The Economist points out that the current policy being pushed on the Eurozone’s weaker periphery states is wrongheaded and particularly dangerous. The main premise? If Spain and Italy find they can’t escape the crisis by behaving, then they may see if they can’t escape the crisis by misbehaving.In other words, Spain and Italy are not […]

Regular readers know we have been closely following the Bo Xilai saga and its impact on the Chinese Communist Party. Having already been fired as mayor of Chongqing, Bo has now been suspended from the Politburo, the second most powerful body in China. To add further intrigue to an already charged atmosphere, Bo’s wife has been […]

Politics in post-Mubarak Egypt have just grown murkier. The constitutional convention was supposed to ratify a new constitution before May’s presidential elections, but an Egyptian court ruling Tuesday suspended the activities of the constitutional committee, according to the New York Times. Now there won’t be a constitution until after the election—a disappointment for the Muslim Brotherhood, which was […]

Is the higher education bubble about to pop? The answer is a resounding yes, according to Martin Hutchinson (h/t Instapundit). Hutchinson, himself a graduate of Cambridge and Harvard, has decades of experience as a market analyst. He sees all the signs of an industry that has peaked: costs are soaring, returns are plummeting, and legitimate challengers […]

Mobile phones have been globally ubiquitous for years, but were illegal in Cuba until 2008. Over the past year or so, the Castro government has also made it legal for foreigners to add minutes to Cuban cell phone accounts from abroad. The regime thought this would help foreigners and Cuban émigrés to send money to Cuba, but […]

For all the talk of a “green century” fueled by renewable resources, lower energy consumption, and ambitious carbon-trading programs, the most significant energy developments of the 21st century so far have been in the brown sector, thanks to advances in techniques like fracking and deep-water drilling. Via Meadia has been closely following these developments .Many […]

Thus far, it’s been a busy year for the Game of Thrones in Asia. Scarcely a week goes by without an announcement of a new military, naval, or strategic agreement in East Asia that tweaks the competition between the U.S. and Chinese alliance systems. Yet for all this activity, America has managed to keep its […]

As the situation in Syria devolves further into sectarian civil war, fears are growing in Turkey that nearby violence may ignite its own ethno-religious tinderbox. The WSJ reports that the Syrian conflict . . . could drive a wedge between Turkey’s Sunni majority and the country’s Shiite sects. As record numbers of Syrian refugees have poured […]

Revolutions are started by the young. And as the Arab Spring demonstrated, they also tend to be started by those with dismal economic prospects. Saudi Arabia, which has so far managed to avoid the upheaval experienced by many of its neighbors, could be sitting on a “time bomb” according to Bloomberg News: “Wherever I go, […]

One of the most important claims that the friends of the blue social model make is that it addresses the needs of the poor and the weak better than any other existing social system. This is a serious point that blue critics sometimes don’t think enough about, but the claim is more questionable than blues […]