Is there something about the word ‘green’ that makes people go weak in the head?Rivaled only by the ‘get tough on Netanyahu’ fiasco and the Gunwalker scandal, the ‘Green Jobs’ meltdown is the most comprehensive and conspicuous policy failure of the Obama administration to date.  What three months ago was widely hailed by the establishment […]

Legalizing drugs isn’t making people use them less.  The WSJ reports that about four times as many people die from using prescription painkillers as did ten years ago: About 14,800 people died in the U.S. from overdoses of painkillers in 2008, up from 4,000 deaths in 1999, while the number of these drugs sold quadrupled, […]

Having spent months warning readers about the incompetence of Europe’s political leadership and the incoherence of its institutional structures, I thought I had seen the worst.  But for even this hardened and cynical observer who has had years of watching European ineptitude the last 24 hours have been a revelation: the Europeans are totally at […]

Droves of jumpy Chinese millionaires are looking to emigrate from the PRC.  Should investors and geopoliticians be paying attention?With concerns about social policy and slowing growth becoming more prominent, over half of Chinese millionaires are considering fleeing the country. From the Wall Street Journal: More than half of China’s millionaires are either considering emigrating or […]

From this side of the Pacific, the titans of Asia seem unable to put a foot wrong.  Look more closely, though, and both giants have feet of clay.  India and China have a million things to do before their economies reach their full potential; understanding both geopolitical and global economic trends in this century will […]

The tradition of arranged marriage is a very old system, but the pressures of modern life are forcing India’s urban elite to rely on professional marriage brokers. For the brokers, business is truly booming. The Hindustan Times reports: As family sizes shrink and divorce rates skyrocket, family members and friends are apprehensive of  making introductions […]

A word of warning to financial criminals: you are risking more than your own freedom — the health and well-being of your family may be in jeopardy as well. A 60 Minutes special on CBS paints a harrowing picture of the pain and shame endured by the Madoff family in the years following the unveiling […]

Vietnam and Indonesia may be the future, but China is content being the present.  At least that’s the tone of the Canton trade fair, according to the FT: The massive trade gathering—which is so large it is held twice a year in three phrases—is at the front line of leading indicators on China’s export prospects. […]

We are awash in movements. The Arab Spring is one long series of movements, like a row of candles, each one igniting the next one in the row—Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, then back to Benghazi, and so on across the Middle East. Even Israel has caught a spark, as protesters camped out on Dizengoff Boulevard in […]

World War Two gave us Spam.  The space program gave us Tang.  Today’s Pentagon is preparing a new treat for the American palate: caffeinated meat.   According the the WaPo, caffeinated meat is the latest military technology from the lab that invented Kevlar.Napoleon said that an army travels on its belly, and supply has always been […]