At a time of lackluster economic growth, countries around the world are attempting to devise and implement strategies to spur and sustain recovery. The key word is strategy: to succeed, policymakers must ensure that measures to open the economy, boost public investment, enhance macroeconomic stability, and increase reliance on markets and incentives for resource allocation are implemented in reasonably complete packages.
David Sanger and Martin Fackler write in the NYT that the NSA “drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies,” and also placed malware in North Korean computer systems “that could track the internal workings of many of the computers and networks used by the North’s hackers.”
Were a confused Michael Moore and others faulting American Sniper on the argument that Chris Kyle was a sniper per se, or that he was an American sniper?
Walter Berns, a leading figure in the study of constitutional law for nearly half a century, enjoyed an advantage over most other scholars in this field: He never attended law school. Unburdened by this professional training, Berns brought to his subject the fresh perspective of an outsider who had studied political philosophy at the University of Chicago, earning his doctorate in 1953.
Setting up international campuses and programs require great care as cultures, political systems and levels of economic development, of course, differ. Finding ways to bridge these differences is not only one of the challenges but one of the important opportunities. Establishing basic research and teaching initiatives abroad, when feasible, provides unique ways to encourage mutual respect, understanding and growth.
What do academic economists think about neoliberalism? I wanted to know because I was invited to take part in a private roundtable, held at Warwick on Wednesday afternoon, 14 January, 2015. The subject of the roundtable was Neoliberalism and Naomi Klein's (2007) book The Shock Doctrine. The roundtable was organized by the theatre company Dumbshow, which is currently producing a play based on some of the ideas and stories in The Shock Doctrine.
As suspicion of Muslims grows in Germany and France, the danger of a vicious spiral is palpable. We need to counter this xenophobia now – before it is too late
With 2015 just getting under way, the buzz of political activity makes it seem almost as if we are already in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Though hardly the only issue to be debated during the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education act, annual testing has taken center stage in discussions so far. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate HELP committee, put forth a bill that leaves open the possibility of removing the federal requirement that states test students annually in reading and math from grades three through eight—a possibility that has thoroughly freaked out much of the education-reform community.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile, Black Swan, and Fooled by Randomness, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a recent co-authored paper on the risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the use of the Precautionary Principle. Taleb contrasts harm with ruin and explains how the differences imply different rules of behavior when dealing with the risk of each. Taleb argues that when considering the riskiness of GMOs, the right understanding of statistics is more valuable than expertise in biology or genetics. The central issue that pervades the conversation is how to cope with a small non-negligible risk of catastrophe.
In mid-January 2015, as we may be entering a more intense phase of the civilizational conflict that has characterized our century, Henry Kissinger’s capstone book, World Order, perpetuates a legacy of strategic thought centered on resolving major conflicts through grand bargains pursued through complex signals.
Bruce Schneier has responded to my earlier exchange with Edward Snowden with a challenging question: Putting aside what the Constitution currently does or does permit, wouldn’t it be better if all surveillance decisions were subject to judicial review?
When things don’t work out according to one’s wish, the most obvious human response is to ‘blame it on politics.’ These are the opening thoughts of the book, Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit,’ by Charles W. Calomiris of Columbia University and Stephen H. Haber of the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
We all think we know Stalin. He was the brutal and vengeful dictator of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until 1953, when, mercifully, he died before he could do any more damage. He was the instigator of forced industrialization and collectivization, taking his country down a dead-end path to modernity from which its heirs are still trying to recover.
Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explains why the Navy will become more important over time and points out that its shrinking surface forces (down to 288 vessels, a number not seen since 1916) do not appear consistent with the increasing need (see 13:30).
