President Barack Obama called for raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour and warned he’ll use executive powers to get his way on issues from climate change to manufacturing if Congress doesn’t act, laying out an assertive second-term agenda sure to provoke Republicans. In the first State of the Union address (See Here) since winning re- […]
Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are expected to run dry in fifty years. This prospect has encouraged the Saudis to go shopping for cutting-edge science that can secure the kingdom’s future—at elite American research universities. King Abdullah and Saudi Aramco are spending tens of billions on technology research to make the oil last longer and develop […]
President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, offering proposals for investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education, a senior administration official said on Saturday. In the annual presidential address to Congress, Obama plans to show he has not lost sight of […]
IN THE months since China implemented its once-a-decade leadership transition, American policymakers have been watching closely to see whether changes in personnel might augur any change in Chinese policy toward the United States. As the year of the dragon draws to a close and Barack Obama busies himself trying to replace many of his most […]
For the past three years, economists have been arguing about whether growth—the way we’ve understood it in developed economies—will ever return to the wonder years of the end of the 20th century. This week, cautiously, quietly, the Congressional Budget Office weighed in: Maybe economic growth is slowing for good. Read Here – Businessweek
What if the government could know the future? It’s trying. Armed with billions of tweets, Google (GOOG) searches, Facebook (FB) posts, and other publicly available social-media and online data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring research projects involving 14 universities in the United States, Europe, and Israel with the goal of using advanced analytics to […]
The U.S. military was closely tracking a one-eyed bandit across the Sahara in 2003 when it confronted a hard choice that is still reverberating a decade later. Should it try to kill or capture the target, an Algerian jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or let him go? Belmokhtar had trained at militant camps in Afghanistan in the […]
As Washington and its great power partnersprepare for more nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Obama administration and policy elites across the political spectrum talk as if America is basically in control of the situation. Sanctions, we are told, are inflicting ever-rising hardship on Iran’s economy. Either Tehran will surrender to U.S. demands that it stop […]
Don’t look now, but for all the buzz about the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, momentum is building on both sides of the Atlantic for a U.S.-EU free trade agreement that could be at least as consequential in shaping the world order. In fact, considering the messy geopolitical landscape with few […]
U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 14,000 for the first time in five years, as data on the labor market and manufacturing boosted confidence in the world’s biggest economy. “You’re going to see this economy driven by capital being put to work,” Robert Lutts, president and chief investment officer of Cabot […]
