It’s that time of year again: Experts of all kinds are coming out of the woodwork to offer up forecasts and predictions for the year ahead. It can be amusing, but this is not the most productive way to think about the future. Perhaps you’re familiar with Philip Tetlock’s landmark 2005 UC Berkeley study that looked at […]
For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have invested heavily in governance schemes that erode the Constitution’s separation of powers and mar its proper functioning. The Federal judiciary has uniformly rubber-stamped these schemes. The consequence has been an unsustainable spree of borrowing, spending and overregulation at the Federal level, cyclical fiscal crises at the state level, […]
The European Central Bank has managed to calm the markets with its promise of unlimited purchases of eurozone government bonds, because it effectively assured bondholders that the taxpayers and pensioners of the eurozone’s still-sound economies would, if necessary, shoulder the repayment burden. Although the ECB left open how this would be carried out, its commitment […]
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and President Zardari, made his first major public speech on Thursday to vast crowds gathered in Garhi Khuda Baksh to mark the fifth anniversary of his mother’s assassination. Hundreds of thousands of people, including Pakistan Peoples’ Party’s (PPP) workers, supporters and the party’s top leadership, had congregated […]
Bloomberg News mapped the families of Communist China’s “Eight Immortals” to reveal the origins of princelings, an elite class that has been able to amass wealth and influence, and exploit opportunities unavailable to most Chinese. Bloomberg tracked 103 people – descendants including children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and their respective spouses. The Immortals, now all […]
People who are surprised by certain recurrences in Russian history apparently are not aware that popular culture changes very slowly, if at all. U.S. history is a good example. The U.S. emancipated itself from Britain 250 years ago, forming a republic intended to be unique. Yet even today, our political and legal culture is thoroughly imbued with concepts and values inherited from Britain. Russians are no […]
In the summer of 1993, I was granted a rare scoop as a Palestinian journalist: an exclusive interview with the prime minister of Israel at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, the first ever given to a reporter working for a leading Palestinian newspaper. Midway way through the one-hour meeting, I asked Rabin for his vision as […]
The United States surpassed the European Union in the first 11 months of 2012 to become the largest buyer of Chinese exports, according to data released by the Commerce Ministry on Tuesday. The value of US trade with China increased by 8.2 percent year-on-year to reach $438.62 billion, according to the ministry. At the same time, China‘s […]
The passing year was the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) first opportunity to get up close and personal with the United States’ pivot back to Asia, the strategic rebalancing that looks a lot like containment. The PRC spent a lot of 2012 wrestling with contentious neighbors emboldened by the US policy, like Vietnam and the […]
“A modest man,” Winston Churchill supposedly quipped about Clement Attlee, his successor as prime minister, “but then he has so much to be modest about.” We should say the same about economists, particularly their ability to forecast anything in a useful and timely manner. Those predicting an imminent American economic decline have usually been no exception. This […]
looking beyond borders 