Last week we got some bad news from a Hawaiian volcano. Not an eruption, but an emissions measurement that has far greater global significance. At a facility on Mauna Loa, instruments measured carbon dioxide levels at 400 parts per million for the first time. It’s a nice round number, and though it’s not a number […]

When people debate issues like climate change and health care, they frequently talk as if tomorrow’s solutions will be built on today’s technology. That’s a mistake. As technological progress accelerates, policymakers should keep in mind that many of our most pressing problems will be solved by solutions we haven’t yet imagined.The recent shale boom is […]

Last Sunday we introduced the Big Five: a series of challenges that will make or break America’s in the 21st century. Of those Big Five, the most pressing and urgent issue to today’s economy is the jobs crisis, which we profiled in this week’s essay: This is more than the problem of recovering from the […]

By now everyone has heard the statistic that American students and graduates owe more than $1 trillion on student loans. But while everyone knows what these students did with their loans, it’s far less clear what the colleges are doing with all this money.In his new book College (Un)bound, Jeffrey Selingo took a closer look at […]

The US disability program has come under scrutiny following some high-profile reports on large-scale abuses of the system. As Jim Quinn’s The Burning Platform reports (via Zerohedge) the number of people living on disability benefits in the United States is now greater than the total population of Greece. If the report is to be believed, the timing of this spike suggests […]

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 […]