03 Tuesday Sep 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Wherever Turks dwell, from the Europeanized behemoth city of Istanbul in the north to the stunningly beautiful Anatolian coastal region below, where hazy mountains rising steeply from the deep blue Mediterranean unmistakably evoke arrival in Asia Minor, the two ubiquitous sights rising above the streets are the minarets of the mosques and the innumerable national flags, the bright white crescent and star on a brilliant vermilion field.
27 Tuesday Aug 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian kicked up a fuss earlier this month with his statement that there are two countries facing each other across the Taiwan Strait, China and Taiwan, and proposing a referendum on Taiwan about its future status, including the possibility of independence. China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province whose destiny is reunification with the mainland, was clearly displeased.
20 Tuesday Aug 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
I published in Policy Review’s June-July edition an article by a California portfolio manager, Steve Stein, called “Taxes, Dividends, and Distortions.” It was a rather brilliant discussion of the drastic decline [to the point of near-demise] of the practice of corporations paying annual dividends to their shareholders. Where once dividends were the rule and retained earnings drew the scrutiny, now the opposite is the case.
06 Tuesday Aug 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The good news is that the president is getting trade promotion or “fast-track” authority from Congress. The bad news is that congressional support for liberalizing trade hangs by a wire. The Bush team needs to be as attentive to rebuilding the domestic case for free trade as it needs to be aggressive in negotiating new pacts in both the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks and bilateral agreements.
30 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
There’s that sight again: The captain of industry or titan of Wall Street emerges from his palatial home in the early morning light. But this time he is in handcuffs, being led by a squad of police and prosecutors, who have visited him at six in the morning to arrest him on charges of nefarious financial wrongdoing and lead him away as his bleary-eyed wife and children look on and the cameras roll and click.
23 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The question of whether [or perhaps now, how much] the administration of George W. Bush and Republicans in general will be tainted by the ongoing corporate scandals and the slump in the stock market, and accordingly punished by the electorate, is certainly an interesting one. But may I suggest that there is something rather more important here than that, namely, the future of global economic liberalization?
16 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Strange question, perhaps: Why is American foreign-policy making so good? The reason the question is strange is that U.S. foreign policy, like Rodney Dangerfield, gets no respect.
09 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
In November, NATO countries will meet in Prague to issue invitations for alliance membership to a number of the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Prime ministers from the current group of aspirants, numbering 10 in all, gathered here last week for a fifth and final time before Prague to reiterate the commitment they first set out in Vilnius, Lithuania, two years ago – to work together and in support of each other toward alliance membership.
02 Tuesday Jul 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
What is striking this Fourth of July week is something rather unstriking – the presence of large numbers of American flags all across the landscape. In years past, Independence Day was indeed the time for festooning the country with red, white and blue. But usually by the fifth at the latest, the bunting had come down and the flags restored to the cupboard drawers.
25 Tuesday Jun 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The twists and turns of the Bush administration’s Middle East diplomacy are the product of the interaction of two basic truths: Everybody knows what the final status looks like, and nobody has the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.
Tod Lindberg 