Understanding the impact on oil-exporting countries On June 23, 2008 the price of oil peaked at over U.S. $140 a barrel, and by the following February fell drastically to below $39 a barrel. As Venezuela, Russia, and oil-dependent economies across the Middle East saw their oil revenues dry up over the course of a few months, a devastating impact seemed ... Read More
The future of the WTO and the Doha trade round July 29, 2008 witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round, high-level negotiations aimed at lowering trade barriers between countries. Immediate reactions were varied, reflecting international ambivalence about globalization. Free traders viewed the collapse as a disaster, poverty activists as a moral failure, and globalization’s malcontents as a ... Read More
Does America’s transportation policy need an overhaul? “The nation faces a crisis. Our surface transportation system has deteriorated to such a degree that our safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life are at risk.” So begins the Feb. 2009 report of the National Surface Transportation Financing Commission (NSTFC), tasked by Congress to develop a new framework for funding America’s transportation ... Read More
Reconciling perceptions and realities of economic mobility in America
The prospects for Obama's energy plan
Roberts, Kennedy, and Collegiality on the Supreme Court During the summer of 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke publicly about the need for greater unity on the nation’s highest court. In a commencement address at Georgetown Law School, he urged that “unanimity, or near-unanimity” would yield “clarity and guidance” for lawyers and lower courts trying to understand the Supreme Court’s ... Read More
Obama and the conservative legal movement That a president would search for judges who are ideological allies is unsurprising, to say the least. Certainly we are used to the idea that this is how presidents behave when it comes toƒ their Supreme Court nominees. President Bush vetted his nominees to the federal courts of appeals “to find those who shared ... Read More
