Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner play host this week to the third round of a newly formed bi-lateral talks between the US and China. This is the first time the so-called US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SE&D) is being held in the US. The purpose of the talks, Geithner said in his opening comments on Monday, is to look for opportunities to build closer economic ties between the World’s two leading economic powers.
The Big Lie – or tired old axiom if you want to be polite – is that renewables can’t get the job done. If you need to believe that, then you might as well believe that ignorance is strength. As I noted here, and many times at this blog, renewables are blowing the doors down […]
As mentioned yesterday, thought I’d do a follow up on the enhanced interrogation technique blog I wrote yesterday. I asked the following question during the May 5th press call sponsored by the National Security Network and the Center for American Progress: …if I’m understanding and hearing correctly, there was historical precedence as well as […]
I have written on the subject of fuel banks before, the idea being to prevent the spread of Enrichment and Reprocessing (ENR) facilities which are capable of producing weapons-grade fuel by providing reactor material produced at a multilateral facility through supply assurances. As I also noted, the IAEA Board of Governors approved a fuel bank […]
Echoing recent warnings by the FAO about a budding global food crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton counseled representatives at a meeting in Rome on Friday about the dangers of rising prices and enduring shortages of food. Now, thankfully, the situation we face today is not yet as serious [as the 2007-2008 global […]
In the aftermath of the take down of Osama Bin Laden, there has been much debate and speculation on the nature of the intelligence used to finally track him down. Front and center has been the role played using controversial interrogation techniques. On 5 May I participated in a press call sponsored by the National […]
The chap who deigned to take on the Bush Administration, refusing to kowtow to their demands that he provide evidence of Saddam Hussein’s imaginary nuclear weapons program, has published his memoir. In “The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times”, Mohamed ElBaradei, three-term Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), details his […]
I’d like to highlight three significant effects of the bin Laden killing. First, as I noted last week, some people view the operation as precedential. The first one I caught was from Knesset member, Shaul Mofaz, who took the opportunity to call for similar strikes on Hamas leaders. Additionally, as David Karl of the FPA […]
After initial excitement, this moment of unity in the capture & killing of Osama bin Ladin registered as a momentary blip in Global Markets as investors worry about the immediate risk of a terrorist backlash and, more generally, the malaise of the US economy. Yet bin Laden’s death has the potential to become a focal point for the country, and for President Barack Obama in particular, if the spirit of unity & partisan cooperation can be translated into broad-based, bipartisan progress on economic issues such as re-employment, infrastructure investments, increased corporate spending of their HUGE profit margins, decreasing the Federal deficit & the National Debt levels that are central to the long-term economic health & prosperity of the nation, and the world.
Unemployment remains stubbornly high.
This morning on NHK TV, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku (the second-in-command in Japan’s civil service) said, “Our energy policy is to stick to nuclear power.” Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are under review for safety in light of the Fukushima disaster, but apart from three reactors at the Hamaoka facility in central Japan, the […]
Today is a day to honor mother’s across the globe, women who give new life and hope to the world. Women who raise future leaders, raise the motherless child of another like their own, protect and shield children’s lives with no thought to themselves, and women who give their lives sacrificing all to see that […]
Tomorrow is Mother’s day and for many it means getting Mom a card, some flowers or a gift that show her how much we care and appreciate all she has done to make us the people we are today. For mothers in developing countries it is also a day in which they most often reflect […]
Yesterday, the price of crude oil dropped about 10%. This will not bring any immediately relief to motorists, nor does it mean that a bear market has started in the trading pits. The sell-off did not come from the killing of Usama bin Laden (or it would have happened on Monday), nor did any survey, […]
Apologies for skipping out on my last post; I was on vacation in one (two, actually) of those places where there’s no Internet, no cell phones, and no TV, which is really the only way to get a vacation anymore. Which means that I didn’t get any news about anything until Tuesday morning. And now, […]
We are at war. Twelve new wars have broken out in the world since the dawn of the new millennium, including the United States’ war with Afghanistan, Iraq, and the even more recent civil wars in Libya and the Ivory Coast. So much global unrest is enough to make anyone uneasy, despite the recent death […]