning
July 20, 2017 - By Adam P. Saffer: "The older I get, the more I appreciate simplification. Whether instructions on how to pair wireless devices, driving directions to a meeting place, a recipe for a good meal, or a training event, the simpler the better. For years I worked as a management consultant helping for profit and non-profit firms develop their business strategy. During those years, I read a plethora of books, papers and articles on the subject - each one smarter and often more complicated than the other. Don't get me wrong, there is a tremendous amount of creative, rational, well-researched and well-written literature available; all written by people far smarter than me. Be it vision-based, issue-based, goal-based, or scenario-based, using various tools and structures such as a log frames, strategic maps, balanced scorecards, all offer interesting and valuable perspective. However, if you don't have a Chief Strategy Officer or are not particularly interested in or familiar with the process of strategic planning (which if executed correctly is usually as if not more impactful than the final product), it is hard to determine which model is best suited for your company. Other determining factors include but are not limited to the stage of the business (e.g. start up, early stage SME, rapid growth or expansion phase, preparing to sell, transitioning to a new generation), the industry (e.g. manufacturing, wholesale, retail, services, FMCG, ICT), current market conditions, competitive dynamics, and the company’ approach to differentiation (e.g. high quality/low volume; low quality/high volume, faster, cheaper, greener, a new product)."
July 20, 2017
The Destructive Effects of The Charitable Tax Deduction
July 14, 2017 - Martin Hutchinson: "President Trump’s tax plan removes the deduction for state and local taxes, but leaves in place a much worse policy: the charitable tax deduction. As tax policy, the charitable tax deduction is execrable. It favors primarily the very rich and it enables such atrocities as the Clinton Foundation. However, this tax deduction has a subtler undermining effect: it allows the very rich to get away without paying the taxes the rest of us suffer. This exemption from tax is why the rich now vote Left, betraying what should be their class interests. It needs to go – now."
July 14, 2017
Can Emerging Markets Become Competitive?
July 11, 2017 - Martin Hutchinson: "Five years ago, the future for emerging markets seemed set fair. Globalization was driving much of the world’s manufacturing to them, as Western companies sought optimal global supply chains. All they needed to do was avoid selecting lunatic Marxist or Islamist dictators as leaders. Yet the future has changed; globalization is in retreat, though it’s not yet clear how far the retreat will go. However, that does not mean that emerging markets are condemned to long-term penury."
July 11, 2017
The robot revolution resembles the first industrial revolution
July 6, 2017 - Martin Hutchinson: "New technology disrupted working life as never before. A large percentage of the workforce seemed likely to lose its job and maybe never work again. Poverty threatened the displaced workers, who succumbed to addiction and disease. It sounds like a dystopian prediction on the introduction of robots – but it is actually a description of Britain’s problems during the first Industrial Revolution. The parallels are striking and instructive."
July 6, 2017
America Needs More Women Engineers
June 29, 2017 - By Roberta Rincon: "Women represent a small percentage of the total number of engineers in the workforce today. This is not to say that there has not been improvement. In fact, female engineers have more than doubled since 1980 – from 5% to roughly 14% of employed engineers in 2015.[i] Unfortunately, this is still vastly behind what many other STEM fields have seen with regard to gender equity improvements. For example, approximately 48% of biological and life scientists are women."
June 29, 2017
Weaker Britain after the vote
June 28, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon: "It was a 91-year old woman who summed up Britain’s widespread anger, sense of tragedy and loss of respect for government and authority. The country, she said, was in a “very sombre national mood”. There have been four terrorist attacks in four months, a general election that left the government weak and floundering, the opening of difficult and divisive talks with the European Union and a terrible fire in London that killed around 80 people in a tower block that housed mainly immigrants and poor people."
June 28, 2017
Can we really understand Chinese finance?
June 21, 2017 - By Gabriel C. Unruh: "The Chinese financial system is highly regulated and dominated by government control and intervention, in stark contrast to the mostly-private and relatively unregulated financial system in the U.S. In theory China has extensive regulatory systems in place. However, these systems are weak and not applied evenly throughout the economy. Along with The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, four large government banks control most major financial operations in the country. These four are ..."
