Are India and Pakistan about to kiss and make up?Some observers think so.They are wrong.India and Pakistan have a long history of freezes and thaws — and journalists get too  excited either way.Pakistan’s stylish new foreign minister has wowed the media with her youth and western ways.  Yawn.  As cynical (Indian) journalists note, Pakistan has […]

Don’t believe everything you read about Chinese innovation, research and development. While the headlines proclaim: “China to overtake US on science in two years” and “China seen overtaking U.S. in research“, China is still a long way behind the global competition.So says the WSJ, looking closely at patent filings in the leading countries.  95 percent of […]

An important post at Talking Points Memo this morning observes that the “anti-Keynesians” have won the Washington argument for now; stimulus is dead and austerity rules.  The evidence: a Nancy Pelosi statement that “it is clear we must now enter an age of austerity.”Fair enough, although Pelosi’s idea of austerity may not quite be up […]

The crises in Europe and the US get most of the ink, but Asia faces a dangerous double threat to its growth and stability that in the long run may have greater implications for the global picture.As the Asia Development Bank notes in a recent report, inflation is rising across Asia.  Currency manipulation (pegging currencies […]

The IMF has warned France that its budget deficit will not hit the target (3 percent of GDP in 2013) without more spending cuts.  Bad news for President Sarkozy’s uphill re-election campaign, and a sign, also of the growing strains at the heart of modern Europe: the postwar partnership between France and Germany forged by […]

Here’s one way to deal with the problems of the breakdown of the Blue Social Model: assume them away.Bloomberg reports that many state pension funds have been assuming an annualized return of 8% on their investments, despite earning no more than half that in recent years (Washington’s state fund, the top performer, only managed to […]

The US has put 60 Russian officials on a visa black list because of their presumed involvement with the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblower who appears to have been framed and perhaps murdered by corrupt officials.  The Russian Foreign Ministry has attacked that decision, threatening unspecified retaliation against the US.The Magnitsky affair painfully demonstrates […]

Hugo Chavez isn’t the only Venezuelan entity with health problems these days. The national economy has been struggling for some time, and things look to be getting worse. Goods shortages, high inflation, slow growth — Venezuela has it all.With a fresh round of “elections” looming on the horizon, the wannabe Grand Poohbah of the Axis of […]

Yesterday, Britain joined France in announcing that Qaddafi can stay in the country if he relinquishes power. (The rebel forces, on the other hand, rescinded that offer this morning.) It’s a wretched idea, and it casts a cruel light on the strategic miscalculations behind the Days Not Weeks War.  To persist on this road will […]

Could greens be learning some lessons from the catastrophic meltdown of the global climate agenda?  A new way — says a diverse group of scholars from Oxford, LSE, Third Way, the American Enterprise Institute, and elsewhere — aims to “accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures”.The Climate […]