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Obama travels to the Middle East, and Osama releases a new audio message. Indeed, this is no coincidence.

While all of the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – have increased their holdings of foreign exchange reserves since 2000, China is easily the largest holder of US financial assets. Brad W Setser, fellow for geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Arpana Pandey, a research associate at the Council, write that […]

A national candlelight vigil will be held today (June 3) for jailed journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two women were on assignment from Al Gore’s Current TV media project in China, and were arrested by North Korean police near the border. Rallies will be held nationwide tonight for two American journalists imprisoned in […]

Today the strategic forecasting firm Stratfor released a comparison report dealing with the “Geography of Recession“.  I’ll let you subscribe to the actual post, but the main gist of it is that the US is far better off than its competitors at weathering the recession.  What’s more, the US compares far favorably to China, and […]

Oil has finished higher during 16 of the last 20 trading sessions and seven straight as it continues to rise from lows in February. Although it looks set to close lower today as traders cash in on recent gains, the price has increased over 110% over the past four months. But the fundamental drivers over […]

This documentary style film keeps the viewer on the edge of his or her seat. It depicts the lives of Algerians who are fighting against French colonial power between 1954 and 1962. Banned in France when it was released, this film seems to side with the Algerians but provides a balanced approach to the problems […]

The world has become, in most respects, unlivable. We have come to the end of nature, people are spiritually and physically dying or already dead, the once blue-green paradise, Earth, is spinning off into space, soon to become just another lifeless rock in the void. That’s one dystopian vision. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, “The Road […]

As President Obama embarks for Riyadh and Cairo this evening, the “scene setters” appear:  the BBC headlines “what could be one of the most important speeches of his presidency”;  America’s own NPR features a pre-departure interview focused on the Cairo speech as a “high-profile opportunity to reshape America’s image among Muslim countries.” We’re all familiar […]

Moral Hazard, the idea that companies will engage in highly risky behavior that jeopardizes the system that they otherwise would, when they are aware that “too big to fail” assurances of government bailout shifts the burden to taxpayers. Because of this dilemma, companies ought to be allowed to fail as a necessary trauma of capitalim.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner appears to have had a nice meeting with Chinese leaders today. Smoothing over any ruffled feathers of the recent past. Stressing cooperation. Setting it up nicely for a little Obama administration “good cop, bad cop” routine, starting with a meeting in late July, with Secretary of State Clinton playing the role of the baton-wielding heavy.

Cross-strait relations between the Chinese mainland and the Republic of Taiwan have made significant progress with an extension of goodwill to Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which strives for Taiwanese independence. Earlier this month, Kaohsiung municipality Mayor Chen Chu became the highest ranking DPP official to have set foot on the mainland. Not only is […]

Iranian human rights activist and former journalist Emad Baghi has been awarded the 2009 Martin Ennals Laureate Award.  For a man who has been thrown in jail, threatened with death, and continues to struggle against the insurmountable odds in Tehran, Baghi is testament to a passion for justice and fundamental rights. A peacemaker, his controversial […]

A long-time China hand, Mandarin speaker, East Asia major at SAIS, son of an East Asia expert who opened the Ford Foundation’s office in Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in China to jumpstart the Obama administration’s “strategic and economic dialogue.”  This effort puts a stamp of change on Bush’s “strategic economic dialogue,” the so-called G-2, or regular meetings between […]

Earlier this month Nicolas Kristof, a long time advocate on all forms of modern slavery, wrote a piece entitled, Girls on Our Streets, in which he sought not to bring attention to modern slavery itself, but to the plight of young girls right here in our own backyard.  American teenage girls continue to work the […]

Green Roofs – I have seen the future and it works.  (Well, in the case of the Soviet Union, it didn’t, but with green roofs, it definitely does and will.)  I’ve written before on this unbeatable approach to lowering the urban heat island effect, diminishing the troublesome problem of stormwater runoff, and providing a stunningly […]