Nick Ottens is a public affairs officer for the Dutch Animal Coalition and a board member for Liberal Green, the sustainability network of the Dutch liberal party VVD. He is a former political risk consultant and a former research manager for XPRIZE, where he designed prize competitions to incentivize breakthrough innovation in agriculture, food and health care. He has also worked as a journalist in Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York for EUobserver, NRC, Trouw, World Politics Review and Wynia’s Week, among others.
With health-care reform passed, the Obama Administration is gearing up to tackle the next item on its agenda: financial reform. The president is expected to push Congress in the coming weeks, hoping to have some progress to show for by the fall when the midterm elections are set to ravish the country’s political landscape. Treasury […]
A new bilateral relationship is emerging across the Near East as India and Saudi Arabia strengthen their ties. The desert kingdom has grown to become India’s foremost supplier of crude oil while the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh realizes that the nation’s security is very much dependent on stability in the Middle East. Relations […]
How an otherwise tempered remark by the president spawns a media fury, left and right.
With capitalism under persecution and “Wall Street greed” continually blamed for plunging the world economy into financial crisis, many bankers rather keep a low profile these days in order to avoid the crowds and pitchforks. Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., however, is no stranger to the political arena and several […]
St Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has announced its intention to stop hiring smokers, stating that it hopes to improve the health of its workforce and reduce medical costs. This May, the hospital starts screening prospective employees for nicotine use. Those testing positive will be precluded from the process. St Luke’s is not the first […]
“Regulated markets work best.” The words are coming from Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. After all, “we have traffic lights too,” he argued on Fox Business this Monday. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was set up as an independent government agency in the 1970s with the stated goal of protecting […]
Bankers and bureaucrats want peaceful ties. Hardliners are convinced the West is conniving to keep them poor.
The economic factor tends to be overlooked in discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It shouldn’t be.
Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin stubbornly persists in his crusade for free-market capitalism though criticism of his “Roadmap for America’s Future” is fierce. In February, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag deconstructed Ryan’s plans, stating that although they address long-term fiscal problems, many lawmakers might find them “objectionable” because, as Politico put it, […]
Surprise, surprise, health-care reform is going to cost corporate America dearly. The Wall Street Journal reports that telephone giant AT&T is among the first businesses to announce multimillion dollar writedowns solely due to the health bill. “The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!” writes the paper. To make health-care reform appear financially responsible, […]
Old Europe is in something of an identity crisis. The specter of European federalism coupled with a widespread unease about Muslim immigration has many Europeans wondering about their nationhood and what it means to be “European” anyway. The financial meltdown and subsequent recession further fractured an already fragile self-image. Foreign immigration and decades of post-colonial […]
American secretary of state Hillary Clinton returned empty handed from Brazil earlier this month with President Lula da Silva’s government unwilling to support tougher sanctions on Iran. Brazil has long maintained that it wants proof of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions before it agrees to push for sanctions with the United Nations. Part of the reason […]
With dozens of states lining up to contest the constitutionality of health-care reform as it passed through Congress last week, there is ample reason to take this charge seriously, not treat it as the final breath of a party of sore losers. The states are fighting reform on two counts: first, that the Constitution doesn’t […]
The compromise which European leaders reached last week on aiding Greece may struck many foreign observers as evidence of the EU’s ineffectiveness at settling its internal discord, but it was in fact a minor victory for “President” Herman Van Rompuy and his campaign for greater economic governance from Brussels. Van Rompuy, former prime minister of […]
In a comprehensive study (PDF) presented to the Brookings Institution on Friday, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and noted laissez-faire economist Alan Greenspan traces the roots of the global economic downturn back many years, arguing that because the savings rate of the developed world soared in the decade preceding it and intentions to invest […]
