Current Affairs

My Backwoods Upbringing Serves Me Well

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I found this article while glancing at Thomas Ricks' blog at FP–It's about the issues that US troops have been facing in Afghanistan with the weapons they're assigned.  I've commented on similar micro-level issues before and I think this AP article is pretty closely related, although it focuses more on the US side.  I really think framing the issue in the way that the AP does undercuts our ability to
understand what the problem is. 

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The War We Don’t See

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This is a topic that I’ll probably expand on later, but I was just reading an article discussing the role of Hamid Karzai’s brother in the present Afghan conflict.  This article gets at an issue that I’ve thought about before.  From the FP article cited above: But he could not exist without the support of coalition … Read more

Economy of Force and Asymmetric Conflicts

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Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy had a piece posted a couple of days ago that just caught my eye.  It basically talks about the current status of terrorist training camps and what the itinerary for the typical attendee entails.  It's pretty brief, but I think it covers some interesting subject matter.  And let me preface … Read more

Happy belated Pi and Square Root Day.

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March this year hosted two mathematics-related holidays that now have passed us and March will not contain both of these days for a century (2109 will be the next lucky March, set your calendars!).  The first holiday in March was Square Root Day celebrated on March 3rd.  For those of you who have missed an … Read more

Aggregating Predictions for 2008

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On October 7th, a peer of mine collected 20 surveys from self-selected (volunteered) members of the political science department (from first year graduate students to professors) on an electoral challenge.  The survey presented seventeen different questions in regards to electoral outcomes and those who were able to predict the most accurately 14 of the 17 … Read more

Projectors and Pollsters

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The methodologists and closeted Americanists among us (everyone is during the election season, it seems–don’t worry, we won’t tell) may be interested to know that WashingtonPost.com is hosting a live chat tomorrow at noon with Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight.com and Charles Franklin of Pollster.com.  If you are unfamiliar with these websites then first, you should … Read more

The European Treasury

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Philip Coggan gave an interesting interview this morning to NPR in which he discussed the effect of the of the United States’ bailout failure on the European markets.  The primary purpose of the short interview was to describe the European perspective on the global impact of the U.S.’s financial crisis and the speculation on Congress’s activity surrounding it, though one incidental point caught my attention. 

Coggan mentions that a concern in Europe at the moment is that a large Swiss bank might fail.  This would be quite problematic because, while these types of firms are probably considered "too big to fail" for the European economy, the Swiss government could not afford to bail them out.  Europe has a strong interest in the survival and growth of European financial markets–whether they are located within an EU constituent state or not.  However, the EU does not have a treasury of its own, so it doesn’t have the power to spend taxpayers’ money on economic bailouts–it doesn’t even really taxpayers in the strictest sense.

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How urgent is “Urgent”? The Bailout Package Defeated

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I watched in awe today as members in the US House of Representatives failed to pass the 700 billion dollar bailout package. How could this possibly be? All the signals from President Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated that if something was not done soon, we would all be doomed. McCain even “suspended” his campaign because this impending crisis was so urgent. Yet, 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans voted against this bill. To make matters worse, it seemed as though the impending doom was correctly predicted. As the votes were tallied on the floor, Wall Street watched and the Dow Jones dropped 788 points, its lowest point drop in history.

After taking a moment to calm down (and contemplating whether I should convert my dollars to pesos- Mike’s suggestion), I realized this all this drama may not be as dire as some would want the American public to believe. The Republican Party may be making this crisis seem worse for strategic purposes, which I will explain more about below. However, I want to talk about why this crisis may not be as bad as it seems.

More after the jump…

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China, Sudan, and the British Empire

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As the opening of the Olympics in Beijing nears, NPR is running a few series on the foundations and future of China’s global power within the context of the country’s history and economic position.  Today’s installment, “China and Sudan: A Marriage Sealed in Oil, History,” is the first of stories that will outline China’s influence … Read more