For all the talk of de-leveraging in the economic and financial media these days, it looks like at least one group of borrowers is bucking the trend–students. According to the New York Fed’s latest Quarterly Report, released late in the week, while all other forms of debt in the US have fallen by $1.53 trillion since […]

Shale gas might just be the best thing since sliced bread.  In addition to saving the environment and solving poverty, fracking–and the abundance of natural gas it produces–is doing its part to help solve America’s economic woes. While regular Via Meadia readers know that the fracking revolution has been generating good, well-paying jobs in the energy sector and […]

As the British celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s sixty years on the throne, Americans congratulate them and share the celebratory moment. She isn’t, thank goodness, our queen, but she is a symbol of some enduring British qualities and accomplishments that are worth remembering and celebrating at a time like this.This year Queen Elizabeth passes George III […]

It isn’t a “pivot,” was the message of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday. It’s a “rebalancing.”Whatever it is, it’s big.Panetta used the occasion of a Singapore speech at the (London based) International Institute of Strategic Studies to tell a group of Asian officials about US plans to shift the balance of its naval forces to […]

Last year the US made great strides towards a more equal society: we cut the number of millionaires by more than 100,000. According to a study from the Boston Consulting Group, 129,000 evil US millionaires rejoined the ranks of the proletariat last year as the value of their stocks, cash and other non-business and non-property […]

As world opinion becomes more outraged (and US diplomacy looks more impotent and clueless) on Syria, a poll in France casts light on the growing clamor for yet another Middle Eastern war.According to a poll published by the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde, 58 percent of those polled favored a UN backed intervention in Syria. […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for May on Friday, and the Obama administration was stunned by the numbers. America added a paltry 69,000 new jobs last month, and the numbers for previous months have been revised downwards by nearly 50,000. As Matt Yglesias notes, this amounts to a net gain […]

According to Germany’s Spiegel, a chill has fallen over German-Russian relations even as summer reaches the far north. The Kremlin’s recent snubbing of German President Joachim Gauck and Putin’s absence at the G8 summit have led to suspicion as to how much swagger the Russian leader will exhibit in the coming months as his EU […]

Tel Aviv—and all of Israel—shook this week after a protest-turned-riot over the question of African immigrants. A crowd of about 1,000 people swarmed the streets of south Tel Aviv last week; shops and cars were vandalized and hateful slogans shouted through the streets.According to reports, the riot was preceded by hateful speeches in the Knesset, […]

China’s abnormally low 8.1 percent GDP growth in the first three months of the year was initially viewed as insignificant. Many China watchers thought the economy would quickly return to the heady days of 9–10 percent growth, but industrial production, investment, retail spending, and trade data have all been much lower than expected. Even other economic […]