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BUSINESS / MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS Bulletproof suits Forget the scandals. The consiglieri of the corporate world are more powerful than ever f075-01 THE CEOWHISPERERS of Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey, the trio at the pinnacle of management consulting, are accustomed to operating in the shadows. Of late, though, they have been thrust into the light by scandals. Bain ha..

INTERNATIONAL / CAPITALS OF COOL How pop culture went multipolar PARIS AND SEOULFears that globalisation would produce a monoculture have proved utterly wrong f073-01 THRONGS DESCENDED on the Jamsil Arena in Seoul, the South Korean capital, in July to see Super Junior, a band that exemplifies the “Korean Wave”. The crowd reflected the global reach of Kpop. Melonie was visiting from Ecuador. When..

EUROPE / YUGOSLAVIA AND UKRAINE Shadows of the past VUKOVARThe war in Ukraine has awakened memories in the Balkans f065-01 OUTSIDERS TODAY have mostly forgotten the Balkan wars of the 1990s. As communism collapsed in Europe, the despotic glue that held together Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic state, dissolved. The country fell apart. Unscrupulous political entrepreneurs won or cemented power by stirr..

EUROPE / GERMAN IMMIGRATION Willkommen BERLINThere are not enough Germans to do the jobs Germany needs f063-01 PERHAPS FRIEDERICH MERZ thought he was being clever. The head of Germany’s main opposition party recently claimed on television that many of the 1m Ukrainians who flooded into Germany this year came not as refugees but as what he called “social tourists”, to take advantage of government..

SPECIAL REPORT / INFLATION TARGETING The end of 2% Whether by choice or by accident, policymakers are likely to jettison their 2% inflation targets THE LAST time rich economies conquered inflation it ushered in a decades-long era known as the “great moderation”. From the mid-1980s to 2007 growth was steady, inflation was low and economists celebrated their own “end of history”: the triumph of in..

SPECIAL REPORT / INFLATION Long road back The inflation problem will get better before it gets worse IN 1978 MILTON FRIEDMAN looked back at three recessions that had struck America’s economy over the preceding decade. “Each scenario has been the same,” he wrote. Loose money created a boom and then inflation. An outcry against rising prices led to higher interest rates and a recession, only for r..

SPECIAL REPORT The total bill Adding up the fiscal drag from ageing, energy and defence IN 2006 NATO members set a target for defence spending of 2% of GDP. In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, they pledged to meet this target by 2024. But by 2021 most countries still fell short: averaging across western Europe, defence spending was only 1.6% of GDP. Some big countries—Germany, Italy, the Nethe..

vSPECIAL REPORT Feedback loop Is the world economy in a debt trap? f052-01 AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION for why real interest rates have fallen since the 1980s is that many countries have become less equal. Richer people save more as a percentage of their income, so as they earn a bigger slice of the economic pie, aggregate savings rise. Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub and Amir Sufi, three economists, sa..