June 21, 2017
The Information We Create Will Enslave Us
June 12, 2017 - By Martin Hutchinson: "When James Thomson wrote, “Britons never, never, never will be slaves”, the concluding chorus line of “Rule Britannia” in 1740 he did not envisage the coming of the Information Age. Today the accumulation of Big Data on every transaction, even every word uttered electronically, gives governments, notably that of Britain’s Theresa May, powers of enslavement they are likely to misuse. We should not blame governments; the fault is in the information itself, and the solution relies on the world where modern information transmission and storage is no longer possible."
June 13, 2017
Good policy favors the small property-owner
June 8, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "The Financial Times and The Economist have recently taken to issuing fatwas against the Trump Administration’s economic policy, indulging in repeated bouts of “Two Minutes Hate” against the man himself, combined with denunciations of “populism.” Yet “populism” is a term that covers a multitude of sins. In pandering to the prejudices of their journalists and readership, both publications have lost sight of the bedrock of sound economics: strengthening and furthering the interests of the small property-owner."
June 8, 2017
No Serious Discussion About Entitlement Reform In The U.S.
June 2, 2017 - By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Much has been said about the first Trump budget recently released. The expected partisan critiques –in fact outcry– focus on proposed cuts in Medicaid and disability benefits. Therefore, this becomes a “cruel budget”, an open attack against weak, low income Americans, and so forth."
June 2, 2017
Buffett rings the bell for the market
May 25, 2017 - By Martin Hutchinson: "Warren Buffett recently announced he had more than doubled his stake in Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and apologized to investors for missing out on Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Alphabet/Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). Presumably, had he been around in July 1720 (he wasn’t quite) he would also have apologized to investors for missing out on the bonanza of the South Sea Bubble. Buffett’s belated rush into the tech sector is about as good a sell signal as you can get."
May 25, 2017
China’s Ambitious “One Belt One Road” Project Will Promote Growth
May 22, 2017 - By Martin Sieff: "Four years after its formal launch in 2013, President Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative continues to quietly generate momentum as one of the most important geostrategic developments of the new millennium. Expressions of skepticism about the OBOR project remain widespread in the Western media. "
May 22, 2017
Why wait 30 years for robot CEOs?
May 11, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "Jack Ma, Chief Executive Officer of the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, opined last week that in 30 years even CEO jobs would be outsourced to robots. His observation caused qualms in the overstuffed hearts of the cognitive elite, who had thought themselves immune to such vulgarities as replacement through automation. My question is: given the abysmal quality of current corporate top management, what in the world would make us wait so long for that transition to occur?"
May 11, 2017
The Dream Of New U.S. Manufacturing Jobs
April 21, 2017 - Paolo von Schirach: "We know that President Donald Trump pledged to renegotiate (supposedly unfair) trade agreements worldwide with the goal of re-balancing the U.S. trade accounts, while forcing companies to move lost U.S. jobs back to America."
April 21, 2017
How do we fix finance in the U.S.?
April 21, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, formerly President of Goldman Sachs, startled markets last week by suggesting that the United States should re-impose the Glass-Steagall separation between commercial and investment banking. That is probably desirable on balance. However, this may not be enough. The U.S. and global financial system was already a mess when Glass-Steagall was removed in 1999. We should do more, beyond restoring Glass-Steagall, to restore finance to its proper state."
Humans will avoid the fate of the horses
April 20, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "We are not horses. Yet the Luddite left is telling the story of how the horses lost their jobs after 1900 as a parable of what might happen to most humans as the robots take over all the jobs. In a truly free market, in which government was small and with little power, this would be impossible. The world economy is set up to benefit humanity, not horses, so the market would adjust to robots as a useful new tool to serve humans. Yet we are far enough from a free market today, and government is powerful enough and stupid enough, that the equine nightmare cannot entirely be ruled out. We must thus take steps to avoid being sent to the glue factory."
April 20, 2017
How to defeat crony capitalism and restore a free market
April 5, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "Paul Ryan’s health care “reform” bill was defeated last week without even receiving a vote in the House of Representatives, in spite of the care he had taken to get input from the health insurance industry. That was the problem. In a crony capitalist system, where bad lobbyist-pushed laws and regulations have poured illicit profits into the pockets of oligopolists, the oligopolists are the last people to consult on how to reform those laws."
