Here’s a huge blow to the ACA: even now, after the full court publicity press for the Obamacare has started in earnest, public opinion continues to swing against the law. In January, 44 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare and 51 percent supported it. Today, Politico reports that 57 percent oppose and 39 percent favor.At the […]

The bifurcation of Californian society into coastal elites and inland proles is catching the attention of more and more people. Economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast are warning that California’s slow growth and high unemployment may be part of a structural problem that’s not going away any time soon. The industry on which California’s economy […]

Just how bad of a mess is President Obama in over Syria? So bad that the New York Times is visibly pained by the messy and humiliating situation the Democratic Reagan, the Second Coming of Lincoln and the New FDR finds himself in this week. A sampling of today’s headlines: “A Rare Public View of Obama’s […]

There are a whole host of reasons why China is finding it so devilishly difficult to replicate American shale success. China lacks the water resources, the geology, the roads, the pipelines, the technical know-how, and the wildcatting ecosystem, all of which helped foster the US shale boom. In a round-up of what’s gone wrong with […]

The popular understanding among the chattering classes is that the Fed’s quantitative easing policies—specifically the looming end of loose monetary policy—are at the root of emerging markets’ recent troubles. Daniel Gros has a great contrarian essay up at Project-Syndicate taking issue with this oversimplified view: Quantitative easing in the US cannot have been behind these […]

On the anniversary of the day the government of Japan bought the Senkaku islands—a handful of small rocks in the East China Sea—from a private owner, relations between China and Japan still haven’t recovered. As the anniversary approached, a number of Chinese coast guard ships and an unidentified drone thought to belong to China lurked near the islands. […]

When your debt is trading cheaper than Detroit’s, it may be time to panic. Puerto Rico is approaching a debt crisis that makes Illinois look hale and hearty. The WSJ reports: “It’s getting concerning,” said Dan Toboja, senior vice president of fixed-income trading at investment bank Ziegler. Puerto Rico yields “never got near a 10% […]

Who’s to blame for the massive blackout in Venezuela last week that left more than half the country without power? Shady saboteurs, enemies of Hugo Chavez, and American spies, of course, the same people who were responsible for a huge blast at an oil refinery last year that killed 40 people. According to Nicolas Maduro, […]

Google has just become the latest tech giant to jump in to the MOOC world, announcing yesterday that it will be partnering with Harvard and MIT’s edX to develop the company’s online MOOC platform. The project aims to create a “Youtube for MOOCs”, allowing any interested party, from schools individuals, to easily sign up and […]

Questions about technical glitches in Obamacare’s new digital platforms have dogged implementation for months now. The administration blamed the employer mandate delay on technical failures related to computer reporting systems, and observers worried that state-level exchanges wouldn’t launch on October 1st.A flurry of news stories today suggests that this particular ACA crisis has passed. California is now […]