With Europe unable to solve its financial crisis on its own, attention has turned abroad as bankers look to Asia and the US for help. China balked; luckily for Europe, Uncle Sam is still a reliable friend. The Federal Reserve, along with several other central banks, is stepping in to save the day. The European […]

Corruption scandals are rocking the administration of Brazil’s new president Dilma Rousseff – yesterday saw the ouster of the fifth cabinet-level official since June. According to the WSJ: Though none of the officials have been formally charged with any crimes, the scandals have reminded Brazilians that despite recent economic gains, corruption remains a significant obstacle […]

One of the less-discussed problems with blistering economic growth is “managing abundance.” As countries like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey post high growth rates year after year, the boom times can plant economic time bombs.In Brazil, fears have begun to mount over a “crisis” in liquidity, despite high interest rates. The culprit? Brazil’s own success: […]

James Carville has looked at the results of the Nevada and New York congressional elections and has a word of advice for the White House:Panic!Beyond that, Carville suggests that the President fire his economic advisers and maybe his Attorney General, force the Justice Department to indict a bunch of bankers, launch a rhetorical campaign attacking […]

There’s an interesting article in the most recent issue of the New York Review of Books that echoes some of the thoughts on Via Meadia about the Arab Spring. The authors show that the events of 2011 in the Arab world were far from unprecedented; in fact, the sentiment that swept Mubarak and Ben Ali from […]

There have been a lot of headlines about the US poverty rate lately, many aimed at stampeding us into pumping more money into blue social programs.  But as the Wall Street Journal reports, recent Census Bureau statistics on poverty in the United States are misleading. The rate released Tuesday by the Census Bureau showed some 15.1% […]

Scandal is sweeping the California Democratic Party as it turns out that campaign coffers for national and state elections have been looted by a prominent Party operative. The WSJ has the story: Accusations that a campaign treasurer stole more than $1 million from Democratic candidates across California have jolted the party on the eve of […]

The spirit of Gamal Abdel Nasser is back – only this time he’s Turkish. Prime Minister Erdogan’s Arab Spring tour enjoyed rapturous reception on its first leg in Cairo on Tuesday – a hallmark of his increasing popularity and influence among Arabs. The Wall Street Journal reports: In Cairo’s Opera House on Tuesday, the standing ovations, chants […]

Asians are getting older. As a report from the Asia Development Bank and a story in the FT tell us, aging populations across Asia will have a significant effect on economic productivity over the next several decades: …the surge in the Asian workforce that began in the 1950s with changes in the birth and death rates contributed […]

Will they or won’t they?  The question agitating world stock markets the last couple of sessions is whether China will help Europe avoid defaults by buying up the bonds of troubled countries.During the current euro-crisis, many of the debtor countries have been persistently hopeful that an angel was going to descend from the sky and […]