Argentines are desperate to gain access to the US dollar, the WSJ reports. Cuevas (caves) where residents can exchange pesos for dollars at black-market rates are flourishing, and people are trying all sorts of tricks to profit off of an economy in crisis.Why is this happening? Argentina is experiencing severe inflation: 10.8 percent if you believe the government, upwards […]

Charter schools and teacher unions have so far tried to have as little to do with one another as possible, but there are signs that this is beginning to change. Burdened with long hours and comparatively low pay, some charter teachers are open to hearing what the unions have to say, and some of their […]

China’s military considers the United States “enemy-in-chief” and, as it has done for decades, maintains a shroud of secrecy around the PLA’s size, capabilities, and intentions. That much is clear from a recent paper written by the PLA’s deputy chief of the general staff, the number two military man in China, for the Study Times, the official […]

The European Parliament just voted down a measure that would have attempted to revive its carbon market, likely dooming it to a slow and undignified death. This was a last-ditch effort to drive the EU’s carbon price back to a level that would incentivize green reforms. And it failed.The EU’s carbon market was the flagship program of […]

Watch out Gucci, you’ve got competition: designers in Asia are beginning to challenge European fashion powerhouses. Bloomberg reports that Asian brands like Courrone and Woo are growing even as traditional companies like Louis Vuitton are facing slowing growth. This is a dramatic shift for a region that has traditionally been known for low-quality manufacturing and illegal […]

As the day dawns on Boston after yesterday’s barbaric, tragic bombing, Iraq too is recovering from a particularly bloody day. The New York Times has the story: In the latest surge of violence, more than 20 attacks around the country on Monday killed close to 50 people and wounded nearly 200. Two schools in Hilla […]

Since yesterday afternoon, Americans have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know we’ve been attacked by someone deranged, hate-filled and cowardly, but we don’t know much more than that.The police seem to be following some leads, but either because no one is claiming responsibility or because so many are claiming responsibility we […]

What does it mean for the euro that, on paper at least, Spaniards, Italians, and Cypriots are much wealthier on average than Germans? That’s the question Wolfgang Münchau tackled in a must-read column in the Financial Times, and it’s one that VM readers would do well to spend some time thinking through.Here are the outlines of his […]

How unfair is Social Security going to be on the coming generations? Here’s a report being highlighted by CNN that’s worth looking at: A couple who each earned the average wage during their careers and retired in 1990 would have paid $316,000 in Social Security taxes, but collected $436,000 in benefits, according to data crunched by Eugene […]

New York has just become one of the first states to introduce standardized testing that accords with the Common Core curriculum, a set of state-developed national standards and academic guidelines. The curriculum has been adopted by nearly every state, but the associated tests have not. The New York Times reports on the roll-out in New York: New York […]