French President François Hollande’s wildly unpopular tax policies have a new critic: François Hollande. After a year in which everyone from the rich to entrepreneurs to the general public have savaged his tax plans, Hollande has admitted that French taxes are simply too high. As the FT reports, Hollande is cutting back on a few planned tax hikes that would […]

News of self-driving cars never fails to pique our interest at Via Meadia. While Google is hard at work developing the technology that would make us happy perpetual passengers, others are spoiling the party. Writing for Bloomberg View, Megan McArdle identifies liability as a major logistical challenge: [E]ven if the overall number of accidents drops [as a […]

Online courses have seen their stock rise dramatically over the past couple of years, but one question still lingers—and it’s a big one: can they make any money? Thus far, the answer has been no. Young MOOC upstarts like Coursera and Udacity have been quick to point out that they are at present more focused on establishing […]

In a better world, two news stories today would help straighten out the often crooked reporting on the Middle East: Israel has decided to lift a major ban on imports of building materials to the Gaza Strip; meanwhile Egypt is destroying the vast majority of Gaza’s smuggling tunnels (on which its economy depends) and is […]

In 2006, President Obama gave a speech condemning the culture of lobbying in DC, holding up as an example a closed-door deal the then-reigning GOP made with a clutch of health care lobbyists. Seven years later, the front page of the NYT has a big story about “dozens” of former administration officials moving into lobbying […]

In India today, there are two competing images of Narendra Modi, the star player of India’s most powerful opposition party, the Hindu nationalist BJP. One is Modi the Muslim-hater, the man who was in charge when religious violence, inflamed by some of Modi’s close aides, swept across Gujarat in 2002. More than a thousand people, most […]

One of my favorite spots in the Greater Boston area is the kiosk in the center of Harvard Square, which I visit every couple of weeks or so, looking around the rich collection of periodicals, and usually buying a few that I am not subscribed to. On my last visit I picked up the September […]

Over the past few years, the college cost crisis has evolved from merely an important issue facing parents and students into a serious national problem that could impact the future of the country. Moreover, most government programs designed to address the problem have only made it worse, inflating the bubble by encouraging students to borrow […]

The 23 biggest “tight” oilfields—the kind of plays that require fracking—outside the US and Canada contain more than four times the oil found in North American tight oilfields. The FT reports on a new study: Analysis by IHS published on Tuesday morning suggests fields including the Vaca Muerta of Argentine, the Bazhenov shale of Siberia and the Silurian […]

Unfortunately for pensioners, reports of their retirement security have been greatly exaggerated. The Economist calculates the 10-year return on an average diversified portfolio to be a mere 2.7 percent. That’s the fourth-lowest level since 1871. This estimation comes to the chagrin of any investor, but for government pension-holders and fund managers it is much grimmer.In nominal terms, the […]