Political Economy

Voters in America are concrete, specific, and focused on the here and now by a margin of 3 to 1. To me, this has a real impact on the outcome of primary and Presidential races as candidates must speak in a way that resonates with those…

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph in London is one of the more interesting reporters on the business scene. In today's Telegraph, he chronicles the depth and breadth of the global slowdown now taking form.However, the crux of his…

The U.S. has decided brinkmanship is the way to deal with the Russians. Having seen Georgia overrun by the Russian military, Poland jumped at the chance to have a stronger U.S. defense behind them and so they now have it. Less than two…

Yesterday I pointed out that today's global banking crisis has some historical precedents worthy of comparison. In particular, I looked at the Japanese bailout schemes from their housing bubble to see if there was anything there to learn.…

The Wall Street Journal has a good piece from Yuka Hayashi about lessons that can be learned from Japan's experiences with its bank crisis in the 1990s. While I do take issue with a number of the article's assertions, on the whole it sheds…

I wrote a blurb on the Georgia-Russia struggle on my blog. But I wanted to add a blurb here from Mikhail Gorbachev's Op-Ed in today's Washington Post. His viewpoint stands in great contrast to the punderati of Washington. Framed in a real…

If Georgia or Ukraine were a part of NATO, we would be willing to go to war for them as that is what NATO means. Think about it: Russia attacks the Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. and its allies go to war to stop the Russian aggression.…

While the finance world is concerned with its own problems of writedowns and deflating asset prices, a proxy war of great importance is being fought in the country of Georgia. It has everything to do with both a Russo-American power…

The Financial Times Deutschland is reporting that China and Iraq want to revive a Saddam-era oil contract between the two nation that is worth billions of dollars. The contract, an obvious economic coup for China, secures Beijing…

Ben Smith has a good column on McCain's bellicose response to Russia's invasion of Georgia. Even George W. Bush has shown more statesmanship here.‘Invasion of Georgia’—a ‘3 a.m. moment’When the North Caucasus slid into war Thursday night,…