America’s skilled and educated are continuing to flee the country’s glamorous metropolises for the more affordable cities of the Sun Belt and Great Plains. Joel Kotkin writes in the Daily Beast: Despite hopeful claims from density advocates that the Great Recession and the housing bust ended this trend, the latest census data shows that Americans have continued […]

Is America ready for Tea Party governance? If Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s popularity in his own state is any indication, the answer might be no. A recent poll suggests that Governor Jindal, a GOP star and possible 2016 presidential candidate, is less popular than President Obama in deep red Louisiana. With only 38 percent approval, […]

International STEM students once flocked to American graduate schools, but they are increasingly looking elsewhere for their education. International applicants to US grad schools grew by only 1 percent this year, the smallest gain in eight years. The WSJ reports: Applications from Chinese citizens to U.S. graduate schools declined 5% for the coming academic year […]

America’s shale revolution is more global than you think. Twenty percent of investments in American shale energy, totaling more than $26 billion, came from joint ventures with foreign companies. As the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports: Both U.S. and foreign companies benefit from these deals. U.S. operators get financial support, while foreign companies gain experience in horizontal drilling […]

Total student loan debt is now more than $1 trillion and rising, and parents of students, many of whom are a decade or less from retirement, are finding themselves on the hook for an increasingly large portion of that total. The Deseret News: Borrowers who are age 60 or older are the fastest-growing age group for student […]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to fix Chicago’s harrowing pension crisis, but he has few allies to work with in this deep-blue city. His problems are daunting: Chicago has one of the worst-funded public pension systems in the country, with bills for a $24 billion liability beginning to roll in. A state mandate is forcing the […]

Surprise, surprise: talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany) broke down over the weekend with no agreement and no plan to meet again. The NY Times reports: Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who led the talks for the six powers, said that after two days of […]

In the face of ongoing instability in the Eurozone, people are hoarding dollars. No, not interest-bearing Treasury bills, but good old fashioned greenbacks. According to the San Francisco Fed’s President John Williams, the amount of cash in circulation has risen by 42 percent in the past five years. Here’s the key paragraph from this morning’s Financial […]

Last week, Lara Jakes reported for the AP that President Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria is because he wants to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. We’re reluctant to jump to conclusions based on this one press report, aware that we might not be seeing the full story. But it is […]

Does your commute drive you crazy? Maybe more than you think. A new study says that daily stress—like being stuck in traffic—can lead to mental disorders years down the road. IOL reports: Everyday irritations like waiting in traffic can build up over time and cause mental problems later in life, psychologists found. […]Using data from two […]