Most of the attention about Syria has been on the civil war and its appalling human toll. Rightly so. But the Syrian economy may ultimately be what brings Assad down, as the economic strains mount. As the FT reports, “The value of the Syrian pound has dropped by more than 15 per cent on the black […]

The U.S. isn’t the only developed economy anxious about its infrastructure. A deadly tunnel collapse last week on a busy highway near Tokyo has led to doubts about the quality and safety of Japan’s much vaunted, enormously expensive infrastructure. The Associated Press: Experts told the panel that about 40 percent of the 8,716 kilometers of expressways […]

Greece is entering the latest stage of its long decline, as businesses flee the country and move their headquarters away from the collapsing country. Those businesses that choose to remain not only face rising taxes and increased regulations; they are also risking credit downgrades for the simple fact that they are located in Greece. Coca-Cola’s […]

South African energy company SASOL is joining the American shale gas revolution with an investment of up to $21 billion to build two new plants in Louisiana. If plans go forward as expected, Louisiana would be home to the first gas-to-liquid plant in America, which transforms natural gas into a liquid fuel form to power vehicles.As the […]

Rhode Island’s blue-on-blue showdown is heating up. Famed litigator David Boies is taking a 96 percent pay cut to represent the state against recalcitrant public sector unions. The New York Times reports: Mr. Boies became involved, he said, because he was convinced that Rhode Island’s pension troubles were just the tip of a $5 trillion […]

Voters in Colorado and Washington have approved marijuana legalization, and polls show national support for it are at an all-time high. But those who think legal pot can quell violent crime in the drug trade are mistaken. The Atlantic explains: The notion that legalizing marijuana will cripple Mexico’s brutal drug cartels has gained steam in […]

After almost every election, you hear that the winning party is on the verge of consolidating a long-term domination of the system. This is particularly true following the reelection of a sitting president. After Bush’s victory in 2004 many on the right gloated that an era of permanent Republican dominance was upon us. Now we’re hearing […]

Not even a week into office and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has announced an ambitious, wide-ranging, and broadly supported plan to reform the country. The FT has details: In a 34-page document called the Pact for Mexico, Mr Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), set out what for many observers is the most ambitious reform […]

Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It might as well be called Detroit’s Law because it’s a perfect way of describing the city’s fiscal situation. Detroit is currently on track to run out of money at the end of the year. Michigan promised some much needed cash relief, but […]

My last two posts had the quality of academic mini-lectures. I don’t want my readers to suspect that I have gone into the business (a growing one, judging by ads all over the place) of long-distance education, so this post will break the pattern. It is somewhere between an intuition and a meditation.There were two […]