William Easterly is one of the most interesting critics of the mindless NGO, feelgood development ‘consensus’ that has wasted so many tens of billions of dollars in poorly conceived foreign aid programs over recent decades.  Now he’s performed yet another important service by compiling the “Aidspeak Dictionary” that tells laypeople just what development professionals really […]

You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold, raged William Jennings Bryan against the punitively high interest rates imposed by the gold-based monetary system of his day.  Bryan lost the election, but arguably he won the debate.  FDR took the United States off the gold standard during the Depression, and since then the […]

The Arab Spring is doing what revolutions usually do: making officials in Washington worry.  The State Department has no idea what direction events from Libya to Turkey will take and is hunkering down to prepare for every possible scenario.  The New York Times reports on some of the scenarios the State Department is considering: What […]

Public employees in Chicago are learning the hard way what Via Meadia has had the poor taste to point out for some time now – that their smug union leaders no longer have the ability to preserve their members’ benefits. As formerly friendly Democratic pols turn on the public sector unions, union members are jumping […]

President Obama’s much ballyhooed green jobs don’t just move to China; they sometimes aren’t even green. The Chinese government has responded with violence as villagers protest against a polluting solar panel factory near Shanghai. From The Guardian: Although solar is seen as clean energy in terms of carbon emissions, the production of many components is […]

Add purple Florida to the list of states facing financial disaster from the twin bombshells of the financial crisis and massive union pensions. The Miami Herald has a shocking report of waste and abuse in the state’s pension system. Speaking of one moderately paid, midlevel employee, the paper reports that: By the time she reaches […]

A few weeks ago, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez announced to the world that his doctors – Jesus, Castro, and “the medical team” – had cured him of cancer. This is a remarkable team, not known for all that many previous collaborations. But it appears not to have worked as well as Chavez would like us […]

For decades now, shocked lefty journalists have gingerly ventured into the dark American interior, emerging with terrifying tales of “Christianist” plots to hijack American democracy and install theocratic rule.  There’s an endless appetite for these stories on the secular left, and the fact that none of these Christianists dictatorships ever appear doesn’t seem to diminish […]

An entirely commendable and even necessary push by Ireland to safeguard its economic sovereignty from the machinations of German and French Eurocrats reveals the crippling structural weakness of the EU. The FT reports: The Irish government has asked the European Union to amend its treaties in order to provide specific legal assurances that the country […]

The confusion and disarray in Washington’s policy making was starkly revealed last week as some Democrats and housing experts called on the government to continue backing jumbo mortgages, saying that the market is too weak to handle a drop in the size of loan guarantees. From the WSJ: If Congress doesn’t act, the maximum size […]