Garry Kasparov: Cut Off the Russian Oligarchs and They’ll Dump Putin

Garry Kasparov: Cut Off the Russian Oligarchs and They’ll Dump Putin

Target their assets abroad, their mansions and IPOs in London, their yachts. Use banks, not tanks.

GARRY KASPAROV

March 6, 2014 7:26 p.m. ET

For the second time in six years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops across an internationally recognized border to occupy territory. This fact must be stated plainly before any discussion of motives or consequences. Russian troops have taken Crimea and they are not leaving, despite the Ukrainian government’s protests. Five hundred kilometers southeast across the Black Sea, Russian soldiers still occupy parts of Georgia—South Ossetia and Abkhazia—where they have been since Mr. Putin’s 2008 invasion and de facto annexation. Read more of this post

Beijing’s Credibility Deficit; Political control reduces the prospects for serious economic reform

Beijing’s Credibility Deficit

Political control reduces the prospects for serious economic reform.

Updated March 6, 2014 6:50 p.m. ET

This week’s National People’s Congress in Beijing is being studied for clues as to the Communist Party’s reform intentions, although it’s hard to see why. Surely China has reached the point where what leaders say they intend to do is less significant than what ends up happening. Read more of this post

China needs to curb risks posed by booming online finance: former ICBC president

China needs to curb risks posed by booming online finance: former ICBC president

2:21pm EST

BEIJING (Reuters) – China needs to regulate booming online financial services firms to curb the risks they pose to the wider financial sector, the former president of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Yang Kaisheng, said on Thursday. Read more of this post

Dewey & LeBoeuf Execs Accused of Accounting Fraud; In a multiyear scheme, the law firm’s CFO and other executives falsified accounting entries to conceal a cash-flow shortfall

March 6, 2014

CFO.com | US

Dewey & LeBoeuf Execs Accused of Accounting Fraud

In a multiyear scheme, the law firm’s CFO and other executives falsified accounting entries to conceal a cash-flow shortfall, Manhattan prosecutors allege.

Vincent Ryan

Dewey & LeBoeuf executives, including its former chief financial officer, are accused of running a multiyear scheme designed to hide the law firm’s financial struggles from creditors in the years prior to its filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Read more of this post

Tapping the power of hidden influencers; A tool social scientists use to identify sex workers and drug users can help senior executives find the people most likely to catalyze-or sabotage-organizational-change efforts

Tapping the power of hidden influencers

A tool social scientists use to identify sex workers and drug users can help senior executives find the people most likely to catalyze—or sabotage—organizational-change efforts.

March 2014 | byLili Duan, Emily Sheeren, and Leigh M. Weiss

Employee resistance is the most common reason executives cite for the failure of big organizational-change efforts.¹ Winning over skeptical employees and convincing them of the need to change just isn’t possible through mass e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, or impassioned CEO mandates. Rather, companies need to develop strong change leaders employees know and respect—in other words, people with informal influence. But there’s one problem: finding them. How can company leaders identify those people beforehand to better harness their energy, creativity, and goodwill—and thereby increase the odds of success? Read more of this post

Trust-busting in Mexico: Taking on the tele-garchs; Just as America bust its trusts a century ago, so Mexico needs to take on its near-monopolies in TV and telecoms

Trust-busting in Mexico: Taking on the tele-garchs; Just as America bust its trusts a century ago, so Mexico needs to take on its near-monopolies in TV and telecoms

Mar 1st 2014 | From the print edition

IN HIS second year in office President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico is admirably keen to develop a reputation as a cartel-killer. In December his reforms stripped Pemex, the state oil firm, of its 75-year monopoly. Last month he sent a bill to Congress raising the maximum jail sentence for anticompetitive behaviour to ten years. (He has even made some headway against the relentless drug cartels, as the capture on February 22nd of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Mexico’s most-wanted kingpin, attests—see article.) Read more of this post

After Mt Gox: Bitconned

After Mt Gox: Bitconned

Mar 5th 2014, 17:45 by P.H. | SEATTLE

JUST over a week ago, Schumpeter wrote about the collapse of Mt Gox, the once-dominant Bitcoin exchange that disappeared in late February along with almost half a billion dollars of customers’ cryptocurrency (and $65 million of its own)—all presumed stolen. Schumpeter’s reward for his article was open warfare in the comments section. A large minority of commenters pilloried Schumpeter for daring to criticise their belief in the almighty Bitcoin. The remainder questioned the sanity of anyone believing in what one commenter described as “the currency equivalent of unicorns.” Read more of this post

What’s gone wrong with democracy; Democracy was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Why has it run into trouble, and what can be done to revive it?

What’s gone wrong with democracy

Democracy was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Why has it run into trouble, and what can be done to revive it?

It is easy to understand why. Democracies are on average richer than non-democracies, are less likely to go to war and have a better record of fighting corruption. More fundamentally, democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own and their children’s futures. That so many people in so many different parts of the world are prepared to risk so much for this idea is testimony to its enduring appeal. Read more of this post

The battle of Detroit: Pensioners and bondholders fight over a city’s diminished coffers

The battle of Detroit: Pensioners and bondholders fight over a city’s diminished coffers

Mar 1st 2014 | From the print edition

IT WAS inevitable that the rights of creditors and pensioners would come into conflict, especially in places that suffer from high debts, sluggish growth and an ageing population. Admittedly Detroit, where a bankruptcy plan proposes deep cuts to the wealth of both bondholders and retirees, is an extreme example. But it does point to where future battle lines will be drawn. Read more of this post

Cult of dividends a ‘dangerous obsession’

Cult of dividends a ‘dangerous obsession’

March 1, 2014

Vesna Poljak, Simon Evans

Australian companies are redirecting their cash towards dividend-hungry investors instead of stepping up investment to underpin future growth in a shift that has serious implications for the ability of the non-mining sector to shoulder a bigger burden. Read more of this post

India Parliamentary Elections Set to Start April 7; Contest Between Congress Party, BJP Seen as Most Significant in Decades

India Parliamentary Elections Set to Start April 7

Contest Between Congress Party, BJP Seen as Most Significant in Decades

NIHARIKA MANDHANA

March 5, 2014 8:52 a.m. ET

Narendra Modi, the standard-bearer of the BJP, is considered the front-runner to become India’s next prime minister. Associated Press

NEW DELHI—Indian officials said voting will begin next month in one of the most significant elections in decades—a contest between a weakened secular left and a resurgent right with Hindu nationalist roots. Read more of this post