If there is only one film you see this summer, make it ‘Restrepo.’ Awarded the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary, it follows the lives of one U.S. platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley during their entire 15 month deployment. The valley is considered one of the U.S. military’s most […]
David Leonhardt, an economics columnist and blogger for the “NY Times,” has just taken a good swing at the compelling arguments for a cap-and-trade bill. See Saving Energy, and Its Cost. (For a recent post from me on this and an exchange with an opponent, see The Facts of Cap and Trade.) Leonhardt has about […]
S&P, a premier global credit rating agency, is growing increasingly concerned that many companies in the United States could find it difficult to refinance their enormous debt loads in the coming years, possibly leading to an explosion of defaults and bankruptcies.
I recently authored a post regarding the crisis in Kyrgyzstan, and it has come to my attention that the piece could be interpreted somewhat differently than I intended. A clarification is in order. What I was trying to suggest was that U.S. intervention would have been pretty much out of the question no matter who […]
An excellent New York Times article yesterday discussed how democratic politics and bureaucracy in India prevent the elimination of infrastructure bottlenecks, especially in transportation. The article focused on India’s railway system, where freight rates are expensive, travel times excessive, and traffic volumes inadequate to the task of fostering strong economic growth…of the pace we see in China. […]
Happy “World Day to Combat Desertification” (WDCD) everyone! It may not be a day on the calendar that everyone keeps exceedingly close tabs on, but a little more information couldn’t hurt. Desertification is a process where land is slowly degraded due to certain human and environmental factors. Occurring in dryland ecosystems that already have scarce […]
An excellent issue brief from the Arms Control Association points out that a ban on major weapon deliveries, hardly mentioned if at all in most press coverage, is one of the most significant provisions of the sanctions the UN Security Council imposed on Iran last week. Resolution 1929 directs all states to “prevent the direct […]
Journalists in Mexico are facing an increasingly hostile environment. On Sunday, 13 journalists on a tour in the state of Michoacan were kidnapped at machete point by Nahua Indians. They had been mistaken for a crew in the area to film a beer commercial, and were released, but their equipment was confiscated. According to the […]
I have long said in my China posts that China does not have a lot of options right now besides buying US treasuries. The AP article below describes how China has increased its purchases of US debt in recent months. If you are going to hold your currency undervalued in order to run massive current account […]
Scheduling meetings here in Brussels and Paris has been suspiciously tough this week, with one person I met with actually admitting he was late because staff was gathered round the conference room television watching, yup, you guessed it, World Cup matches! If you have not checked out Africa blogger Derek Catsam’s posts from SA, now […]
South Africans, Africans across the continent and diaspora, and Africa-lovers are rightfully proud of the first World Cup on African soil. With billions invested in infrastructure and a drastic increase in international airtime, South Africa is presenting a refurbished image as it affirms its presence on the world stage. However, strikes this week have […]
The targeted building and Hosam Smadi First off, apologies for the sparse posting recently. Before I post about some recent big events I’d like to shed some light on a lesser known plot that was set to occur in my hometown of Dallas, Texas in September of last year. On September 24, 2009, a 19-year-old […]
Great presentation by Eli Pariser at PDF 2010 on the Filter Bubble. What’s the filter bubble? Well, you’re living in it. In the Internet Age, we’re used to seeing many, many results for any search. “Why Am I Lonely?”: 150,000 hits. “Why Am I Happy?”: 141,000 hits. (Not as bad as I expected.) A huge, colossal amount of information. […]
As noted in an earlier post, inflation is a sensitive issue in India. In addition to worrying about over-heating, today a preoccupation in many Emerging Market Economies (e.g. China and Brazil), Indian politicians are concerned that when food prices rise, millions may starve. JPMorgan below analyzes the latest inflation report, including double-digit price hikes in the food category. Moreover, with only modest capital expansion going on […]
A small collection of human rights story from the FPB network and beyond: And the clashes continue… For those of you living under a rock (or just caught up in World Cup fever), Kyrgyzstan is currently in the midst of some of the worst ethnic violence seen there in years. As ethnic Uzbeks flee from […]