From the northern edge of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan to the coast of Vietnam, with seemingly endless cash, diplomatic charm, and industrial resources, China is wooing countries in its neighborhood and beyond at a brisk pace. Beijing is buying gas, building pipelines, financing oil refineries, selling nuclear reactors, launching efforts to settle territorial disputes, […]

The shutdown is over, and the only Obamacare concession the GOP won is, at first glance, even less significant than the more modest items on their wish list going into this fight.The GOP won not a delay of the individual mandate, not the repeal of the medical device tax, not an agreement to strip congressional health […]

Here’s another really important story that the drama over the shutdown has been pushing to the sidelines. The Supreme Court is teeing up several potentially groundbreaking rulings. SCOTUS agreed this week to hear a case about whether or not the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and factories under the […]

America’s pension crisis has crossed the line from financial challenge to moral crisis. The chief evidence for that judgment is this Tennesseean article, which describes how pension obligation bonds are making a comeback.These bonds allow politicians in cities whose pensions are dangerously underfunded to shirk difficult decisions like raising taxes or cutting services; they do so, however, […]

Two hundred years ago this week, Napoleon’s forces battled those of the Sixth Coalition at the Battle of Leipzig, sometimes called the Battle of the Nations because soldiers from so many countries fought there. It was Napoleon’s first true defeat in battle and completed the work of the Russian campaign the year before. His mastery […]

China is winning the global race to the bottom in solar panels by propping up its producers, allowing them to dump their products on the world market at very cheap prices. But it isn’t just Beijing pumping money into green energy producers; the World Bank is financing Chinese firms as well. The Washington Post reports: Bank programs […]

If there’s a consensus among observers of what’s happening in Afghanistan (and VM has heard these views from Indian and European observers as well as those in the US), it is this: the long NATO presence has really changed the country in some important ways. Economic development, construction of road networks, educational progress and much […]

France’s socialists took their first real step toward reforming the country’s pension system yesterday. After months of pressure from EU leaders to shore up the finances of the struggling pension system, the lower house of the French Parliament narrowly passed President Hollande’s reform, which increases the amount that public employees contribute to their pensions without […]

Facing sectarian violence and a collapsing state, the Central African Republic (CAR) is soliciting intervention from its former colonial master. In March, a coup led by the Muslim Seleka rebel group removed President François Bozizé from office. Since then, the predominately Christian country has seen intense, armed conflict between Muslim rebels and Christian militias. With […]

On Monday Ezra Klein called the magnitude of the ACA’s rollout failure “stunning”; now Daily Kos contributor Tirge Caps is piling on. He’s furious that his insurance prices will increase under the ACA: My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 […]