The markets are understandably riveted by the drama at the ECB, but more significant for the future may be the continued unraveling in Italy, the third largest economy in the Eurozone and next in line after Spain at the bailout window.The economy is shrinking as the second-dip recession tightens its hold on the country. Unemployment […]

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi today revealed an unlimited bond-buying bazooka that is supposed to save the euro (again): Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs). This makes the ECB an explicit lender/money printer of last resort for debt-troubled nations.The OMT idea aims to bring down high borrowing costs in the troubled economies of Southern Europe, where, according […]

There hasn’t been all that much good news to come out of the past three years of economic “recovery,” save this: the energy revolution has led to an explosion in “brown” jobs that is driving job growth in a number of states.The gains are particularly notable in the Rust Belt states of the Midwest, which […]

The World Economic Forum’s latest annual report on global competitiveness has some bad news for America: The U.S. has fallen from fifth to seventh in its global rankings, the fourth consecutive drop in as many years. The Wall Street Journal reports: “In addition to the burgeoning macroeconomic vulnerabilities, some aspects of the country’s [United States] institutional […]

In the past, if you asked Indian policy planners what the greatest threat was to the west,  they would traditionally list three: Pakistan, Pakistan, and Pakistan. These days, however, Delhi is thinking a lot more expansively about its place in Asia. Earlier this week, India hosted Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, capping the visit by inking […]

In response to poor economic news, UK Prime Minister David Cameron is exercising one of the few formal powers the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom possesses: the hiring and firing of cabinet secretaries. With the reshuffling of ministers, the Cameron government is taking a turn to the right, the FT reports, although key posts remain […]

Here at Via Meadia we’ve been tracking the great strides online education has made this year. Startups like Coursera and edX have signed up more than a million students for courses offered by some of the best schools this country has to offer. But in a way, this was just a re-shuffle of the old university model, […]

Party platforms are worthless mounds of drivel that have no impact on what U.S. leaders of either party actually do. Here’s what we wrote on the occasion of the GOP’s platform being the hot topic of discussion among our media elites: Hungry for story lines, any story lines, the press has occasionally tried to gin […]

We’ve been following Google’s experiments with self-driving cars for some time now, but robotics can do a lot for our driving even if humans stay behind the wheel. A new study shows that technologies like adaptive cruise control and inter-vehicle communication can improve the efficiency and safety of our vehicles while nearly eliminating congestion: Researchers at Colombia […]

As we noted yesterday, one of the major aims of Secretary Clinton’s Asia-Pacific tour is to promote multilateral negotiations as a palliative for the dangerous disputes in the energy-rich South China sea. Now in China, Clinton, is making the same pitch that she made in Indonesia. This will be a harder sell; Chinese state media recently referred to […]