Last week I was pleased to meet with a delegation of Members of Parliament and staff from the Parliament of Ghana, who were in town as part of a USAID-supported legislative strengthening visit coordinated by the SUNY Center for International Development.While in Albany, NY they spent the week meeting with state legislators, staff from the […]
Here’s a succinct and hopeful message from UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer on where we are on the international politics. We will know more this week after the UN Climate Summit and the G20 meetings.
Most anyone sane who has ever had to suffer through Eurovision song contests walks away stunned. The event has gone on for something like 50 years and drives the Europeans mad. And the associated kitsch isn’t even remotely interesting. Though I’m sure someone like John Waters wouldn’t agree. Genius has no bounds and thankfully, no […]
Google Books, the ambitious plan by Sergey Brin and Larry Page to make available for free huge quantities of digitized books, suffered yet another blow on Friday as the US Department of Justice urged a federal judge to deny a settlement agreement that Google reached with authors and publishers over copyright issues. The heart of […]
President Obama reversed course on missile defense this week, announcing a retreat from the Bush plan of stationing missile interceptors and radar bases in Eastern Europe: In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush’s plans to station a radar facility in the Czech […]
In what has been called the most important death penalty case in US history, the government is seeking a 60 day delay in the joint trial by military commission of Guantanamo’s Ramzi bin al Shibh, who, along with four others, is facing war crimes charges resulting from his alleged involvement in the September 11th attacks. […]
Will technology and financial engineering of complex products require the global coordination of a financial regulatory regime. More global finance and economic policy-makers think so.
A month ago a new wave of fighting started between Yemen’s government forces and rebel Shi’ite Muslims. According to Reuters/Alert Net, the conflict has spread and the plight of civilians is at “alarming levels.” The most recent fighting has been on-going for five years, displacing about 150,000 people. The government argues that the Houthi rebels […]
An update on a post I did last week on the Obama administration’s swing toward trade protectionism with its action against Chinese tires: enclosed is this nicely written NYTimes editorial…not an Op-ed, an editorial. The Times editorial board understands economics. American workers in the tire industry, many represented by the United Steelworkers Union, may well lose their jobs […]
Because really, there’s never enough guns in Somalia. If you looked up failed state in the encyclopedia, a picture of a khat-chewing Somali toting an AK-47 he purchased off the street for a hundred dollars—if that—would be plastered front and center. The government controls a few blocks of Mogadishu—at best—while raging Islamist insurgencies have claimed […]
I’ve written about nuclear power here a number of times. To be upfront with you: I’ve been an opponent for almost 40 years, since long before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. I have seen very little along the way to change my views. In the light of the specter of climate change, I’ve tried to […]
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are preparing broad new rules that would force the financial industry to rein in excessive compensation schemes and commission practices that disproportionate made gazzillionaires at the expense of investors and taxpayers out of many financial executives – many just out of college – during the global financial meltdown.
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