Carl Bloice

Last Sunday Erskine Bowles of �Simpson-Bowles� fame told CNN�s Fareed Zakaria that President Obama had not asked him to take over as Treasury Secretary when Timothy Geithner leaves the job and further, that he wouldn�t take the post if it were offered. Whew. To paraphrase columnist George Will�s comment on George Romney seeking Donald Trump�s…

In the beginning, Americans Elect said its purpose was to “Break the gridlock and change politics as usual – No special interest. No agenda. Country before party.” And now, two years and many post mortems later, there is plenty on why, after spending $35 million and getting all the fawning publicity money could buy, they…

The economic elites on both sides of the Atlantic have suddenly seen their plans for the future run into a volatile foe: democracy. I say sudden because who would have thought, say five years ago, that an aroused popular will would be shaking the foundations of the political order from Los Angeles to Bucharest? Said…

Rest assured. The specter of socialism is not haunting Europe right now. Francois Hollande is �hardly a rabid socialist� say the editors of the Financial Times. The New York Times chimes in that he is a �cautious moderate on most issues, and certainly not a socialist in the historic meaning of that term.� And, we…

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One would think that someone in official Washington would have had an inkling of what was coming. I mean, what is with all those �intelligence� agencies? And, wasn�t anybody awake at the State Department�s Latin America Desk? Couldn�t anybody have hipped President Obama before he left for Cartagena de Indias that he was headed for…

The March unemployment figures arrived just as I was thinking about Yahoo and the 2,000 workers the company just laid off. Although it won�t be known until next week where exactly the axe will fall and which techies will lose their jobs, my friends in the industry say most probably won�t have much trouble finding…

On the same day a national task force warned that the country�s security and economic prosperity are at risk if America�s schools don�t improve, California State University system said it would shut out thousands of mid-year applicants for spring terms starting in January. According to the Oakland Tribune, only eight of the system�s 23 campuses…

Some truly distressing news made its way across the Atlantic last week. The jobless rate for young black male jobseekers in Britain rose from 28.8 percent in 2008 to 55.9 percent at the end of last year. According to government statistics, �Unemployment rate for black 16 to 24-year-olds available for work now double that for…