While Japan continues to linger in economic trouble with little hope for imminent recovery, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama forced his 77 year-old finance minister Hirohisa Fujii to resign last week and had him replaced with Naoto Kan, a former civic campaigner against government corruption with virtually no experience in economics. Behind the screens Ichirō Ozawa, […]
The old blogosphere may be gone, but only because the blogs won.
Where last month the European Council decreed that there can only be a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Jerusalem as capital of both nations, American envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is more nuanced, stating that Israel “annexed” East Jerusalem so that “for the Israelis, what they’re building in, is in part […]
China seeks to increase trade and investment with its Southeast Asian neighbors.
Regulatory failure instead of a lax monetary policy bears the responsibility for the American housing bubble that produced the financial crisis of 2008, said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke this Sunday. Bernanke rejected accusations that the Fed contributed to the fostering of the recession and argued that the interest rates set by the bank between […]
The war in Yemen is suddenly not so quiet anymore after an Islamic terrorist who was trained in the country tried to blow up an American airliner headed for Detroit this Christmas. Some forward-looking analysts recently identified the Yemen problem as probably President Obama’s greatest challenge ahead. Considering the regional dynamics involved, that assessment may […]
Not too long ago, Richard D. Fisher Jr. writing for The Washington Times, argued in favor of letting Japan in on the groundbreaking F-22 fighter aircraft. Current American law prohibits Lockheed-Martin from selling the plane overseas. According to Fisher there were two good reasons for letting Japan have the Raptor. “First,” he wrote, “the F-22 […]
Had we had another man for president this year, Iran’s nuclear facilities might well have been carpet bombed already. Certainly the United States would not have discouraged Israel from undertaking such a venture. But would it have been the smart thing to do? When even The New York Times advocates military action it must seem […]
Year’s end is near so journalists like to look back and beyond to what’s coming especially, it seems, for the Obama Administration. The president has had his fair share of “litmus tests” already: the overanalyzed “first hundred days” in office; his first foreign visits as head of state; the new Afghan war strategy; his Nobel […]
Last time we reported on Japan’s lingering in economic trouble, we identified decades of government interference as the cause of much of the country’s modern-day hardship. With the Democratic Party in power after years of Liberal Democratic leadership, there was reason to hope that the former would undo part of the Keynesian measures the latter […]
The European Union model is an example to many nations across the globe. The South American Mercosur is well underway to become an even more successful game plan for cooperation while in Southeast Asia, ASEAN provides a forum for states that might want to try to compete with their northern neighbors China and Japan. Even […]
It’s difficult to get about some eggs in the eastern parts of the Netherlands these days. Supermarkets are experiencing serious shortages there because large supplies of eggs have been bought up by German wholesalers. The Netherlands has always been one of the world’s greatest exportors of eggs but usually not at a disadvantage to the […]
The United States spend more on health care than the rest of the developed world yet quality is often lower.
When we asked here earlier this month whether the Western coalition can win in Afghanistan, the findings were ambivalent at best: while the United States could not appear to be scuttling from the country, President Barack Obama did announce a date for troop withdrawal to commence. Throughout his campaign, the president stressed the importance of […]
Turkey, or in the past the Ottoman Empire, has always been something of a bridge between Europe and the Near East. In recent years, it increasingly turned its attention westward, joining NATO and hoping, some day, to become part of the European Union. Decades of promises and negotiations have left the country frustrated with Europe […]
