What is it about mainland China that prevents the emergence of innovators like Steve Jobs? While in the West it seems obvious that a lack of free speech, free expression and free association puts China at a disadvantage, this editorial from Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po shows that Beijing still has a way to go before it accepts that in order to unleash the creative power of its people, it will have to loosen...

Mushrooming from lower Manhattan, the inchoate backlash brings expectable reactions in Washington from Democratic cheerleading to GOP hypocrisy. As Eric Cantor calls protesters “a mob…pitting Americans against Americans,” Nancy Pelosi reminds the Tea Party toad, “I didn’t hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol,...

WASHINGTON — So let’s see: The solution to large-scale abuses of the financial system, a breakdown of the private sector, extreme economic inequality and the failure of companies and individuals to invest and create jobs is — well, to give even more money and power to very wealthy people, to disable government and to trust those who got us into the mess to get us out of it. That’s a...

Ezra Klein, in his analysis of last night’s Republican Candidates debate, writes: “The candidates vying for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination want to force history backward.” If there is one thing all of them want to do, it is to repeal everything the Obama Administration has done — and then go much further than that: Their proposals to roll back the growth and complexity...

With their vote on a motion to proceed, the Senate avoids even a real debate on the jobs bill. The BBC: Forty-six Republican senators joined with two Democrats to filibuster the $447bn (£287bn) bill. Democratic support for the bill wavered this week, as several Democrats said they would vote for moving the bill forward, but against the bill itself. Republicans opposed the measure over its spending to stimulate...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The American Autumn: Children of the Lost Decade Revolt by Tina Dupuy The movement known as the tea party started in the mainstream media, on a national show. CNBC’s Rick Santelli, fired what cable news would later dub “the shot heard around the world” in 2009, when he lamented paying for the mortgages of the “losers” who couldn’t pay their bills. “President Obama,...

There is something comical, even farcical, to the reaction of the oligarchs and their congressional and news media helpmates to the growing Occupy Wall Street protests, which have laid bare the reality that our so-called democratic system is rigged to benefit the wealthiest 1 percent at the sacrifice of the other 99 percent. The protests will be a failure as a means of ironing out the perversities in the system,...

Reason Magazine, the Koch Brothers funded libertarian publication had a surprisingly fair and balanced look at the Occupy Wall Street movement. Occupy Wall Street: Beyond the Caricatures Outsiders are criticizing a heterodox movement that they choose not to understand. It’s very easy to decree from afar that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators flooding Lower Manhattan right now are there for no other...

WASHINGTON — It’s not often that a sound bite from a Democratic candidate gets so under the skin of my distinguished colleague George F. Will that he feels moved to quote it in full and then devote an entire column to refuting it. This is instructive. The declaration heard ’round the Internet world came from Elizabeth Warren, the consumer champion running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts....

In this political climate of loud no’s and yesses, good journalism is vital to disentangle all the maybes and what if’s. As Republicans brand the 2009 stimulus of $787 billion a total failure and Democrats defend it as keeping the recession from getting worse, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post reports what economists and politicians were actually thinking and doing back then. He cites the 2008 book of Carmen...

“Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.” Herman Cain OK, Herman Cain never told the nation’s 14 million unemployed or underemployed Americans to drop dead. Neither, for that matter, did President Ford tell New York City to drop dead — as a famous headline in the New York Daily News proclaimed...

Blame Wall Street, Not China, for Job Losses by Jan Ting As the recession continues, the hunt for a scapegoat intensifies. No one in Washington wants to hold Wall Street accountable for its mega-profits from unregulated credit default swaps, packaged subprime liar loans, and incompetent credit ratings. Despite the resulting housing, banking and market collapse, and continuing foreclosure crisis, it’s still...

The Occupy Wall Street Protests are moving north. Under the banner “Occupy Toronto,” protesters are due to take to the streets on October 15th. It’s easy to dismiss these folks — as many have — as simply lazy kids with nothing better to do. But, as Tom Walkom writes in the Toronto Star, that would not be wise: While the aims of the Wall Streeters remain distressingly vague,...

Is the American left and center-left finally feeling its oats? As the protests on Wall Street spread across the country, the world is taking notice . For Germany’s Die Welt, columnist Ansgar Graw writes that Americans who hardly know the meaning of thw word ‘demonstration’ have taken to the streets, and no one, least of all the protesters, knows where it will all lead. For Die Welt, Ansgar...

I have thought for some time that those predicting another recession are overly optimistic.  We are about to see a collapse of the world financial system and there is nothing anyone can do about it.  The banks that were bailed out are still insolvent – zombie banks. Well IMF adviser Robert Shapiro has said what anyone paying attention knew already. In an interview with IMF adviser Robert Shapiro, the...

During his press conference this morning—one that focused on the economy and the American Jobs Act, the so-called Jobs Bill—president Obama showed some frustration with an obstructionist, just-say-no, do-noting Congress. In what became a recurring theme, he posed a number of rhetorical questions, preceded by the admonition: So as we look towards next week, any senator out there who’s thinking...

As uncomfortable is it may make people in the United States – and especially in Mexico – this editorial from Spain’s La Vanguardia warns that with 30 percent of Mexico already in the hands of drug cartels, there may be no way other to take a President Perry up on his offer if Mexico is to avoid becoming a failed state. The La Vanguardia editorial says in part: Mexico City Mayor Marcelino...

Almost a thousand people marched through the San Francisco financial district on Wednesday, in solidarity with 2,000 or more in Manhattan. New York police have arrested at least 700 since the movement began on September 17, with many of those arrests occurring over the weekend, an action that is being challenged in court. Media reports mention, usually in passing, other protests around the country, but I don’t...

WASHINGTON — American politics reached a pivot point this week. A new story line will now define how voters and the media see what’s going on. Since Election Day in 2010, the prevailing narrative has been about a resurgent conservatism, a president on the defensive, big government under attack, the deficit as the dominant issue, and the tea party as the political system’s prime mover....

How worried are Japanese about the rise of China? Hiroshi Kawamoto form Japan’s Isen Shimbun, after closely examining what he considers the calamitous decade of U.S. behavior since 9-11, warns that closer ties to America is the only strategy that has any hope of preserving Japanese prosperity. For Japan’s Isen Shimbun, Hiroshi Kawamoto writes in part: Trying to return to the United States of the...

Was that a long ago-echo in my ears? The other day I caught video of a big protest with demonstrators shouting, “The whole world is watching!” as police approached. Wasn’t that chant from 1968 when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unleashed his police on anti-war demonstrators at the ill-fated Democratic convention? In the same video, some chanted “Un pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” a worldwide protesters’...

Love her or hate her, Maureen Dowd certainly knows how to put things into political/partisan perspective—take your pick. Her eagerly anticipated post-mortem of Chris Christie’s equally eagerly awaited “I have told you before, I am telling you now, ‘the answer was never anything but no’ announcement” will not disappoint fans or foes. From the opening paragraph of her “Man in the [Big] Mirror”...

Is the state of the world really as dire as world leaders who recently spoke at the U.N. General Assembly would lead us to believe? Have we all gotten carried away with gloom and doom? For Argentina’s Diario Decuyo, columnist Andrés Oppenheimer cites a recent report that asserts things are on the upswing almost everywhere, from life expectancy to education levels to the number of wars. For the Diario...

Why do public school teachers have such a bad reputation in the US and get little pay? That’s one of the things I don’t get. It’s quite different over here. The job is well paid and respected by most folks. As a country with little natural resources, Germany depends on innovation and a smart work force. Education is good for democracy, happiness etc. The children are our future, yade, yade. The...