The presidential election was, naturally, the biggest story of the week. Predictions of a major change at the top were proven wrong as America held its first status-quo election in nearly a decade, returning to Washington a Democratic President, Democratic Senate and Republican House. But that doesn’t mean that the election was meaningless; a number of […]

The heated speculation over the who knew what and when about the Benghazi debacle seems to overshadow a much bigger problem for U.S. policy: post-Qaddafi Libya is and continues to be lawless and anarchic.Shortly before Benghazi happened, the Obama administration set aside $8 million to build up a counterterrorism force in the country. The challenge […]

With its island disputes with China getting serious, Japan is beginning to play a more active role in the Game of Thrones. Already this week, we’ve seen signs that Japan is moving closer to India and Taiwan, and now it appears to be moving closer to America as well. The US and Japan haven’t seen […]

Nobody in human history has ever been entirely sensible and rational about the Big Five subjects, at least not for long: sex, power, children, money and God have been agitating and confusing human beings since time began.Note which comes first on the list: sex is both inescapable and inescapably confusing.America’s own peculiar forms of sex […]

President Obama is preparing to make history this month by becoming the first US president to visit Burma while in office. As part of a multi-country tour of Southeast Asia, Obama will stop in Burma to meet with both Burmese President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The BBC has more: Mr Obama’s […]

To some the GM bail-out seems like the distant past, especially since President Obama recently hailed it as a success in Midwestern swing states. But now that the election is out of the way, its true cost to the taxpayers – billions – is about to become very clear.The government still owns 32% of the auto company, […]

In September, the US trading deficit shrunk by $2.3 billion. Why? The reason is simple: the US is producing more oil. A $2.2 billion surge in oil exports accounted for more than three fourths of the reduction of the trade deficit, counteracting a small surge in imports. The WSJ reports: What’s going on? Lower demand is part of […]

Argentina under President Cristina Kirchner is wrecking its own economy. That’s bad enough, from a Brazilian point of view, as neighboring Argentina is an important market for Brazilian exports. Worse, the Kirchner government, short of hard currency and desperate to create jobs at home, is pushing a made-in-Argentina policy to build up Argentina’s manufacturing industry.But […]

China’s rise is stirring its neighbors into action, and watching Japan’s foreign policy moves in Asia is especially useful if you want to understand what’s going on in the region. Besides developing a closer relationship with far-away India, Japan is also cozying up to its island neighbor Taiwan. Like Japan, Taiwan is an off-shore trading […]

New Orleans, a city not famous for good governance, has one of the most generous — and worst funded — pension systems of any city in the country. According to an article in the Times-Picayune reporting on a study by the Bureau of Government Research, those enrolled in the particularly over-the-top fireman’s pension fund will […]