Lena Martin
Dollar dominance – why the world’s most traded commodity isn’t oil
Every day, $9.6 trillion changes hands in global foreign exchange markets. Global crude oil demand runs at approximately 103 million barrels per day —...
How international sanctions actually work — and why they usually don’t
Thirty years of research suggest sanctions rarely change the behaviour they target. Western governments keep imposing them anyway.
On February 19, 2022, Kamala Harris stood...
Why the world’s largest private landowners are not who you expect
Ask someone who owns the most land and they will name the wrong person. A Saudi royal. Jeff Bezos. Roman Abramovich, or whoever replaced...
The countries that pay citizens to have more children — and...
In South Korea, having a baby in 2024 triggered an eligibility cascade. A lump-sum payment of two million won at birth. Monthly transfers of...
Boutique powers – the countries with no natural resources that became...
Under a 1962 water agreement, Singapore purchases raw water from the Malaysian state of Johor at three Malaysian sen per thousand gallons — water...
The hidden architecture of tax havens: more legitimate than you think
In 1998, the OECD published a report formally establishing criteria for identifying what it called harmful tax competition. Two years later, its 2000 progress...
The miracle and its price: South Korea’s economic transformation, 1953 –...
From the ruins of the Korean War to a semiconductor superpower, a cultural exporter with global reach, and a society now confronting the economic...
What’s next for Bitcoin?
NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Bitcoin is a speculative...
How much are diamonds really worth?
The diamond market is the most successful psychological operation in the history of modern commerce — built on manufactured scarcity, engineered culture, and, where...