Along the way, it discovered that customers, especially foreign ones, have strict cost requirements it needs to match.

ECONOMIST: Japan's best engineers are having to learn about business

They are tired of the whingeing of overpaid financiers, especially foreign ones, and believe the economy has become overexposed to the banking industry.

ECONOMIST: London as a financial centre

In a bid to persuade investors, especially foreign ones, that it is serious about reform, the government wants most of this choreographed clean-up finished before deposit insurance is lifted in April.

ECONOMIST: Japan's banks

To take a more recent example, Arundhati Roy, India's Booker-prize novelist, not long ago wrote a long and impassioned article in one of India's weekly magazines portraying capitalists, especially foreign ones, as plunderers.

ECONOMIST: India��s choices

It may be impossible to set a minimum threshold for taxable revenue that penalises foreign firms but exempts domestic ones, especially as the latter grow.

ECONOMIST: France and the internet