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Hurricane Irene is making its way across the eastern seaboard of the United States, a rare trajectory for such a powerful storm.  With damage expected in the billions of dollars and uncertainty about the degree to which storm damage will disable access to utilities and supplies for the large population on the East Coast of […]

Just in time for the weekend, here’s a round-up of some articles and podcasts to keep you informed. Do you have any suggestions? Please post them in the comments!

The ever-unhelpful Senator Inhofe has been repeating his silly mantra that Iran will be in a position to deliver weapons of mass destruction against the United States by 2015. My friend Greg Thielman takes him to task in a recent blog, pointing out that the emphasis of Iranian missile development has been on medium-range rockets […]

In physics a quantum state is indeterminate until observed. This is known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and well illustrated by the famous “Schrödinger’s Cat” example in which the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. It’s very rare to find examples of such non-intuitive “both at the same time” situations in […]

In what I can only imagine to be an explicit acknowledgement of the importance of nonproliferation in the context of the renewed fervor for nuclear power – Fukushima notwithstanding – two new NGO initiatives have recently launched. The first, launched earlier this month, is courtesy of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Their new “Nuclear Initiative” will […]

This post originally appeared on August 20 on stephanbauman.com. Stephan Bauman, the author, is the CEO and President of World Relief. Tin, tungsten, and tantalum are at the heart of the loodshed that plagues Eastern Congo. Novelist Joseph Conrad referred to the exploitation of Congo’s minerals as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured […]

The TARP covered banks across the nation The US government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was such a success that it not only saved America’s financial system, with the help of the Federal Reserve, it also saved the global economy AND turned a profit for the US taxpayer.  It was almost three years ago, during […]

In May this year I published the piece, Ending the Blame and Shame of Child Victims of Sexual Assault and Abuse, for which I discussed the issue of placing the blame of abuse, assault, and/or human trafficking on that of the victim.  The article was written largely in response to a horrendous case of blame […]

The Federal Reserve Board With right-wing Republican presidential candidates these days either calling for the Fed to be abolished (Ron Paul) or simply calling the nation’s central bank “treasonous” (Rick Perry), thinking citizens should at least be concerned about the Fed’s activities. I defended the Fed on this blog and still do. People who should […]

The Union of South American Nations Will the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and its monetary fund, Banco del Sur, be successful? It has been difficult for emerging markets to diversify their sources of balance of payments (BOP) support. During the 1997-98 Asian crisis, the shame such Asian nations as Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia […]

The following post is an edited version of an article that appeared in the Jerusalem Post earlier this month by Pinchas Landau, author of The Landau Report, a newsletter and consultancy service addressing the needs of foreign firms and financial institutions active in Israel and the Middle East. “Domestic fury, and fierce civil strife Shall […]

When word of the possible fall of the dictatorship of Muammar Qadhafi began spreading across the wires, the very first thought I had was this: that’s great, but who has his reputed chemical weapons and what remains of his nuclear weapons program? Sure enough, the good people at the Associated Press wondered the same thing […]