After the dramatic rightward shift in 2010 swept a wave of Republican governors and legislators into office, the country has seen a flurry of new conservative initiatives. One year later, the voters have spoken again: in Arizona, Mississippi and most importantly in Ohio they are saying too much, too extreme, too fast. The New York […]

[Updated version]$92.8 million. That’s the size of the penalty handed down yesterday to convicted hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. The NYT reports: Combined with the fines and forfeitures ordered last month when he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading, Mr. Rajaratnam will be paying a total of $156.6 million…Mr. Rajaratnam’s lawyers […]

A lot of the world spends its time oscillating between the gleeful anticipation of American decline and the detailed analysis of those endlessly clever American plots that keep the inevitable, surely approaching decline at bay.  The rise of new powers like China and Brazil has been supporting the decline school of late, but sooner rather […]

The bloodbath in Syria continues as the Assad regime tramples on its agreement with the Arab League. The Washington Post reports: Syrian troops on Monday routed government opponents in a neighborhood of Homs that had emerged in recent weeks as a center of armed resistance to the regime led by President Bashar al-Assad, dealing what […]

Governments in Greece, Italy and Spain are falling as the upheaval in markets spreads to the palaces and parliaments of Club Med.  But as has been the case throughout the long running euro drama, markets are moving faster than politics.  Even as Prime Minister Berlusconi announced his impending resignation, the yields on Italian bonds rose […]

According to the Wall Street Journal, the rising cost of a college education and the impact of the recession is causing even wealthy, affluent students to consider state and local schools over their more prestigious and expensive competition. Mr. Schwartz, 18 years old, was accepted at Cornell University but enrolled instead at City University of […]

Misha Glenny has an important piece in the FT that puts the Greek mess in more of a historical context and assigns much of the blame for Greece’s financial problems on oligarchs, business conglomerates, cheats, and criminals.  A handful of wealthy families control the commanding heights of the Greek economy, he argues, and many of […]

Coming on the heels of the democratic thaw which promises to alter the country’s politics, Myanmar has more surprises in store this month. A detailed article by the redoubtable Andrew Higgins in the Washington Post discusses the Burmese government’s recent shift on a Chinese dam project in Burmese territory: After five years of cozy cooperation […]

Could the growing crisis in American academia be eliciting some smart thinking from the inside?  Maybe so.  From the Washington Post’s “On Leadership” roundtable, president of Arizona State Michael Crow: What is missing at present are…pathways for more students to achieve higher levels of educational attainment while graduating at the lowest possible cost…[We] often lack […]

Hold on to your seats; according to The Conference Board, perhaps the most important business oriented forecasting group in the world, revolution is coming to China.That’s not what the group’s latest global forecast says literally, but this or something like it is the clear meaning of the forecast that China’s growth is likely to slow […]