Oil is the lifeblood of the Iranian economy. Oil exports provide half of Iran’s government revenues and account for 80 percent of the country’s total exports, according to the Financial Times. As oil from mature fields becomes harder to extract, new technology and management techniques are needed to slow the decline in output. Fellow hydrocarbon behemoths […]

Bo Xilai was fired as Chongqing chief of the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday. Thus ends his initially popular but eventually unstable reign in Chongqing and his quest for a seat at the most powerful table in China.Bo Xilai is a fascinating and scary figure. He is a demagogue in a non-democratic society, and he had […]

Every parent today knows that college will be one of the biggest expenses in their children’s lives—if not the biggest. And the expenses don’t begin and end with tuition, room, board, and books. Today, a profitable industry has sprung up around SAT prep courses, college counselors and the like. Yet the truly surprising thing about […]

Despite mounting political pressure and public discontent, President Obama—at least in public—is hanging tough on his raise and withdraw strategy in Afghanistan. The FT reports that the President ruled out any “sudden” troop pullouts and reaffirmed his commitment to the timetable in a joint address with British PM David Cameron.This is Obama’s call to make, […]

Everything is getting harder for the U.S. in Central Asia. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is touring the region and his caravan recently rolled into Kyrgyzstan, where he received some unwelcome news. The New York Times informs us that a top Kyrgyz defense official told the Secretary that his country plans to close a crucial U.S. military […]

In a remarkable farewell speech delivered live on national television and the Bo Xi Lai controversy neared a climax, China’s outgoing Premier, Wen Jiabao, issued a call for liberal reform that will reverberate throughout the country. The Premier even went so far as to invoke the specter of Mao’s devastating Cultural Revolution, suggesting that a similar […]

While the conflict with Iran continues to gather more media attention, today’s biggest news may have come from South Korea, whose free-trade agreement with the U.S. is coming into force.  The Wall Street Journal calls it the largest free trade pact America has signed since NAFTA. The agreement will see 80 percent of existing tariffs […]

California is staging a limited retreat in the war on arithmetic—but it’s vowing to fight on.Just like in New York, where the state legislature recently vetoed a plan to put the state’s wobbly pensions on stable footing, California is facing a crisis borne out by numbers. The problem bedeviling California is the gap between the […]

One of the big news stories this morning is that the world’s leading search firm and huge corporate entity is preparing a deep overhaul of its basic search engine.It’s the essence of capitalism here. Google must perpetually reinvent itself or wither and die. Change is risky — the new tech may not work out, consumers […]

Yesterday Korea, today Mongolia: China, India, Japan, their neighbors and the United States keep making new moves in Asia’s Game of Thrones. Mongolia and Japan are moving closer this week following recent announcements from Mongolian President Sukhbaatar Batbold. According to the Wall Street Journal, Batbold’s new plans to re-energize his country’s economy focus on improving […]