April 5, 2017
Business Development Services or “BDS” not working in the Developing World
April 3, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser Adam Saffer: "Historically across the developing world, the donor community invested significant amounts of money to promote small-scale enterprises with Business Development Services, (BDS), providers acting as the agents of governments and the donor community. However, it became increasingly clear by the mid-1990s that these subsidized programs had not achieved much success in terms of outreach and impact, nor were they self-sustaining."
April 3, 2017
China to Become Green Super Power?
March 17, 2017 - By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Many Western environmentalists and commentators openly praise China for its declared energy policy objective of turning itself into a truly “Green Super Power”. They claim that, unlike Trump’s America, (ignorant and backward), China (smart and forward-looking) truly understands the threat of global warming, and is actually doing something very serious about it."
March 17, 2017
Washington needs major productivity growth to pay the bills
March 17, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "Crunch time is here for the Trump administration, and for us all. President Trump’s economic policies, in particular his plans for drastic deregulation, (in parallel with a rise in interest rates led by the Fed), if they work as advertised, will produce a surge in productivity growth that will allow the United States to pay the bills coming due. However, if the productivity growth does not materialize, or if other less benign Trump policies pull the global economy off course, it is difficult to see how we can avoid economic collapse and universal debt default. Things could genuinely go either way."
Facing Low Oil Prices Exxon Is Looking For New Strategies
March 16, 2017 - By GPI President Paolo von Schirach "Major oil companies are in deep trouble. Too much global supply means lower crude prices. If this continues –and there is every little evidence that it will not– this means that large exploration projects in far away lands that typically require large up front investments may no longer have economic justifications. Simply stated, these projects mean too much money invested now for potentially weak or even negative returns years from now."
March 16, 2017
Where is all the malinvestment in the US economy?
March 15, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson , We have had eight, nearly nine years of zero interest rates and negative real interest rates. You don’t have to be a convinced Austrian economist to believe that in this length of time an extraordinary amount of “malinvestment” – investment that is not justified by economic reality – has piled up. Now that interest rates seem to be rising, that malinvestment will collapse, losing lenders’ and investors’ money."
March 15, 2017
Wellness Programs Will Transform US Health care
March 6, 2017 - By GPI President Paolo von Schirach - "Undoing Obamacare is proving to be a lot more complicated than what confident President Trump (and the Republicans in Congress) had anticipated. The problem is that it turns out that most Americans want universal health insurance and affordable health coverage –the promise of Obamacare. But they do not want to pay what it costs to obtain medical care in our horrendously complicated and super expensive system."
March 6, 2017
In A Time Of Rising Nationalism, Boeing Becomes The Model Of What An American Company Should Be
February 27, 2017 - By GPI Senior Adviser Loren Thompson, "In the three months since Donald Trump was elected president, no corporate executive has interacted more with him than Boeing Chairman & CEO Dennis Muilenburg. Trump apparently has concluded that the nation’s biggest exporter is a model for how he would like other U.S. manufacturers to behave. And with good reason: in 2016, for the fifth consecutive year, Boeing delivered more jetliners than Airbus without the benefit of government subsidies that its European rival receives."
February 27, 2017
Reform the Federal Reserve before de-regulating banks
February 13, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "President Trump has promised financial de-regulation, and has hired the former Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, to design it. Given Goldman’s sorry record over the last decade that should worry us. It should worry us even more when we consider that there is no sign of a change in Fed policies, so that the “funny money” trend that caused the 2008 financial crash and subsequent malfeasances is still in full effect. Without reforming the Fed, de-regulating banks will be largely counterproductive."
February 13, 2017
No Economic Growth Without Clear Property Rights
February 13, 2017 - By Paolo von Schirach: "The almost unanimous mission statement of key International Financial Institutions (IFIs) devoted to development, along with national development agencies and their many private and public sector partners is that they are all united in a major effort “to fight poverty”, or at least “reduce poverty” around the world. Well, may be so. But if this is indeed their goal, they are not focusing on one of the most important issues –may be the most important– that prevents poor countries to get out of poverty."
