Google Books, the ambitious plan by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to make available for free huge quantities of digitized books, suffered yet another blow on Friday as the US Department of Justice urged a federal judge to deny a settlement agreement that Google reached with authors and publishers over copyright issues. The heart of […]
President Obama reversed course on missile defense this week, announcing a retreat from the Bush plan of stationing missile interceptors and radar bases in Eastern Europe: In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush’s plans to station a radar facility in the Czech […]
In what has been called the most important death penalty case in US history, the government is seeking a 60 day delay in the joint trial by military commission of Guantanamo’s Ramzi bin al Shibh, who, along with four others, is facing war crimes charges resulting from his alleged involvement in the September 11th attacks. […]
Will technology and financial engineering of complex products require the global coordination of a financial regulatory regime. More global finance and economic policy-makers think so.
A month ago a new wave of fighting started between Yemen’s government forces and rebel Shi’ite Muslims. According to Reuters/Alert Net, the conflict has spread and the plight of civilians is at “alarming levels.” The most recent fighting has been on-going for five years, displacing about 150,000 people. The government argues that the Houthi rebels […]
An update on a post I did last week on the Obama administration’s swing toward trade protectionism with its action against Chinese tires: enclosed is this nicely written NYTimes editorial…not an Op-ed, an editorial. The Times editorial board understands economics. American workers in the tire industry, many represented by the United Steelworkers Union, may well lose their jobs […]
Because really, there’s never enough guns in Somalia. If you looked up failed state in the encyclopedia, a picture of a khat-chewing Somali toting an AK-47 he purchased off the street for a hundred dollars—if that—would be plastered front and center. The government controls a few blocks of Mogadishu—at best—while raging Islamist insurgencies have claimed […]
I’ve written about nuclear power here a number of times. To be upfront with you: I’ve been an opponent for almost 40 years, since long before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. I have seen very little along the way to change my views. In the light of the specter of climate change, I’ve tried to […]
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are preparing broad new rules that would force the financial industry to rein in excessive compensation schemes and commission practices that disproportionate made gazzillionaires at the expense of investors and taxpayers out of many financial executives – many just out of college – during the global financial meltdown.
This past Thursday I attended an annual event of the International Center of the Capital Region that honors people in the community who have taken time out of their busy schedules to meet with delegations brought to the US through the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. It was a wonderful gathering that included federal, state and […]
This week in Egypt, two American couples were arrested and charged with human trafficking after they engaged in illegal adoptions.They were sentenced to two years in prison and fined $18,153. According to the AP, “They adopted children from a Cairo orphanage that allegedly gave them forged documents stating the adoptive children had been born to […]
On the first anniversary of the financial crash, I have been thinking of the role oil played. Most pundits cite re-setting mortgage rates as the precipitate cause, but I believe the sudden spike in energy prices earlier that summer — and the resulting inflation in food and other prices — acted as the tipping point […]
Around the world the way to deal with the aftermath of past violence and police states has yet to come to a definitive closure or method to resolve crimes of the past. Often the ruling class in one era of a society remains in the next era, whether it be a peaceful one or a […]
The debate over Israeli and Palestinian conduct during the 2008-2009 Gaza War continues, this time with the release of the UN Human Rights Council report on the issue. Commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report after the head of the special commission, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the 575 page report found that both sides […]
The Obama Administration released yesterday its list of 50 metrics, under three objectives, to designate progress in the war in Central Asia. While it’s important to have a cohesive set of tactics for the war itself—and this document makes our goals much more lucid than before—what strategy does the war itself fit? Are we once […]