Not long ago Via Meadia discussed the possibility of an internationalization of the Syria crisis, with Turkey and Iran being the chief belligerents. Events this week are edging closer to a wider Middle East war amid the crumbling wreckage of the Levant:First, on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan declared his government’s willingness to invade Syria to crush what might […]

Take a look at the latest grim economic data from Europe: Industrial output in Spain dropped for the tenth straight month, and now the German economy appears to be spluttering: German exports, a major source of growth for the country, fell in June for the month, after recovering the previous month from an earlier decline, […]

Americans don’t expect good economic news anytime soon, according to a new poll by Discover Financial Services’ U.S. Spending Monitor: the portion of consumers that expect the economy will get worse rose to more than half for the first time this year–up 4 percentage points at 53%–as sentiment among men worsened.Meanwhile, people expect to spend […]

Behold a green failure so colossal even Via Meadia is surprised: a UN carbon-credit trading program intended to reduce global concentrations of greenhouse gases has instead led a handful of factories in the developing world to massively increase them.The NYT explains: Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more […]

Egypt’s President Morsi, a former Muslim Brother, reacted resolutely to this week’s Sinai attacks, in which 16 Egyptian policemen were killed. As we noted earlier, the Egyptian military attacked unknown targets in Sinai from the air. Shortly thereafter, Morsi fired his intelligence chief, the commander of the military police, the head of the presidential guard, and […]

Trading giant Morgan Stanley is planning to eliminate a number of positions by tapping computers that can make many trading decisions, according to the WSJ: While the effort represents only a part of what the firm is doing to boost low returns in the business, the shift already has reduced the ranks of interest-rate and […]

July was a difficult month for Brazil: a major corruption scandal bolstered the case for supporters of the rule of law and transparency. This was a small bit of good news amid otherwise discouraging economic signs and a round of massive deficit spending that may be storing up trouble for the future.The trying times at home […]

Newly-independent South Sudan and its northern neighbor Sudan finally seem to have agreed on the financial part of a deal to get the precious liquid flowing out of the south again; this is a crucial step for both countries, which rely heavily on oil revenues, the Financial Times reports. Most of the crude in the vicinity […]

California is rapidly running out of money to pay for even the most basic services; it’s the perfect time, think some in the Assembly, to add to the Golden State’s fiscal burden.According to this scathing Sacramento Bee editorial, Assembly Bill 2451, which is sponsored by the state’s highway patrol and firefighter unions, “removes the statute […]

America’s energy revolution is underway. Proven oil reserves have been steadily rising for years, and increased production of shale gas is projected to create tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in the years ahead. But that doesn’t mean we know precisely where it’s all going, or when it will end.One of the bigger questions, for […]