Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote a provocative op-ed in the New York Times last weekend. Titled “When Dead Companies Don’t Die,” it argues that unprecedented monetary stimulus from global central banks created a “fat and slow” world, dominated by large companies and plagued by a swarm of “zombie firms” — those that should be out of business but survive because of rock-bottom borrowing costs.     I would add that central bankers are creating a horde of zombie investors as well.     By now, bond markets have adjusted to the unabashedly dovish shift from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi…

The Indian subcontinent got partitioned in 1947 when the British colonial rule came to an end. India was divided into two new independent states: India and Pakistan. The reason for the division was the Indian National Congress’ (INC’s) adamant refusal to share power with the Indian Muslim League (IML) headed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was himself a non-practicing Muslim with a secular vision. Muslims represented over 25% of the then total Indian population. The partition was gory and bloody; in excess of a million people were killed. Also, millions of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and Muslims in India, migrated to areas cohabited by their…

In  Sacred Liberty, I offer loads of examples for how the modern claims of persecution by religious conservatives are exaggerated—and how Donald Trump has weaponized religious freedom concerns to sow division and beat up opponents. But it's important to understand that traditional American Christians are not hallucinating when they express concerns about their own religious status and rights. Look at it through their eyes. Religious motivations are denigrated. After the passage of Alabama's anti-abortion law, some progressives claimed that it was a violation of the separation of church and state because the sponsors had religious motivations. "One of the tenets of our…

More than one billion Muslims across the globe will soon celebrate a holiday called Eid al-Fitr. Eid al-Fitr, means the “Holiday of Breaking the Fast.” It is one of the major holidays of the Islamic faith. This holiday spans over three day with the first day marking the end of the month of Ramadan. The month of Ramadan Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, and intimacy with their spouses from sunrise to sunset. In the evening, they gather in the mosque to perform a special congregational prayer called Tarāwīḥ. Additionally, many Muslims spend most of the month of Ramadan in sincere devotion,…

The White House has pushed Arab nations to start securing their neighborhood on their own, but the U.S. might not like the result. THROUGHOUT HIS presidency, Barack Obama has tried to place the responsibility for Middle East security on the region’s leaders, particularly allies like Saudi Arabia whom America has provided with billions of dollars worth of military machinery. At the same time, his administration has backed away from deploying American troops to what have become a growing number of dangerous hot spots. “It’s more effective to use our capabilities to help partners on the ground secure their own country’s futures,” Obama said in a weekly address in September, employing…