As our readers on the Eastern Seaboard are well aware, the biggest story of the week was the arrival of Hurricane Sandy and the destruction it caused in New York and New Jersey. At the time, we had this to say: Hurricane Sandy is many things; one of those things is a symbol. The day is […]

Victor David Hanson’s beautiful heartfelt reflection on California is a must-read this weekend. Hanson, a fifth generation Californian, does a masterful job of describing the beauty, allure and immense potential of his home state, clearly synthesizes what’s gone wrong, and gives many reasons for optimism about its future.We won’t summarize the wide-ranging, personal piece as we […]

India’s government has been widely criticized for the slow pace of economic reform, but in recent weeks the Congress party appears to have renewed and strengthened its commitment to the cause. A major rally in Delhi saw speaker after speaker defend the importance of economic reform.Most important, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, widely believed […]

When a boy in a blindfold drew his name in a church ceremony in Egypt yesterday, 50 year old Bishop Tawadros might have just gotten the toughest job in the world: he has been chosen as the leader of the largest remaining Christian minority in the Middle East at a time when Islamist revolutions are […]

As Xi Jinping prepares to assume his new leadership role in China, there’s a lot of speculation about where he’ll take US-China relations.A lot of this speculaton is overdone; China’s collective leadership system and the careful balancing among factions, not to mention the continuing influence of ‘retired’ officials, mean that changes in personnel don’t necessarily […]

Presidents Putin, Chavez and the retired Fidel Castro have expressed varying degrees of support for President Obama’s re-election; now it looks as if the mullahs in Iran are casting their vote. According to the Guardian, Iran is making a goodwill gesture on the eve of the American presidential election: Iran has suspended the enrichment of […]

Memo to investors: the Euro crisis is nowhere close to being over. That’s at least Angela Merkel’s take on things: German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will last at least five more years.Merkel says the continent is on the right path to overcome the crisis but “whoever thinks this can be fixed […]

A reader follows up on our news write-up from earlier this week titled “Was the Polish President’s Plane Bombed?“: I just wanted to clear some facts on the story – the military attorney general has refuted the claims that there was TNT found on the wreckage that would include a possibility of a bomb. The […]

Nothing is more pointless or more irresistible than to try to predict the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election. It’s pointless both because so many resources and so much energy has been spent on the forecasting effort up until now and because in just a few days the results of the 2012 election will be universally […]

Between the presidential election and Hurricane Sandy there hasn’t been much room in the news for anything else lately, but for anybody trying to understand the big issues facing the United States a just-released report that Accenture commissioned from Oxford Economics makes riveting reading.Looking at demographic trends and trends in the costs of service delivery, […]