US efforts to rekindle peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians have suffered their first major setback. After weeks of threatening to resign, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad fomally announced his resignation from President Abbas’s Fatah government on Saturday. Although Fayyad was extremely well-respected by many Western observers (Via Meadia included) for his efforts to […]

An editorial in the deep blue New York Times on the Stockton, California bankruptcy case offers a peek into the future. The Times editors are suggesting that retired public sector unionized workers may have to accept cuts in the unsustainable pensions that union leaders foolishly negotiated and that pandering politicians foolishly promised.The Times can’t quite come […]

Government scientists have just dealt an important rebuke to the professional Chicken Littles in the green movement. Last year a severe drought devastated farms across much of the lower forty-eight states. It didn’t take long for the Chicken Littles to claim the sky was falling and to blame the drought on climate change. But a new report […]

Important Asia news yesterday, via The Hill: Acting U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis said after more than a year of consultations with Tokyo, the two nations agreed to “robust package of actions and agreements with Japan in the automotive and insurance sectors, as well as other non-tariff measures” for Japan to join ongoing negotiations of […]

With underemployed recent college grads struggling to make payments on their crushing student debt, starting a new graduate school might be considered an exceptionally foolhardy move. Undaunted, Cornell has created an innovative new applied sciences program that we think provides useful lessons for higher ed institutions pondering their future. The NYT writes it up: Not long ago, three […]

With most of the major powers now availing themselves of loose monetary policies, it’s as good a time as any to have a look at how easy money has changed the world since 2008. Here are two good pieces worth looking at this Saturday:1) Last week, the Economist ran a special report titled “A World of […]

The NYT ran an interesting story today, reporting that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi appeared in public yesterday with the country’s head military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. el-Sissi denied the accusations that the military “detained, tortured and killed civilian protesters during the 18-day uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak,” while Morsi “announced nominal promotions for the general and other military […]

Russia’s economy looks to be running down to a crawl. The FT noted yesterday that Andrei Klepach, the deputy economy minister, has slashed growth forecasts to 2.5%, down from the previously expected rate of 3.6%. Earlier in the year, Prime Minister Medvedev had forecast 5% growth for the year.The indicators aren’t cooperating: GDP growth in the first quarter […]

Competitive devaluation is the order of the day. Japan, the EU, the US and China are all deliberately following policies that tend to weaken their currencies. The hope is that they will get a double boost: Easy money will stimulate investment at home while a cheap currency makes their exports attractive abroad and dampens domestic […]

Kansas’s experiment with Tea Party governance is uniting skeptics—both left and right. Tax experts in Washington, DC have joined non-Tea Party Republicans in the Kansas legislature in expressing concern that the tax reform signed into law by Governor Sam Brownback went way too far with its tax cuts. The bill, which slashes top income rates […]