4-Color Problem [Mori Akira]

Mr. Akira Mori Profile

Economist. Affiliated with a think tank (United States). Specialties include exchange-rate policy, monetary policy, macroeconomic policy, and financial regulation. Interacts with market participants, financial authorities, and policy makers to analyze exchange-rate trends from multiple angles.

※This article is a reprint and edit from FX攻略.com January 2021 issue. Please note that the market information written in the main text may differ from the current market.

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Mathematician Francis Guthrie noticed that four colors are enough to color a map so that neighboring countries have different colors, and he posed the question of whether four colors suffice to color any map so that neighboring countries have different colors. This is known as the “Four Color Problem.” It has been proven to be solvable by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken in 1976.

Get to Know Lebanon

Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country bordering Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south. In Beirut, the capital, ammonium nitrate that had been inadequately managed exploded, causing a major disaster with many casualties and injuries, a memory still fresh for readers.

In 1975, before Lebanon’s civil war (clashes between Muslims and Christians) broke out, Beirut was a glamorous city famed as the “Paris of the Middle East,” serving as a major hub for commerce, finance, and tourism. In 1982, when Israel invaded to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israeli forces repeatedly clashed with Hezbollah (an Islamist Shia militant group), and Beirut was destroyed by fighting, making Lebanon’s finances extremely strained due to reconstruction costs.