Austere Illusions
by Robert Skidelsky Added 21.05.2013LONDON – The doctrine of imposing present pain for future benefit has a long history – stretching all the way back to Adam Smith and his praise of “parsimony.” It is particularly vociferous in “hard times.” In 1930, US President Herbert Hoover...
Nationalism, Madness,and Terrorism
by Liah Greenfeld Added 19.05.2013BOSTON – If we want to understand what drove the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to terrorism, the answer almost certainly does not lie in Dagestan, where the brothers lived before moving to the United States,...
Open-Access Economics
by Barry Eichengreen Added 19.05.2013CANBERRA – The brouhaha over Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s article “Growth in a Time of Debt” may be the most conspicuous and incendiary scholarly controversy since 1974, when two earlier economists, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman,...
Which Side is the Government On?
by Michael Lux Added 19.05.2013In my 33 year and counting career in politics, I have done my share of both candidate campaigning and issue campaigning. In the last 15 years or so, frankly, I have been more inclined to spend most of my time on the latter, because just fighting...
The Distortion of Grief
by Christopher Lane Added 14.05.2013CHICAGO – How long does it take to mourn the death of a loved one? The question is peculiar, even mildly offensive. Recovery from bereavement is a personal process that varies significantly among individuals. While it could take months to...
The Last Chance for Syria?
by James J. Zogby Added 14.05.2013One can only hope for the success of the recently announced U.S.-Russian plan to convene a conference aimed at finding a resolution to the conflict in Syria. As difficult as it will be for this effort to succeed, and as bitter a pill as it may...
The Endangered Arab Christian
by Fiorello Provera Added 13.05.2013BRUSSELS – The recent abductions of Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Paul Yazigi, reflect not only the increasing brutality of Syria’s civil war, but also the escalating crisis for Christians across...
What Use Are Economists?
by Dani Rodrik Added 10.05.2013CAMBRIDGE – When the stakes are high, it is no surprise that battling political opponents use whatever support they can garner from economists and other researchers. That is what happened when conservative American politicians and European Union...
Debt Without Drowning
by Paul De Grauwe Added 09.05.2013LONDON – Since the 1970’s, economists have warned that a monetary union could not be sustained without a fiscal union. But the eurozone’s leaders have not heeded their advice – and the consequences are becoming increasingly apparent. Europe now...
Federal Government Nation’s Biggest Creator of Low Wage Jobs: Time for Obama to Act
by Michael Lux Added 09.05.2013There was a moving and powerful event this morning at Union Station in DC where low wage workers for federal contractors, leaders of the faith community, and members of Congress all did a little preaching to President Obama. Their message could...
Clearing A Path Through the Brain
by Javier DeFelipe Added 09.05.2013MADRID – Our brains are like a dense forest – a complex, seemingly impenetrable terrain of interacting neurons that mediates cognition and behavior. The great challenge is to uncover its mysteries, that is, to find out how the neurons are...
Recognizing Israeli/Palestinian Realities Requires that the U.S. not the Arab League Change Direction
by James J. Zogby Added 08.05.2013Last week an Arab League committee proposed a change in their 2002 peace initiative in which they promised to normalize relations with Israel following a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 and an agreed upon resolution...
Why GOP Attacks on Obama Foreign Policy Are Shameless
by Robert Creamer Added 08.05.2013On CBS’s Face the Nation this week, GOP Congressman Darrel Issa held forth once again on the Obama Administration’s “failures” surrounding the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya last October. Later this week his Congressional...
In Defense of Non-Visionaries
by Joseph S. Nye Added 07.05.2013OXFORD – Many of the recent tributes for Margaret Thatcher following her death celebrated her as a “transformational” leader who brought about great changes. There were frequent references to her equally transformational American counterpart,...
DNA at 60
by Donna Dickenson Added 06.05.2013LONDON – On April 25, 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published a one-page paper that many believed would revolutionize biological research. Building on the work of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, they had discovered DNA’s...
Lives versus Profits
by Joseph E. Stiglitz Added 06.05.2013NEW YORK – The United States Supreme Court recently began deliberations in a case that highlights a deeply problematic issue concerning intellectual-property rights. The Court must answer the following question: Can human genes – your genes – be...
The Problem with Poor Countries’ GDP
by Bill Gates Added 06.05.2013SEATTLE – Even in good financial times, development aid budgets are hardly overflowing. Government leaders and donors must make hard decisions about where to focus their limited resources. How do you decide which countries should get low-cost...
