The last time European leaders worked this hard in August was back in 1914, when they cooked up World War One.They don’t seem to be having much more luck this summer; the more Europe’s leaders talk, the more panicky markets grow.  The FT is talking about the ‘self-decapitation’ of Europe’s financial leadership and they are […]

Back when the humanitarian hawks were still selling the ‘days not weeks war’ in DC, skeptics often made the point that nobody really knew who the Libyan rebels were or what they wanted.Going on five months into the days not weeks war, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Libyan rebels themselves don’t know who they […]

The invisible hand has been writing on our wall of late, and the message is scaring the markets.  The markets should be scared; there is real trouble afoot, and the world’s political and economic leaders are terrifyingly out of their depth. In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar of Babylon held a great feast for […]

Middle Eastern Christians and their evangelical friends abroad are worried about what the Arab Spring will bring for the future. Molly Worthen has an excellent piece in Foreign Policy about the troubling situation faced by Christians in the Middle East, and the reasons why Arab dictators often get support from American evangelical Christians. She writes: […]

A gripping New York Times story by Sharon LeFraniere this morning details how corrupt local authorities in rural China literally snatched babies from their parents; the babies were then sold to Chinese and perhaps also American families looking to adopt. Yuan Xinquan was caught by surprise one December morning in 2005. Then a new father […]

The Syrian crisis appears to be intensifying on the first Friday of Ramadan.  Reports from Al-Jazeera this morning say substantial demonstrations are taking place in central Damascus, with crowds chanting “The people demand the execution of the president.”  Syrian state TV is showing footage of rubble strewn streets in Hama; when a regime begins to […]

Last month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) chief Ali Fadavi declared, “The frontline of the Islamic Republic is the sea. Our enemy, the United States, has a military capacity at sea and has secured hegemony by the means of its naval capacity. . . . It is necessary that the Iranian navy counters […]

When your economy looks bad, it doesn’t mean it is bad. It just means those awful rating agencies are using the wrong metrics.  Get some better metrics and the problems will magically disappear.That is what Iran has learned from the Europeans, who habitually blame Moody’s and its kin  for pessimistic economic predictions. In Iran’s case […]

The Burypensions Blog has a post about Detroit’s pension reforms that have merely postponed fiscal collapse for another time (h/t John Ellis). The restructuring is being touted as returning Detroit to fiscal stability. But some disagree. From the post: As in New Jersey, Detroit has assured fiscal collapse by passing weak reforms that artificially reduce […]

Having one CEO sidelined by a criminal investigation could happen to anyone.   But having two get in Dutch with the law begins to look like carelessness.First it was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose fun-filled lifestyle went sadly and still mysteriously awry in a New York hotel. Now his IMF replacement, the equally French and equally talented Christine […]