Yes, the kitten with four eyes, two noses and two mouths is real. She was born on Tuesday and answers to, cue the pun, “Deucy.” What does Deucy have to do with Edward Snowden, aside from their adorable whiskers? A lot. I could explain, but Hobbes does such a better job. Arguing for entrusting ...

I won't propose an answer to this hugely complex question today. Instead, I want to point out some striking similarities between the American perspective on the conflict in Chechnya a decade ago and the run-up to the Obama administration’s pending decision on how to handle the Assad regime’s ...

Now that the two suspects Monday’s horrific bombing have been identified, attention turns to their motive. Why would two brothers originally from the troubled region of Chechnya, a republic of Russia, detonate bombs in Boston on Patriot's Day? Here is a very raw, very quick, very preliminary ...

What's the Big Idea? The conventional wisdom among economists just a few years ago was that China was manipulating its currency, causing a significant drag on the global economy. Holding down the value of its currency made exports cheaper and thus China more competitive in the global marketplace ...

With the European Union mired in crisis and the United States struggling to recover, it's easy to conclude that capitalist democracies' engines of economic growth have run out of steam.  While their elected politicians make myopic decisions to score political points, state capitalist leaders like ...

Occupy Wall Street is a giant human hashtag -- a conversation, a thread, a way of organizing ideas. I resist calling it a “movement” because that may imply that people who do not yet consider themselves participants are excluded from the conversation. What Occupy Wall Street allows people to do ...

What’s the Big Idea? Quick. Grab a pencil. I’ll say a word and you write down the first three things that come to mind. Ready? Manufacturing. I’m betting China was number one. Which is why a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group suggesting that America is set for a “manufacturing ...

Economic growth is a tough thing to control if the tools you’re using only deal with one part of the economy.  The problem is that when you push on one end of an economy, you might be pulling on the other, and vice versa.  It’s a lesson that people who work in international development are finally ...

In recent weeks members of Congress have again moved to punish China for keeping its currency at a low value relative to the dollar.  It’s fashionable and easy to blame vast, mysterious, authoritarian China for our economic problems.  It’s also not quite fair.  In fact, China’s currency policy ...

Editor's Note: The following remarks are from a speech Lionel Barber delivered in Sydney, Australia on 11/17/2011, as part of the Lowy Institute for International Policy's lecture series.   The fundamental question I would like tonight to tackle the proposition head-on: Is the West ...

What’s the Big Idea? How many drachmas do you want to bet that Europe’s not out of the woods yet? Faced with the prospect of a Greek default with dire repercussions for European markets, EU leaders Merkel and Sarkozy scrambled in October to craft a complex rescue package. Then at the 11th hour ...

Markets shuddered when George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, said he would call a referendum on the latest bailout package being offered by Europe’s economic powers.  What scared the markets most was apparently the possibility that the Greeks would choose according to their own interests ...

What's the Big Idea?  For Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, it’s all about power. Game-theory-wielding, uncannily accurate predictor of pivotal outcomes (like whether or not Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon), and co-author of The Dictator’s Handbook , de Mesquita is an utterer of (often) unpleasant ...

  When a country’s politicians can’t get their economic policies right, what’s a central banker to do?  Though central banks are supposed to control inflation, that’s not always their only job.  The Federal Reserve Act, for example, gives America’s central bank a mandate of “maximum employment ...

  IT was one of Labour’s most successful – in terms of winning elections – leaders, Harold Wilson, who realised that the only way to lance the division in his party over Europe was to hold a referendum. That was back in 1975. Since then, Labour has gone from having a policy of quitting what was ...