First of all, sorry to have been absent for a week (plus), but I’ve been wrapping up the end of semester with my great students at NYU, been to a conference (more on that next week), had a house guest with whom I did some local culture, and a few other odds and ends. I’ll […]
In global markets around the world, the free market is being challenged by the rise of ‘State Capitalism’ — a system in which the state through regulatory reforms to check the excesses of greed & volatility becomes the leading economic actor. With the Feds set to announce the outcome of the bank stress tests this week, the ‘nationalization’ of U.S. banks, in some form, seems inevitable. Is state capitalism the future of 21st-century capitalism?
There is something terribly disturbing about it all. Since 2003, the US has imprisoned 43,000 people seeking asylum. The Department of Homeland Security has increased immigration detention beds by 78% says Human Rights First. Jailed in Texas. Why does that not seem surprising? A teacher who fled the persecution and beatings in Burma arrived in […]
“It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” – Mother Teresa of Calcutta Over a billion people across the globe live on less than a dollar a day, placing them in extreme poverty. Moderate poverty is defined as those living, on $1 to $2 a […]
Mas Selamat bin Kastari, a high ranking leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, is in Malay custody. He was recaptured more than a year after he escaped, pantsless, through the bathroom window of the Whitley Road Detention Center in Singapore. His recapture has resulted in much celebration among the Malaysian and Singaporean security industries, though it has […]
6. Six countries chose not to participate in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s ongoing military exercises in Georgia. Largely to appease Russia, Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Moldova and Serbia withdrew from the “war games.” Stratfor notes that “while most of these countries either hold strong political ties to Russia or are wary of angering Moscow […]
Gary Shilling on Bloomberg: bank stress test analysis. According to reports from the New York Times (NYT) here, and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) here, the Federal Reserve with the backing of the U.S. Treasury, directed at least ten of 19 of the nation’s largest banks to bolster their balance sheet capital ratio levels by $75 […]
Is it possible to make a difference in the fight against global hunger from your computer? Organizations that are dedicated to fighting hunger work approach this challenge in many ways, and must dedicate a great deal of time and resources to raising funds to support their programs. The United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) for […]
Despite Russian objections to “meddling” in its sphere of influence, the European Union launched an “eastern partnership” with six former Soviet republics – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – at a summit yesterday in Prague. The plan is designed to extend political and economic ties and promote democratic reforms. Notably, leaders from Britain, […]
So, where does our moralistic support of national self-determination of peoples begin and end? The Abkhaz and South Ossetians? The Chechens? The Basques of Spain and France? The Kosovar Albanians? The Palestinians? The Tibetans and Taiwanese? The Kurds, the Armenians, the Azeris? The Sunni of Iraq? The residents of Darfur and of southern Sudan? Kashmiri Muslims under Indian rule? Tamils in Sri Lanka? German speakers in the Italian Sud Tirol?
The current issue of the Economist highlights the changing balance of economic power in Europe. European powers have been unevenly impacted by the global financial crisis. The article argues that a “new European pecking order has emerged, with statist France on top, corporatist Germany in the middle and poor old liberal Britain floored.” While the […]
“They are truly evil, evil people.” That from U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle who spent 18 months in Sudan’s Darfur region as a ceasefire observer with the African Union. He was referring to the Janjaweed, militias funded by the government in Khartoum who regularly rape and pillage not only villages but also refugee camps. [kml_flashembed […]
As the U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan presidential summit concludes it’s worth noting that we have heard a lot of talk about fighting the Taliban, fighting corruption, increasing aid for development, and promoting trade between the two countries, but there is one important issue that has not been discussed at the summit: the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The […]
Check out this article (thanks to Robert Nolan for sending it along) about Goldman Sachs’ latest report on the shift of global economic power towards the East.
This week saw another confrontation between the US and China over Beijing’s growing naval power and what appears to be Washington’s attempts to retain control of the dominance to which it has grown accustomed in the East and South China Seas. On Sunday 2 Chinese fishing vessels reportedly “harassed” an American surveillance ship in the […]