China’s India Land Grab
by Brahma Chellaney Added 04.05.2013NEW DELHI – Stoking tensions with Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines over islands in the South and East China Seas has not prevented an increasingly assertive China from opening yet another front by staging a military incursion across the...
Ghosts of Enron
by Michael Lux Added 04.05.2013The ghosts of the Enron Corporation are haunting us still, and they are a lot scarier than any horror movie ghosts because unlike the Hollywood variety, these ghosts still have enough substance to cause an economic nightmare. I have a lot of...
The New Economy of Fealty
by Harold James Added 03.05.2013PRINCETON – Since the 2008 financial crisis, most industrial economies have avoided anything like the collapse that occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. But, despite large-scale fiscal and monetary stimulus, they are not...
The Vision and the Fantasy
by Shlomo Ben Ami Added 02.05.2013JERUSALEM – Israel, an audacious vision that came true, is now celebrating its 65th anniversary with a sense of well-deserved satisfaction at its extraordinary domestic achievements. In its relations with the outside world, however, the Jewish...
Voltaire: I Groan In Silence
by Michael Johnson Added 02.05.2013Voltaire looks up from his quill pen but does not rise as I enter his study for our interview. He is working alone, his bald head covered by a skull cap. A shoulder-length wig is draped on a wooden stand nearby. The first thing that strikes me...
America’s Enemy Within
by Ian Buruma Added 02.05.2013NEW YORK – Barring any unexpected new revelations, there is not much to be learned from the Tsarnaev brothers, better known as “the Boston bombers.” We can dig into their family histories in strife-torn Dagestan, or examine, once again, the...
The World Without America
by Richard N. Haass Added 30.04.2013NEW YORK – Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of...
Drones and Rumsfeld’s Question
by James J. Zogby Added 30.04.2013Earlier this week, a U.S. Senate subcommittee held hearings on the use of drones. Most of those who testified were Constitutional law professors or terrorism experts. In what was an emotional highpoint of the proceedings, the committee also...
Bostonians find catharsis in Stravinsky
by Michael Johnson Added 29.04.2013BOSTON -- It was supposed to be a festive occasion – the arrival of spring and the centennial of the premiere – but dark undercurrents from the Boston Marathon bombings dominated a recent performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring by...
When Is Government Debt Risky?
by J. Bradford DeLong Added 29.04.2013BERKELEY – A government that does not tax sufficiently to cover its spending will eventually run into all manner of debt-generated trouble. Its nominal interest rates will rise as bondholders fear inflation. Its business leaders will hunker down...
The Trapdoors at the Fed’s Exit
by Nouriel Roubini Added 29.04.2013MUMBAI – The ongoing weakness of America’s economy – where deleveraging in the private and public sectors continues apace – has led to stubbornly high unemployment and sub-par growth. The effects of fiscal austerity – a sharp rise in taxes and a...
The Central Economic Fights of our Time, Part 1
by Michael Lux Added 29.04.2013The inside-the-beltway world of Washington, DC rarely deals with truly foundational economic issues. When they do, it is only because they are being forced to by crisis or a political movement forcing something onto center stage. The big...
Praetorian China?
by Masahiro Matsumura Added 26.04.2013OSAKA – Do China’s rulers have full civilian control of their country’s military? Asian governments are now regularly asking themselves that question as China hardens its stance on its claims to islands in the South and East China Seas. Perhaps...
Hybrid Humans
by Parag Khanna Added 26.04.2013SINGAPORE – The election of a new pope always sparks debate about the tension between tradition and modernity in the Catholic Church. Perhaps more interesting is the ongoing modernization of the language in which those debates are conducted:...
Tempering the Genetic Revolution
by Jean-Jacques Cassiman Added 26.04.2013LEUVEN – We may not be fully aware of it, but future generations will likely consider our era truly historic. Never before has mankind been able to understand the functioning of cells, tissues, and organs, the precise molecular mechanisms of...
Exceptions Become the Rule
by Esther Dyson Added 25.04.2013NEW YORK – Long ago, I worked as an analyst on Wall Street. The first company that I analyzed was Federal Express, which at the time had not yet shipped its first package. The idea behind FedEx was simple and compelling: The cost of complexity...
Resurrecting The Arab Peace Initiative
by Alon Ben-Meir Added 25.04.2013The resurrection of Arab Peace Initiative (API) by the United States, which was initially introduced by the Arab League in Beirut, Lebanon in 2002, is a strategic and timely move. Sadly, however, the API should have all along constituted the...
