Fitch Ratings today published a press release revising the “Outlook” on its “BBB” rating of Russian government bonds to positive from stable (see a Fitch press release below). Rating agencies – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – have been under fire since their high structured real estate ratings were downgraded rapidly during the recent financial […]
According to the Washington Times (March 2009), “Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.” Now there are more recent […]
Reacting to popular dismay over the light sentences meted out to the corporate perpetrators of the Bhopal tragedy–slaps on the wrist, really–India’s parliament has voted to hold foreign suppliers of nuclear components liable for damages from a reactor accident. Normally, only the operator of a nuclear power plant is held liable, and in virtually all […]
As I’ve written before, it is widely acknowledged that the economic health of the United States is a major national security concern. For one, last year Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence declared that the economic crisis had become the U.S.’s “primary near-term security concern.” I decided to read John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash […]
Been on travel so haven’t found time to Blog. Before I hit the road, I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers roundtable on Monday, August 23rd with Lieutenant General William Caldwell the Commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. It was enlightening and informative. As discussed in previous Blogs, this training is a critical […]
As you undoubtedly already know, last night Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq: What did we accomplish? Where are we going from here and what do we hope to continue to accomplish? How is Iraq related to the geopolitical interests of the United States? Many have taken the time to over the […]
Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the September Atlantic, in which he argues that Israel almost inevitably will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before next summer unless the United States does so first, has attracted excessive attention. Devoid of new information and lacking in any kind of serious military analysis, it’s a far cry from meeting the Atlantic […]
There is evidence that FARC has been trading cocaine for arms brokered by Venezuelan middlemen, entrepreneurs who are, at the same time, supplying weapons to Mexico.
Nine. At least that’s what The Atlantic said last year. In an effort to demonstrate that China is not as monolithic as it may sometimes appear, The Atlantic published an interactive map on its website dividing the People’s Republic of China into nine regions (the interactive feature doesn’t currently work correctly, but you can find […]
What US policymakers also fear is that the steady sale of arms to Venezuela from Russia, Iran, China, and Cuba, and the willingness of both Venezuela (Russian and Chinese arms) and Nicaragua (US-manufactured weapons) to resell firepower to criminal or insurgent elements throughout South and Central America (Mexico being the prize) will someday allow Chavez and Ortega to realize a common dream — power over a Socialist Empire that encompasses most or all of Central and South America.
We know that the global banking system is riddled with corruption (‘vulnerable’ to corruption may be more polite), some authored by its own principals, some embraced opportunistically by financial insiders to snatch sudden profits, a great deal ushered into the world’s financial system by bankers in search of the commissions and corporate profits that ‘high net-worth customers’ (in many cases, money launderers) bring in. And sometimes the bad guys exploit legitimate financial service providers. But the question remains, and it turns on the distinction between deregulation and irregularity, between fair play and laissez-faire, between the right of the ‘haves’ to have still more, and the right of the people to real economic protection under the law.
At what point does financial entrepreneurship turn criminal, and how blind an eye is the US prepared to turn toward banking practices that clearly prosper the powerful and imperil the growing ranks of the poor, in the United States and across the world?
There’s been some back and forth this week between Julian Ku and David Bosco about Jeremy Rabkin’s recent critique of the ICC in the Weekly Standard. I’ll add my two cents, for to me, Rabkin’s piece seems like a ghost story told around a campfire. Rabkin intends to make the ICC seem really really scary, […]
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