In many developed nations, education is one of the greatest expenses of government. In Great Britain, for instance, about £88 billion was spent on education last year, ammounting to 17 percent of the kingdom’s total budget. In the United States, where education is partly privatized, the federal government still intends to invest over $46 billion […]
Speaking to House members of the Republican Party in Baltimore, Maryland this Friday, President Barack Obama defended the measures which his administration has enacted over the past year as cameras rolled. The president took questions, corrected misstatements and blamed Republicans for distorting the true intentions and effects of his policies. So successful was his performance […]
Government intervention in the economy is something of a tradition in France. As the the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal noted, French business “remains curtailed by the pervasive presence of the state in economic activity.” Government spends more than half of GDP and owns […]
One of the stated goals of President Obama’s Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee is to reduce the size of financial institutions. Ideally, his administration would like to do some modern trust busting to make sure that banks won’t ever be “too big to fail” again. Who decides when a bank is “too big”? The same government […]
In the coming days, the United States Senate will vote on whether or not Ben Bernanke will go on to serve as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for another term. Some legislators are skeptical. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky said Tuesday on CNBC that Bernanke’s own staff recommended against bailing out insurer AIG in September […]
There are two major yet unrelated conflicts taking place in Yemen.
A new, thoroughly twenty-first century threat to domestic harmony is emerging, reports The Independent. “In some relationships, it is said to be causing as much discord as those age-old battlegrounds, sex and money. The problem is environmental incompatibility.” Therapists across America are reporting a sharp increase in what they call “green disputes”. Couples are finding […]
The only constant about President Obama’s foreign policy so far seems to be its reception. Conservatives dread the end of American ascendency and wonder out loud whether Obama is projecting weakness while the Europeans are supposedly upset about the current administration not paying them enough attention. The truth is that a series of early hiccups […]
This is the second part in a series of reports on the current state of the Royal Navy. The first entry focused on the expeditionary tool of the Royal Navy’s future force; the aircraft carrier. This article discusses the Future Surface Combatant and the effectiveness of modular versus “hardwired” vessels. Earlier this week, the blog […]
Free markets are in retreat.
Some expect Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, about eight times more violent […]
The president admits he may have underestimated the challenges of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Let’s not worry too much about non-Western actors cooperating on their own. The West might even benefit.
The recent disaster in Haiti has sparked a renewed wave of commentators to demand that men “sacrifice” for the sake of others’ needs. There is little mention of the injustice suffered by the Haitian people at the hands of their own government and, recently, at the hands of nature — which would be legitimate reasons […]
The best defense against bank failures isn’t regulation, rather the threat of bankruptcy.
