…Calmly observing the changing world

Argentina is a beautiful country, but its government is anything but. Last week, the government of Argentina decided that it wanted to own an oil company, so it took one.  Nevermind that 57% of the company was already owned by the Spanish oil company Repsol.  President Kirschner’s I am not a thug comments were not exactly [...]

Rick Santorum is not an especially strong candidate for the GOP nomination.  He doesn’t really have any money.  He tells the whole truth way too often for his own political good.  And, it probably doesn’t help that his campaign seems to be based on two principles that no one has ever heard of and that [...]

Mitt Romney’s campaign threw down the gauntlet last week saying that it would take an act of God for a candidate not named Romney to win the nomination.  Not surprisingly, this led Rick Santorum to quip “Acts of God? Yeah, I believe in those.” But what do the numbers really say?  Is it a forgone [...]

In a world full of constant and seemingly endless information, we may take comfort in reminding ourselves that we don’t have to follow it all.  Not just because most of it isn’t important, but also because a lot of it isn’t true anyway. Most recently, the media has droned on about how the US will [...]

Stephen Stanley had an interesting thought.  What makes this surprising is that he is an economist, so, no matter interesting it might seem, we can be pretty sure that it doesn’t make as much sense. He wonders, that since Keynesian theories have so completely failed in the last few years, that maybe some good will [...]

The citizens of the UK are struggling.  Their internal political system has been completely unable to cope with two seemingly opposite forces which erode what is left of the ancient empire. One is the fight to remain free from the ever expanding and intrusive EU bureacracy that eminates from Brussels. Her majesty’s subjects were never [...]

While the press core is enthralled at the prospect of the Obama administration’s renaissance (no matter how unlikely), and statiticians pour over census data, most normal Americans are making last-minute preparations for Christmas gatherings. Not the number crunchers over at Moody’s though. While admittedly it was a dud, they fired a shot across the political [...]

“Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself,” said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. Daily Telegraph (Ottowa Citizen) Well, I guess we’ll find out.  Despite significant opposition from the actual citizens of Germany, the bailouts seem unlikely to stop for the time being.  You see, the bailout-proponents wisely set aside a lump [...]

As the trick-or-treaters darted from house to house under a waning crescent, seeking to mount up chocolate treasure, the markets have bided their time – seemingly for ages.  In all likelihood, the market is done treading water and (perhaps after a false start) will again pick its direction. Dial L for Landslide With likely voters overwhelmingly [...]

William F Buckley, Jr. usually casts an unseen and unmentioned shadow upon the American political landscape.  So when he is invoked by name to reinforce an argument, we should perhaps all listen a bit more closely – but certainly skeptically.  In this case, it’s Charles Krauthammer who calls forth the invocation: Unfortunately for Krauthammer, invoking [...]