One of Tyler Cowen’s readers poses an important question: isn’t China’s response to the financial crisis exactly what Keynesians would have wanted the United States to do? In fact, in some ways China might have a better case for Keynesian stimulus than either the US or Europe.  To wit: It was large enough (roughly 3x […]

The headlines lately have focused on the big picture problems in Europe: a bank run in Spain, the prospect of costly bailouts, Greece’s inability to push through reforms, and so forth. But something much more fundamental is happening. At the grassroots level, the euro currency area is falling apart.The FT reports that, as differences in […]

Not surprisingly, Israelis are alarmed at the prospect that their southern neighbor will now be led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel lost “the devils it knew”: not only Mubarak, but also his top lieutenants, such as General Omar Suleiman, head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, with whom Israelis have been dealing for years. They fear […]

It’s Labor Day, and the current crop of Via Meadia interns is moving on. Therefore, we are looking for the next batch of ambitious young people to help us research and write for the site. Former interns have gone on to jobs in journalism, tech startups, the State Department and the US military, and have […]

[A Vintage Via Meadia essay originally published two years ago, republished and retweaked as a new cohort of first year students tries to figure out how to get the most out of college — and a new cohort of parents tries to figure out how to pay for it.]The anxious emails from students are hitting […]

A suicide bomber attacked an armored vehicle carrying U.S. diplomats in Peshawar yesterday. The New York Times reports: There were conflicting reports about the number and nationality of the casualties. Pakistani officials said that at least two people were killed and at least 13 were injured, including two police officers. The United States Embassy in Islamabad […]

There’s been an even more sinister turn in the story of the illiterate Christian girl accused of blasphemy by a Pakistani imam: the imam himself was arrested and accused of tampering with evidence and desecrating the Koran. “The imam was arrested after his deputy Maulvi Zubair and two others told a magistrate he added pages […]

Have we all been underestimating the gravity of the European crisis? That deeply unsettling question threatens to wreck the world’s peace of mind in what could just be a much more turbulent fall than people expect. The American election and much else could be wrenched out of shape by new and much more dangerous developments […]

I recently returned from a trip to Mongolia and Myanmar. The linking of these countries on the same itinerary was accidental, though they both actually have a lot in common: they border China and much of their recent foreign policy has been driven by a desire to get out from under Chinese domination. It’s not […]

As regular readers know, we have tried to stay away from the all consuming horse race journalism over the US presidential race while taking a look from time to time at where the two horses actually are. Our method belongs to the quick and dirty school of political analysis rather than the painstaking model crafting […]