The Collapsing Arab State
by Nawaf Obaid Added 25.04.2013BOSTON – The so-called Arab Spring generated a wave of hope among those fighting or advocating for democratization of the Arab world’s authoritarian regimes. Now, following leadership changes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and with a...
Syria’s Chemical Genie
by Bennett Ramberg Added 24.04.2013LOS ANGELES – Since Syria’s civil war erupted, its large chemical-weapons arsenal has haunted the conflict zone and beyond. Now Israel says that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian regime. Escalating fears have driven US President...
Should Germany Exit the Euro?
by Hans-Werner Sinn Added 24.04.2013MUNICH – Last summer, the financier George Soros urged Germany to agree to the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism , calling on the country to “lead or leave.” Now he says that Germany should exit the euro if it continues to block...
Congress Should Not Reward Israel with Visa Waivers
by James J. Zogby Added 23.04.2013There are currently several pieces of legislation being considered in the U.S. Congress that would include Israel in the Visa Waiver Program—thus allowing Israeli citizens to enter the U.S. without first obtaining a visa. Several Senators and...
Competing at The Cliburn
by Michael Johnson Added 23.04.2013The first edition of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since the founder’s recent death is well under way as30 preselected young pianists prepare for two weeks of playoffs beginning May 24 in Fort Worth, Texas. Piano and music...
Suffer the Children, Suffer the Country
by Jeffrey D. Sachs Added 22.04.2013NEW YORK – Children are every country’s most vital resource. This is true not just morally, but also economically. Investing in the health, education, and skills of children offers the highest economic returns to a country. A new study by the UN...
Europe in Depression?
by Federico Fubini Added 22.04.2013MILAN – Charles P. Kindleberger, the great economic historian, once noted that the Great Depression was so deep and so long because of “British inability and American unwillingness” to stabilize the system. Among the functions that the great...
American Exceptionalism, The Good Kind
by Mike Lux Added 20.04.2013When I think of Elizabeth Warren, I think of her as a fiery warrior on behalf of consumers and the 99%, fearlessly taking on the biggest and baddest of all the special interests, Wall Street. But she is also the senior Senator from the great...
Et Tu, Judas?
by Jeff Schweitzer Added 19.04.2013Variously described as “long-lost” or “recently discovered,” the Gospel of Judas has been reexamined and again found to be authentic. By analyzing the unique ink used and how that ink interacted with the ancient papyrus, scientists concluded...
Apple’s Cash-Flow Problem
by Mark Roe Added 18.04.2013CAMBRIDGE – I recently examined the problem of corporate short-termism from two nonstandard angles. One was that some short-termism is sensible . Large firms face an increasingly fluid economic, technological, and political environment – owing...
Mastering The Nuclear Chess Game
by Alon Ben-Meir Added 18.04.2013Iran may have not invented Chess, but it has nevertheless demonstrated unsurpassed skills in playing the nuclear chess game against the P5+1 (US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) and especially against the US. From the time it was...
Capitalists for Inclusive Growth
by Lynn Forester de Rothschild Added 18.04.2013LONDON – In 2012, the Pew Research Center found that 85% of self-described middle-class adults in the United States believe that it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for people like them to maintain their standard of living. The...
Thatcherism’s Bellicose Soul
by Robert Skidelsky Added 17.04.2013LONDON – Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s greatest twentieth-century peacetime prime minister. In the 1980’s, the near-simultaneous crisis of communism in the East and social democracy in the West gave her the opportunity to do great deeds. But...
China’s Dream World
by Minxin Pei Added 16.04.2013CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA – Ruling elites almost everywhere – whether in democracies or in authoritarian regimes – believe that clever sloganeering can inspire their people and legitimize their power. There are, of course, crucial differences. In...
What’s Stopping Europe?
by Allan H. Meltzer Added 16.04.2013 PITTSBURGH – On a recent visit to Greece, French President François Hollande declared that Europe’s decline was over, and urged French companies to invest in Greece. Bad advice. French production costs are high, but Greek costs are higher....
American Attitudes Toward Egypt Have Soured
by James J. Zogby Added 16.04.2013American public opinion has soured on Egypt, with one-half of all American voters now holding an unfavorable view of that country and its leadership. This was not always the case My brother John Zogby and I have been measuring American attitudes...
Letter from the Editor
Bad grammar and the people who hate it
From the BBC: "Grammar is not just an educational issue. For some adults, it can sabotage friendships and even romantic relationships." Extracts: “The research arm of dating site OKCupid looked at 500,000 first contacts and concluded that...
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