The Economist Asia Edition February 12, 2022

Politics Despite a blizzard of diplomatic activity, America and Europe came no closer to ending Russia’s military threat to Ukraine. After talks in Moscow, Emmanuel Macron said Vladimir Putin had promised not to escalate the situation, but Russia denied that. In Washington, Joe Biden said a Russian invasion would prompt the cancellation of its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany; Olaf Scholz, Germany’s new chancellor, was woollier. France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine were planning to meet in Berlin to discuss the Minsk accords on Ukraine’s breakaway region of Donbas, but that deal is unpopular with Ukrainians. Poland’s finance minister resigned after a new tax package intended to benefit low earners instead cost some of them money. Poland’s share of the EU’s covid-19 recovery package is being held up over…

“FOR HISTORIANS each event is unique,” wrote Charles Kindleberger in his study of financial crises. But whereas “history is particular; economics is general”—it involves searching for patterns which indicate if a cycle is turning. Today America’s financial system looks nothing like it did before the crashes of 2001 and 2008, yet lately there have been some familiar signs of froth and fear on Wall Street: wild trading days on no real news, sudden price swings and a queasy feeling among many investors that they have overdosed on techno-optimism. Having soared in 2021, shares on Wall Street had their worst January since 2009, falling by 5.3%. The prices of assets favoured by retail investors, like tech stocks, cryptocurrencies and shares in electric-car makers, have plunged. The once-giddy mood on r/ wallstreetbets,…

NOTHING CONCENTRATES minds like 130,000 troops poised to invade. For years relations between Russia and the West have languished, but the Russian forces converging on Ukraine have caused a spasm of diplomacy. On February 7th and 8th Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, went to Moscow and Kyiv with plans to prevent war. He was to be followed east by the British ministers of foreign affairs and defence. Next week will be the turn of Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor. All face two sets of Russian demands. One is to recast Europe’s security architecture by constraining NATO in the east. The other is to lock Ukraine in Russia’s orbit. Of the two, Ukraine is more urgent and perilous. The danger is that in seeking to avoid an invasion, the West lumbers Ukraine with…

SINCE 2016 the value of investments in financial products that claim to abide by environmental, social and governance (ESG) rules has grown from $23trn to $35trn. Bloomberg Intelligence, a research firm, reckons it could exceed $50trn by 2025. ESG funds typically tell their customers that, among other things, they do their bit to tackle climate change when they invest in publicly listed companies. Most individual investors take these claims seriously and buy these funds in good faith. Such faith is not always well-placed. A lack of rigorous measurement means that greenwashing is rife and bogus claims go uncontested. Many funds claim that there is no trade-off between maximising profits and green investing, which seems unlikely for as long as the externalities created by polluting firms are legal and untaxed. And…

THE PHRASE “state election” does not do it justice. Over 150m people have registered to take part. They will throng to 174,351 polling stations in the course of seven rounds of voting spread over a month. There will be thousands of candidates and hundreds of parties. There are even 39,598 voters aged 100 or more, for whom special provision will be made. And all this is just in the biggest state—Uttar Pradesh—of the five that are holding elections in India in the coming weeks (see Briefing). There will be lots of talk of a “festival of democracy”—and so it will be. Every caste, every sect, every view will be catered for. The candidates include film stars, holy men, feminists and entrepreneurs. Three different sorts of communists are competing: Marxist, Marxist-Leninist…

WHEN THE Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first ever satellite, in 1957, Americans were blindsided. They could scarcely believe that they had been beaten into space. “Now, somehow, in some new way, the sky seemed almost alien,” said Lyndon Johnson, then the majority leader of the Senate, describing what he called “the profound shock of realising that it might be possible for another nation to achieve technological superiority over this great country of ours”. America’s leaders did not want to be beaten again. In 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower approved the creation of a new institution—the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Its task would be to scan the technological horizon and “invent the future”. Six decades later ARPA’s modern incarnation, DARPA (the D stands for defence) has proved itself so useful—with…