George W. Bush allegedly once pointed out that there is no word for ‘entrepreneur’ in French; there is, however, a word for hawk.  It is faucon, and there seem to be plenty of them in Paris these days.In the midst of the greatest European crisis since the 1940s, and at a time when France stands […]

One of the big arguments proponents of the ‘green jobs’ scam often bring out is that the argument that China, thanks to its support of green tech companies, will own the future while the United States is left behind.Think again.  According to a report on Bloomberg, the Chinese solar power industry is on the ropes; […]

So far, the European meltdown has been a relatively orderly affair.  Other than the occasional outbreak of (mostly) mild riots and the odd strike, Europe’s economies have imploded and its governments fallen in a stately and decorous decline.  Prices on financial markets have jumped around, output is down — sharply in some countries — and […]

Most Americans have never heard of the Dexia Group, a Franco-Belgian financial company that could be the next big turning point in the European debt saga.  Dexia has already been rescued once, as France and Belgium stepped in to provide guarantees and liquidity to keep the troubled group alive.The ever-helpful though not always cheerful FT […]

If true, this is probably the scariest story you’ll read all week: Thousands of homes in Illinois had their water shut off by hackers in Russia. The BBC reports: Hackers are alleged to have destroyed a pump used to pipe water to thousands of homes in a US city in Illinois…The net address through which […]

The most important unrest in today’s world may not be on Tahrir Square or even in Syria.  A growing wave of strikes across China may ultimately say more about where the world is headed than anything in the Middle East.As this piece from the Financial Times reports, export orders are declining and factories across China […]

Throughout our history, Americans have benefited from the extraordinary riches and resources of the wealthy land in which we live.  Compared to any other country on earth, Americans enjoy more fertile farmland, better internal communications by water, rich and diverse mineral resources, a more favorable climate, a more favorable position in the world’s commerce,  and […]

Due to the upcoming holiday, we will be taking a week off from posting. I wish all my readers and their families a very happy Thanksgiving. We will return to our normal schedule next week!

Those who follow Asian political debates don’t need to be told who Kishore Mahbubani is.  As Dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at the University of Singapore, Mahbubani is leading the development of an institution that hopes to become one of the world’s leading research and policy centers.  Over a career […]

State and local governments around the country have long underfunded their pension funds, covering the gap between what they have and what they have obliged themselves to pay by making unrealistic assumptions about the rate of return they expect from their investments.Now that the wave of Boomer retirement is starting to hit, the gaps are […]