NASA Space Launch System Opens Pathway To Mars — And Thousands Of Jobs On Earth (From Forbes)
February 9, 2017 - By Loren Thompson: "The companies that supply NASA’s project to one day send astronauts to Mars will be holding their annual conference in the nation’s capital next week. Collectively, they and their federal customer employ over 10,000 workers on the project, the twin centerpieces of which are a huge rocket called the Space Launch System and a crew vehicle called Orion. If you were going to build a case for why our nation still contains the seeds of greatness, this is where your story would begin."
February 10, 2017
Retreating from the global economy?
February 8, 2017 - By GPI Fellow Martin Hutchinson: "The last couple of weeks have been full of events justifying predictions I made over the years, which is very gratifying. My 2010 prediction talked about the possibility of de-globalization. Remarkably, that prediction appears to be coming to pass. I thus thought it worthwhile to look at how far the de-globalization trend might go, and whether it, unlike globalization, will be permanent."
February 8, 2017
No Real Development Without Economic Growth – Part 2
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "International development practitioners focus on policies through which they can eliminate or alleviate poverty, the visible manifestation of underdevelopment, rather than planting the seeds that may foster self-sustaining economic growth and therefore true development –which is, by the way, the only proven way for any society to really get out of poverty. This “poverty alleviation is our goal” approach, while well intentioned, encourages the misallocation and outright waste of limited financial and human resources, all in the name of the noble cause of the “fight against poverty”."
December 29, 2016
No Real Development Without Economic Growth – Part 1
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "International development is generally defined by practitioners of this craft as “the fight against poverty“. I totally disagree with this approach that focuses on poverty, the practical manifestation of lack of economic growth, instead of dealing with the real problem that I define as: “What does it take to get sustained growth, since growth is the prerequisite for economic and social progress in all societies”? "
Trump needs to shape difficult relationship with China
By GPI fellow Martin Sieff: "US President-elect Donald Trump faces a long, difficult road, fraught with pitfalls, in seeking to redefine the symbiotic relationship between the United States and China that has developed over the past 40 years. That process has already begun: But it did not get off to a good start."
December 26, 2016
Has Trump discovered new trade truths?
By Martin Hutchinson : "President-elect Donald Trump’s deal with Carrier rescued some 800 jobs in the state of Indiana at a cost of some $7 million in tax breaks and other subsidies. The deal was immediately attacked, often by commentators whose devotion to the free market had never previously been detected."
December 18, 2016
Mass Produced Electric Cars? Sooner Than You Think
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "The still unresolved issue that will determine if and when there will be real mass demand for Electric Vehicles, EVs, is how to design and manufacture cheaper, lighter batteries for EVs with a higher energy reservoir, and therefore capable of traveling longer distances with one electric charge."
November 30, 2016
How The US Fed Damaged The American Economy
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "I indicated a while back that whoever would be elected President of the United States on November 8 –Clinton or Trump– it was unlikely that she or he would have the fortitude and the political backing enabling her/him to seriously focus on the real, yet silent systemic crisis affecting the U.S. economy: artificially depressed interest rates. I still hold this opinion."
November 18, 2016
Will Brexit Happen?
By GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon: "Will Brexit ever happen? Ever since Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, the government has been in turmoil, uncertain how to proceed. Angry disputes have erupted between those who want a total break with Europe and those who want to retain trade and other links. Now, in a devastating judgement from Britain’s High Court, the Prime Minister has been told that she cannot begin the process of leaving the EU without consulting Parliament. And Parliament could easily veto all her plans."
November 14, 2016
For Syrian Refugees Learning English is a Key to Survival
By GPI Senior Adviser Michael Binyon: "Can the English language save Syrian refugees from extremism? Across Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, thousands of young men and women, driven from their homeland by violence and fighting, are learning the language they hope will open the doors to jobs, money, opportunity and peace. And with every step achieved, every hope kindled, the chances for Islamic State to lure frustrated young refugees into its extremist ranks are reduced."
November 1, 2016
America Needs More Innovation
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach, "Whatever has been said and promised by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in this extremely acrimonious 2016 presidential campaign, in the end America’s long-term future and prosperity rests on its ability to continue producing commercially viable technological innovation."
