An integrated global economy has its limitations, according to a new study by an international team of economists.From the WSJ: For years, economists have told Americans worried that cheap Chinese imports will kill jobs that the benefits of trade with China far outweigh its costs.New research suggests the damage to the U.S. has been deeper […]

A new report from the Gates Foundation’s Complete College America indicates that college enrollment is rising but college completion is not.  The NYT reports: Its report, which had the cooperation of 33 governors, showed how many of the students in states completed their degrees, broken down into different categories , including whether enrollment is full- […]

CFR fellow Michael Levi, one of the smartest people in this business, tweeted that the numbers in Joel Kotkin’s post referenced here on Via Meadia are off.Here’s the Levi tweet: I wish it were so. Kotkin numbers look off by >2X -include royalty recipients as employees. Ditto w wages- ~60k, good, but not 100Kotkin and […]

A month has passed since the Virginia earthquake and it looks like the Washington Monument is going to be closed indefinitely until a team of engineers can check every stone.  The WaPo reports: Officials said a “debris field,” made up mostly of mortar that had fallen during the quake, had been found at the base […]

The situation in Greece is so bad – with sovereign debt at 150% of GDP and economic growth forecasts continuing to fall – that economists and foreign policy thinkers are scrambling to think through the implications of default. What would happen if a bankrupt Greece dropped the euro? Ian Bremmer at the Financial Times explains […]

In San Francisco, the jobs of the future are already beginning to appear. A new company called cater2.me has gone into business providing a variety of catered lunches to businesses too small to afford a chef of their own. The New York Times reports: It’s true that these companies, which are paying engineers $100,000 or […]

While the government has been spending billions of dollars to produce a handful of sickly green jobs without much staying power, a veritable gusher of ‘brown’ jobs in traditional mining and energy extractive industries is on the brink of rejuvenating the American economy.That at least is what Joel Kotkin and his associates have discovered.  Looking […]

The issue of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has been festering now for about two decades. It shows no signs of going away. The issue is based on real facts, more of which keep coming out. At the same time, the issue is fanned by a secular media culture which relishes it with a good […]

Anybody hungry for a dose of good news should go to Bill Glahn’s blog for a cheery story on America’s growing energy independence. Just when it seems that all the news is bad, a ray a light peeks through the clouds.  Our dependence on foreign oil, a bugaboo for Presidents dating back to Nixon, has […]

The Senator John McCain that so many of us admired before his deeply uninspiring presidential campaign in 2008 is back, this time waging war on unauthorized and inefficient government spending on defense projects.  The Vietnam war hero is specifically targeting the Senate Appropriations Committee, or, as he put it, “a handful of senior appropriators and […]