The South China Sea is a crowded place. It is surrounded by six countries (China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei; Taiwan is on the periphery, leaving aside the issue of whether Taiwan is a “country”). All of these countries lay some claim to exclusive economic zones that overlap in complicated ways because of
Although this may come as a surprise to some Americans, especially those stuck in the gig economy who have not had wage increases in years, the U.S. just set a record for the longest U.S. economic expansion ever recorded. As described in this article, the expansion began in June 2009 and just celebrated its 10th anniversary.
The political and social situations in Venezuela are well-known. Venezuela is worse than a failed state. It is a humanitarian crisis of the utmost gravity. Its currency and economy have collapsed. Its role as a major oil exporter has been greatly diminished by economic sanctions. Venezuela’s illegitimate president, Nicolás Maduro, is holed up in the
There’s an old saying in poker: If you’re in a three-way poker game and you don’t know who the sucker is… you’re the sucker. The idea is that in a three-handed game, two players will disadvantage the sucker by coordinating their betting and not raising each other. Eventually, the sucker is cleaned out and the
Jurisdictions around the world are running out of money. That’s because they waste the tax revenue they get, and they can’t get more revenue because growth is slow. Of course, imposing more taxes slows growth even more, but that never seems to deter governments from trying. Meanwhile, debt burdens grow faster than the economy so