October 20, 2016
First Comes Growth Then New Jobs
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Every day I walk by a giant banner hanging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce imposing building in Washington, DC., located near the White House. The banner says: “Jobs & Growth”. On the face of it, nothing wrong with this statement. Of course we all want to have more jobs and more growth. if both things happen, we shall all be better off as a nation."
October 3, 2016
Is Exxon’s Obfuscation About Climate Change A Crime?
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Here is the thing. We know now that ExxonMobil’s internal documents reveal that experts working for the company years ago admitted that burning fossil fuels would cause unwanted higher temperatures, and therefore climate change."
September 29, 2016
Brexit Decision Throws Ominous Shadows over Britain’s Future
By GPI Fellow Martin Sieff: "Almost two months after the British public voted by a referendum margin of 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the European Union, the sky has not yet fallen on London. It may indeed be another two or three years before that might happen."
August 22, 2016
Towards Smart Cities
By GPI Fellow Murat Kuzlu: "The smart city concept consists of various key areas such as transportation, education, healthcare, e-governance, public security and energy. The smart energy/smart grid is one of most important areas to reach sustainable city mission in this concept. It is shown that advanced smart grid applications and a CI-based BEMS architecture will have an important contribution to reach sustainable cities in terms of energy efficiency, energy savings, and peak reduction."
August 3, 2016
Vertical Urban Farming Is About To Happen
By GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Over the years farming has become much more efficient. It has been heavily mechanized. Therefore it is far less labor intensive. Good roads, (at least in the developed world), cold storage systems, modern distribution centers, computerized logistics networks, and a lot more make sure that your lettuce moves rather rapidly from the farm to the supermarket shelf."
July 28, 2016
Italy Overwhelmed by Poor African Immigrants
Issue Brief by GPI President Paolo von Schirach: "Italy has two major demographic problems. Both of them carry bad outcomes. Italy is the destination of too many immigrants from poor countries in Africa and the Middle East; while its native population is shrinking due to extremely low fertility rates. In plain language: not enough new babies."
July 12, 2016
The Impact of False and Misleading Economic Data
Issue Brief by Paolo von Schirach: "We are used to hear that we live in a “data driven” world. Thanks to ICT and the computing power explosion, it is now possible to gather, streamline and organize millions, in fact billions of bits of information on consumers’ preferences, economic sectors’ performance, credit flows, and a lot more. All this intelligently organized and sifted data provides precious information that will influence, in fact will determine investments, marketing strategies, purchases, and even the pitch of political campaigns.
May 12, 2016
Dealing With Depressed Oil Prices
Issue Brief by Paolo von Schirach: "I am not at all surprised to see that the Doha oil talks aimed at finding an agreement among major producers about stabilizing output failed. Saudi Arabia would have liked to freeze production at current levels, which means at the Kingdom’s highest output in modern times, (more than 10 million barrels a day)."
May 2, 2016
The Moral Case for Capitalism
Issue Brief by Paolo von Schirach: "Here is a real shortcoming in American politics. In this critical election year no candidate from either party has been able to articulate in a simple, clear and cogent manner the moral case for free market capitalism."
April 28, 2016
International Financial Institutions Raising the Game: From Billions to Trillions
Issue Brief by Eugene Spiro: "The world’s leading international financial institutions (IFIs) announced, last year, a new, coordinated strategy designed to substantially strengthen their support toward achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals."
April 18, 2016
Why Does US ‘Liberation’ Make Drug Problems in Nations from Afghanistan to Ukraine Far Worse?
Issue brief by Martin Sieff: "Does liberation and subsequent occupation by US forces fan the flames of drug addiction and “integrate” previously insulate nations into the global or international drug economy? The question is an embarrassing one, but the data to support this contention appears irrefutable: Because it comes from the US government itself."
April 15, 2016
What Happens If Britain Leaves the European Union?
Issue Brief by Michael Binyon: "Is Britain about to destroy the European Union? If British voters opt in June for “Brexit” – Britain’s exit from the EU – the shock waves could mean that the 28-member union will swiftly unravel."
April 11, 2016