It’s been a bad month in Russia.  The stock market, already one of the cheapest in the world by conventional valuation, is down 20 percent. A teenager and her stepfather were killed and eaten by bears as the girl called her mother on her cell phone to describe the attack.  Two swimmers off Russia’s Far […]

The stereotype, held apparently by none other than the President of the United States, is that religious people are less educated and less affluent than cosmopolitan and sophisticated seculars.  The bitter clingers handle snakes, guns and Bibles in West Virginia; the seculars discuss literature and economics at swank parties in Georgetown.In fact, some recent research […]

Readers puzzled and intrigued by the battle erupting over corruption in India should read White Tiger, the Man Booker award winning novel by Aravind Adiga to get some sense of why this issue is so explosive. Corruption in a kind of shorthand for political, social and economic privileges that are deeply woven into India’s social […]

Ann Althouse picks up one of the oddest reports of the week: the Hungarian government wants to discourage students from taking English as their first foreign language because it is so easy!  The original article in The Wall Street Journal is a head-scratcher: Hungary’s government wants to dethrone English as the most common foreign language […]

The financial crisis is clearly much worse than the public has been told.  The London Daily Telegraph reports that Goldman Sachs, shaken by the brutal economic environment, has ordered thousands of dollars of potted plants removed from its London offices as an economy measure.  Staff were reportedly so horrified that they physically tried to stop […]

US Department of Labor figures on state unemployment brought more gloomy news to the White House.  Among the ten states where unemployment rose significantly in July were the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and New Hampshire.  The employment picture was significantly improved in only two battleground states: Colorado and New Mexico.

From the Associated Press, via the Silicon Valley’s MercuryNews.com SACRAMENTO — The state auditor’s office on Thursday added teacher pensions to the list of high-risk issues facing California government.The report by State Auditor Elaine Howle added the nation’s largest teacher pension fund because it can’t meet the costs of retirement benefits beyond the next 30 […]

Wondering why Europe’s two most important leaders seem ineffectual and paralytic confronted with the greatest crisis in the history of the European Union?A recent German opinion poll sheds some light on the problem.  75 percent of Germans polled said they lacked confidence in Merkel’s leadership on the euro; only 22 percent said they backed her.  […]

Besides healing the planet and returning the rising seas to their natural beds, then-Senator Obama promised that his administration would create beautiful green jobs: well paid, stable, abundant jobs, unionized, with full benefits and making the earth healthier and the American people richer. As President, he stayed on message: even after the truther-enabling “green jobs […]

At The American Interest we’ve been commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War with a series of on line and print articles.  The September/October print issue is now out and features an article on the consequences of the war by Allen C. Guelzo at Gettysburg College.  It’s a great read; as a native South […]