Following last week’s rankings from the US Chamber of Commerce, another list is out ranking the “Best and Worst States for Business” in 2013, this time assembled by Chief Executive magazine. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Texas is #1 and California #50, with many red states filling the top spots and blue states scraping the bottom.Regular readers of […]

Last Saturday the Düsseldorf opera house opened a new version of  Tannhäuser. But this wasn’t any old version of the classic Wagner opera: the director transposed its setting from the Middle Ages to 1940s Germany. The Nazi-themed version, according to The Guardian, contained scenes of rape and showed people dying in gas chambers. The opera has now been […]

Here’s an early sign of how successful the Obama administration’s plan to get Russia on board vis-à-vis Syria: Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, told the press today that Moscow will send air defense missiles to Syria after all. Moscow plans to deliver already contracted ground-to-air missile systems to Syria, Russian officials said Friday, pressing ahead […]

Central bankers make it their business to be delphic most of the time, but Ben Bernanke’s recent remarks drive us toward two conclusions. “In light of the current low interest rate environment, we are watching particularly closely for instances of ‘reaching for yield’ and other forms of excessive risk-taking, which may affect asset prices and […]

One of the constants of modern European history is that compared to the Germans, the Italians and the Brits, the French have stayed put. Since the French Revolution, the French have mostly stayed home. Emigration has just not been the French way.That may be changing. London is already full of talented young French people looking […]

 With the New York Times now running a front page story on what might be deliberately false statements made by the White House about the Benghazi emails, the scandal has entered a new stage. Benghazi isn’t about a few right wing press activists tooting their horns anymore; much against its inclinations, the MSM increasingly understands […]

Soaring employee costs and unfunded pensions in New York State are forcing hundreds of municipalities to choose between cutting back on services and postponing pension payments.Unsurprisingly, the vast majority have opted for the latter. A 2010 law supported by Governor Andrew Cuomo allows employers to divert money earmarked for pensions and delay payments to stop […]

Last weekend we wrote about the first fully 3-D printed gun, noting that it pointed to a whole generation of up-and-coming tech that will disrupt existing industries and challenge economic and political monopolies. Now it appears that the State Department has ordered Defense Distributed, which designed the gun, to take all traces of the gun’s blueprint off […]

Yet another city is suffering the consequences of hitting up the Wall Street casino to fund its pension system. Bloomberg reports that Denver’s public school system has paid a total of $215.6 million to Wall Street banks related to swaps and bond sales made since 2008—equal to two-thirds of total teaching expenses for one year.We’ve heard this […]

The victor in tomorrow’s elections in Pakistan will inherit a national economy in tatters. There are steep economic challenges ahead—so steep, in fact, that the first stop for Pakistan’s new government will probably be the offices of the IMF, where officials will go to seek a loan to keep the government afloat.Reuters has the story: The winner […]