Via Joe Wiesenthal and Paul Krugman, we see that France’s borrowing costs have plummeted recently, down to 1.71 percent yesterday—almost the same level at which the United States borrows. Wiesenthal surmised that, despite the floundering Hollande government, investors have internalized that France truly is too big to fail and that the ECB stands foursquare behind it.Maybe. […]

Another stiff environmental challenge for China: air pollution in its biggest cities is chasing away the country’s best and brightest. After all, why would someone want to live in a city like Beijing, that routinely sees air pollution go literally off the charts?The Financial Times reports that the better-off have been plotting their escape on China’s social […]

What Saddam Hussein and Richard Nixon tell us about nuclear weapons and the “rational actors” in Tehran.

Tension between Christians and Muslims in Cairo broke out into lengthy street battles this weekend. Four Coptic Christians and one Muslim were killed on Saturday, and during the funeral for the fallen Christians on Sunday a huge fight broke out when “residents of the area” attacked the mourning party, which included women and children. The […]

America’s skilled and educated are continuing to flee the country’s glamorous metropolises for the more affordable cities of the Sun Belt and Great Plains. Joel Kotkin writes in the Daily Beast: Despite hopeful claims from density advocates that the Great Recession and the housing bust ended this trend, the latest census data shows that Americans have continued […]

Is America ready for Tea Party governance? If Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s popularity in his own state is any indication, the answer might be no. A recent poll suggests that Governor Jindal, a GOP star and possible 2016 presidential candidate, is less popular than President Obama in deep red Louisiana. With only 38 percent approval, […]

International STEM students once flocked to American graduate schools, but they are increasingly looking elsewhere for their education. International applicants to US grad schools grew by only 1 percent this year, the smallest gain in eight years. The WSJ reports: Applications from Chinese citizens to U.S. graduate schools declined 5% for the coming academic year […]

America’s shale revolution is more global than you think. Twenty percent of investments in American shale energy, totaling more than $26 billion, came from joint ventures with foreign companies. As the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports: Both U.S. and foreign companies benefit from these deals. U.S. operators get financial support, while foreign companies gain experience in horizontal drilling […]

Total student loan debt is now more than $1 trillion and rising, and parents of students, many of whom are a decade or less from retirement, are finding themselves on the hook for an increasingly large portion of that total. The Deseret News: Borrowers who are age 60 or older are the fastest-growing age group for student […]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to fix Chicago’s harrowing pension crisis, but he has few allies to work with in this deep-blue city. His problems are daunting: Chicago has one of the worst-funded public pension systems in the country, with bills for a $24 billion liability beginning to roll in. A state mandate is forcing the […]