To many it seems inconceivable that the mighty Chinese economy could be headed for major trouble, but recent news should give even the most bullish something to ponder. Consider this analysis from the Financial Times: The problems stem from China’s industrial policies and a vast array of subsidies that allow whole sectors to spring up […]

Violence in Istanbul is threatening President Obama’s relationship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What started out as a protest against the development of a park has morphed into a show of much wider discontent. Over the weekend, more than two weeks after the protests started, police used tear gas and water cannons to […]

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard must be feeling like the Russian nobles who kept killing Rasputin, only to see the dreaded monk rise again after each strike. She has now destroyed Kevin Rudd, her former mentor and boss, three times: she drove him from power and replaced him as Prime Minister, then beat back two […]

Thinking back to the late 1990s, I should start with a compliment. Recall the mainstream thinking of those years, when the evolution of a post-Soviet system was expected to deliver the final proof for the magic working of instant democracy and shock therapy; now here comes Thomas Graham, breaking from the established code of interpretation […]

Two big items US security policy hit the news this week. On the domestic front, disaffected libertarian Edward Snowden released information on a secret NSA spying program that has the Beltway elite wringing their hands over the death of privacy and civil liberties. But polls reveal that both ordinary Americans and Europeans are comfortable with government surveillance programs. […]

The global economy is changing dramatically before our eyes—but whether for better or worse isn’t yet clear. That’s the thesis of an insightful WSJ piece on the current instability of international markets: For the past few years, the global economy, struggling to recover from a financial crisis, has relied on a few constants: The U.S. […]

City and state workers around the country think that their defined benefit pension programs are safe; after all, that’s what the politicians and union leaders keep telling them.But to get a glimpse of what the future will look like for many people who think their retirement is assured, take a look at Detroit, where the […]

Last week union leaders and the French government traded barbs in the run-up to a new report on the country’s chronically underfunded pension system. Now the report has been released and its proposals are likely to make waves. According to the WSJ, the study recommends raising the minimun number of years French workers must pay into the pension […]

The UN commissars of doom and gloom have just armed themselves with a new statistic: according to a recent study, world population is on track to reach a higher level than anyone realized. The new report predicts that the earth will hold 11 billion people by 2100. This number is 8 percent higher than the one the […]

Here’s some distressing news for Southern California’s coastal elite: a new smartphone app called Our Malibu Beaches offers a “beach-by-beach battle plan” for all and sundry to access beaches claimed as private by Malibu millionaires. The NYT reports that the app will let hoi polloi in on the 74 percent of Malibu coastline made inaccessible to […]