Free Republic

Michael Pettis has challenged us to a bet. For those of you who don’t know him, Mr Pettis is a finance professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and a frequent blogger. He would like to bet that China’s dollar GDP (calculated at market exchange rates) will NOT surpass America’s in 2018. That is the year that China's economy will overtake America's if you stick with the default assumptions in our most recent* interactive chart, which allows you to plug in your own guesstimates** of future growth and inflation in the two countries, as well as the exchange rate...

Many western analysts have described the post-Soviet tussle for Caspain and Central Asian energy reserves as the new “Great Game, except this time around, Russia is facing the U.s. rather than the British empire. To a dispassionate outside observer however, what is most striking about the prolonged wrangle between Moscow and Washington for hydrocarbons, military bases and influence is the emergence of an understated sly newcomer who has managed to bag many of the region’s assets – China. There are many reasons for this, despite the fact that both Russia and the U.S. both seemed to hold winning hands. For...

Back in the days when US oil demand controlled the price of oil, a massive recession in the United States would have sent oil to 12.00 dollars a barrel. That era, which ended last decade, was defined by ongoing spare capacity in OPEC, low-cost oil in Non-OPEC, and nascent demand for oil in the developing world. That was then, and this is now. And so it’s rather quaint that the energy analysts from that previous era still gather each week on American financial TV, to discuss the inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma? The US has been removing...

Kyrgyzstan has reversed a Russian order to evict the US military from an airbase close to Afghanistan in a significant foreign policy victory for Barack Obama. After winning major financial concessions from Washington, the Kyrgyz government said it had agreed to allow the US Air Force to retain control of the Manas Airbase for at least one more year. The move, which comes a fortnight before Mr Obama visits Moscow, was welcomed by the United States, which has emphasised the base's importance in the campaign to defeat the Taliban.

THE red banner headline reads like something out of the National Enquirer. "Saddam married 18-year-old girl in spider hole," it screams. Details in the next edition, says a tiny paragraph below. Such are the tactics used to sell newspapers in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein's fall, Iraq's press has exploded into a frenzy of free, fearless and frequently inaccurate journalism that can put the worst of the world's tabloid press to shame. The unlikely story of the former dictator's cramped nuptials may be harmless, but other stories have a sinister edge, from accounts of the immoral behaviour of the infidel occupiers...

According to recent newspaper accounts, anti-American sentiment is on the rise worldwide, even within the United States. While some of this sentiment is related to the war in Iraq and allegations of U.S. imperial ambition, this feeling has deep philosophical and empirical roots. It is clear, or at least should be clear, that utopians apply a standard to American behavior that is neither realistic nor consistent with national achievements. Rather than apply a standard of "seeing is believing," the utopians rely on "believing is seeing," creating a Potemkin Village of the mind, a vast area of artificial conditions that invariably...

75 percent of Hispanics think their own opportunities are better than those of their parents, and 75 percent think the future for the next generation of their family will be better than their own lives are today. (CBS) Hispanics in the U.S. hold both a strong desire to preserve their traditional culture and values, and optimism about their children’s opportunities in America. There are important differences between Hispanics born in the U.S. and those who have immigrated: those born outside the U.S. or in Puerto Rico speak mainly Spanish, follow more news from Latin America, and preserve the traditions of...

For a nation that honors democracy and freedom, the United States has a nasty habit of embracing foreign dictators when they seem to serve American interests. It is one of the least appealing traits of American foreign policy. Like his predecessors, President Bush is falling for the illusion that tyrants make great allies. If Mr. Bush is not careful, Washington will be mopping up for years from the inevitable foreign policy disasters that come of befriending autocrats who maintain a stranglehold on their own people. When unsavory governments control strategic locations or resources, the impulse to join hands with them...