A Change of Course in Cuba and Venezuela?

By George Friedman and Reva Bhalla
Strange statements are coming out of Cuba these days. Fidel Castro, in the course of a five-hour interview in late August, reportedly told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Shipping rates & volumes - Dark Clouds on the Horizon for Baltic Dry Index?

by Prieur du Plessis September 15, 2010

Investors in mature-market equities, commodity prices, emerging markets and commodity-related currencies cheered the August PMIs released earlier this month as they came in better than expected, especially those of China. At the same time the Baltic Dry Index, seen as an important indicator of global trade, surged.

The Cruel Realities of Electric Vehicle Range

By John Petersen
An English proverb teaches us to hope for the best but plan for the worst. With the imminent introduction of a variety of plug-in vehicles that will begin hitting showroom floors in the next few months, the phobia du jour is range anxiety, an entirely rational terror that an EV will get you to your destination in eco-chic style but only get you home with the help of a tow-truck.

Thermal Coal as U.S. Export Industry

James DeLong September 15, 2010

[Part I of this series, The Precarious Crown of King Coal examined the attack on the use of coal in the U.S. by an alliance of environmentalists and the natural gas industry, and expressed concern that coal, domestically, is likely to be a flat or declining industry. This part suggests that coal might recoup its fortunes by becoming an export industry.]

Income Distribution across OECD countries

The Distribution of Income in OECD CountriesRichard Green: While Arrow showed the impossibility of a well defined ordering of social preferences... ...we tend to act as if there is one anyway. That is, we place a lot of focus on GDP per capita when evaluating economic success. By this measure, the US is, of course, successful. By a slightly different measure from the OECD (go to page 37), average disposable income per household, the US ranks second after Luxembourg among the nations measured. Luxembourg has about the same population of Long Beach, so it is hard to worry too much about it.