Don’t trust economic forecasters: that’s the message from Citigroup’s Economic Surprise Index. As Derek Thompson explains at the Atlantic, “A high Surprise Index indicates that economic figures have been stronger than analysts projected. A low Surprise Index indicates that the economy is doing much worse than analysts predict.”Remember — those who try to predict the […]

Here at Via Meadia we’ve been tracking the problems facing young graduates entering a lousy job market without marketable skills. A BBC video report indicates that the U.S. isn’t the only place with this problem — China has it too. The past decade has seen increasing numbers of Chinese attending universities to improve their chances […]

Yesterday it was South Korea, today it’s Vietnam: the future is looking less and less rosy for the emerging economies of Asia. The cheap, export-based development model that made Asian economies the envy of the world in the 2000s is in for some serious shocks as it enters its second decade of life. An FT […]

Iran is not a good place for anybody except a few mullahs and their thuggish cronies these days, but it is a particularly bad place to be a Christian. Via Meadia wrote in August about the plight of Pastor Yusef Nadarkhani, an Iranian Christian leader, who was imprisoned in 2009, pressured to convert back to Islam, […]

The Virginia retirement system, one of the few systems in the country to be in reasonably good shape just a few years ago, is in trouble, says the Washington Examiner.  The reason: poor returns in the markets and cretinous, cowardly decisions by the legislature to cut the state contributions to the fund in order to […]

The failure of the Doha trade talks is now so stinking obvious that even professional bureaucrats and negotiators are forced to acknowledge it.  The FT has a story this morning about the growing possibility that a small number of major countries will move on to develop a free trade in services regime outside the Doha […]

The Seychelles islands, between India and Africa, are one of those places you don’t hear from very much.  I spent an entertaining day there a few years ago with some giant tortoises on a wildlife preserve; they are very fond of having their necks scratched.However the island chain is making a rare appearance in the […]

Even before the most recent round of international negotiations on climate change began in Durban, South Africa recently, many predicted the conference dead on arrival. That is certainly true from the standpoint of substance; I attended the Rio Summit back in the early 1990s and none of them since have reduced carbon emissions or produced […]

The up and coming economies of Asia are taking one hit after another as the global financial turmoil drags on. Today, it’s South Korea. The BBC has the story: The Ministry of Strategy and Finance says Asia’s fourth-largest economy is likely to grow by 3.8% in 2011 and 3.7% in 2012.Previously, it had forecast expansion […]

Vague, cloudy and romantic dreams of Eurasian Weltmacht were the great curse of Germany during the 20th century.  Now that the Fifth, Berlin-based Reich has replaced the old postwar Fourth Reich headquartered in Bonn, those dreams seem to be stirring once more.  A recent article in German weekly Der Spiegel casts the humdrum Durban climate […]