This seems to be Via Meadia’s day to praise the New York Times.  Besides publishing an important story on poverty, the NYT also deserves credit for a blog post that sheds light on modern India for a western audience. Such coverage of culture is often overlooked by the western press. The post, on the India […]

As we’ve been hearing for years, census data shows that serious poverty has been rising dramatically in the US. A new article in the New York Times, however, shows that those statistics may be less reliable than often claimed: Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what […]

Sometimes the United States wins even when it loses. That’s the case with the impending deal to supply India with fighter jets: Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two American companies, have already been knocked out of the competition for the contract, which in the neighborhood of $20 billion is one of the largest aviation orders by […]

Europe’s unending petitions for a big-check Chinese bailout are beginning to sound like a broken record. The FT covers its latest iteration: Europe’s courtship of Beijing is moving to a more intense level. Klaus Regling, the chief of the eurozone bail-out fund, is in Beijing discussing possible support. Just a few days ago French President […]

Auditing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is like draining the septic tank: it needs to be done, but you won’t like what you find.  The WaPo reports that HUD just added another scandal to a forty-six year tradition: At a joint housing and oversight hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, the […]

Looking at the contrast between events in the financial world these days and the efforts of the Democrats to brand themselves as born-again populists reminds me of the Hillaire Belloc poem: The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge) Broke and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with […]

Foreign Policy has a good piece on Iran-Turkey relations. In the article, Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, a professor at GW, gives detail and substance to a line of analysis that we have suggested on Via Meadia and shows how Turkey’s rise to regional leadership has sidelined Tehran. Writes Prof. Tabaar, Tehran initially viewed the rise of […]

California’s proposed high speed rail system linking the north to the south is going to cost nearly $100 billion, according to a new estimate that figures the cost at three times as high as the original projection approved by California voters. The railroad also won’t be operational until 2034. The Christian Science Monitor has the […]

Good news from Pakistan has been hard to come by over the past few years, but perhaps that is finally beginning to change. Although it will not end the decades-long nuclear standoff between the two countries, Pakistan’s decision to grant Most Favored Nation status to India is a small, symbolic but possibly significant step away […]

It’s hard to imagine a greater contrast than the pomp and ceremony surrounding the G-20 summit of world ‘leaders’ in the posh resort of Cannes with the turmoil and darkness of the world’s economic outlook.  But China, the US and many others are not onlookers in the European crisis; every major economy in the world […]