The US shale boom, as Polemarchus might have said, is helping friends and harming enemies. Shale gas from America has become an important asset for Japan’s economic recovery; the country is an ally poor in natural resources and struggling with soaring fuel costs in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from the […]

Public employee unions have a new international villain to add to their growing list: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi’s government is embarking on a fight to break the monopolizing power of Israel’s formidable port unions, the “gatekeepers for Israel’s international commerce,” that would make Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Mexican President Enrique Nieto welcome […]

Filipino police shot a 65-year old Taiwanese fisherman in the neck a few days ago in the latest dispute to heat up the South China Sea. Things escalated quickly after the “accident” and now two American allies are at each other’s throats.The Philippines apologized twice for the “accident,” in which the coast guard riddled the fisherman’s […]

Flame-resistant overalls are the latest reason to be optimistic about America’s future. The US shale boom is creating plenty of new jobs in the oil and gas industry, but it’s having a number of knock-on effects as well. Energy-intensive industries have been bolstered by the influx of cheap natural gas, for example. And a new […]

Egyptians are increasingly dissatisfied about their country’s economy and pessimistic about their collective future, according to a new poll by Pew. 62 percent of those polled are unhappy with the way the country is going, up from 41 percent last year, and 34 percent the year before. The current level of public dissatisfaction is close […]

Sufi Islam—more mystical, more concerned with God’s love than God’s law, and much more tolerant toward other faiths and other varieties of Islam—has been on the retreat in much of the Islamic world. Saudi-funded Wahabi preachers and Islamist activists have put Sufism on the defensive and in some cases (as in Mali) have attacked and […]

Readers trying to understand how Obamacare will transform our health care system should look to Switzerland. Bloomberg profiles the Swiss health care system, which is perhaps the closest global equivalent to what our health care market will become under the ACA.Like Obamacare, the Swiss system does not use a single-payer system or offer a public option, but rather […]

Russia continues to show respect and appreciation for the White House, this time by breaking protocol and outing the CIA’s Moscow station chief. The Guardian has the story: Speaking to Russia’s Interfax news agency, the FSB spokesman said his agency had complained to the CIA station chief as far back as October 2011 “that if […]

Baby Boomers have lost, on average, 117 thousand dollars in retirement savings to unexpected “retirement derailers,” according to a recent Ameriprise Financial survey. CNN money reports: Nearly all, or 90%, of those surveyed, had experienced at least one economic or life event that hurt their retirement savings. And nearly 40% of respondents said they had been hit […]

Don’t tell Sean Penn, but Venezuela is imploding. WaPo reports that demand for the US dollar is skyrocketing in the country, whose weak economy is pushing people onto a shady currency black market: Because the bolivar is artificially overvalued and practically worthless outside of Venezuela, everyone here is desperate for dollars, from auto-part importers to supermarkets […]