New America in the News: 2007

Last week, the New York hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management disclosed that it was selling a $1.3 billion ownership stake to an investment firm controlled by the government of Dubai. In September, another Dubai-controlled fund announced that it was buying about a fifth of the Nasdaq stock exchange. A Chinese government bank just entered into a partnership with the investment bank Bear Stearns Companies Inc. And the Blackstone Group private equity firm recently sold a $3 billion ownership stake to China's state investment company.

One thing is clear about the race for the presidency. None of the candidates really want to talk about the hard stuff.

They want to make promises about health care, usually by expanding it to cover everyone who is uninsured. They allude to problems with Social Security. But they avoid talk about the looming costs of Medicare and Medicaid benefits as the 78 million baby boomers move into old age.

The next president, whoever he or she is, must confront these problems, or the nation will be lost.

In a broad-ranging talk at a dinner Tuesday night in Washington, GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska warned of dangers in the way the Bush administration is handling the Iran issue, previewing a major policy speech on Iran that he will give next week.

Nir Rosen's work of freelance political journalism is instructive both as a first-hand account of a post-war society in crisis, and as a cautionary document of the distinction between systematic social science and the recitation of current events. The book consists of seven chapters and an afterword covering a one-and-a half-year period following the invasion of Iraq, which respectively addresses I ), the ascendancy of religious radicalism and the marginalization of moderate voices, 2), the popular response to the U.S.

...Shannon Brownlee's Overtreated provides a welcome antidote to the narrow view that simply finding enough money to buy health insurance for all the uninsured would solve our health-care crisis. She reminds us that entrepreneurial medicine often drives physicians and other providers to do too much to patients, which can be bad for their health as well as for everyone's wallet. Doctors order costly imaging studies like MRIs and CAT scans when a careful history and physical exam would do.

John Bolton, America's recent U.N. ambassador, brags in his new tell-all memoir about thwarting efforts by his successive bosses, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to open a dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program.

If you're disturbed to read about U.S. diplomats backstabbing one another while our nation drifts toward yet another Persian Gulf war, then don't pick up Esquire's November issue, because it features a story that will make your blood boil.

Student loans are often categorized as good debt, because a college education is considered a sensible long-term investment. ...

But it's important to understand that not all student loans are alike. Federally guaranteed student loans, known as Stafford loans, have fixed interest rates, now 6.8%, and flexible repayment terms. Any full-time college student, regardless of family income, can take out a Stafford loan.

In its latest issue, dated November 8, The New York Review of Books published in a prominent - if not screaming - manner a letter signed by eight famous individuals and addressed to United States President George W. Bush, warning him of the grave dangers inherent in a possible failure of the Annapolis conference.

As baby boomers enter the starting gate into retirement, the cost of America's entitlement programs – foremost, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – is projected to balloon to levels that are unsustainable.

Already, those three programs make up 40 percent of the federal budget. If reforms are not enacted, Social Security will eventually go bust; in 40 years, on the current path, the two medical programs alone could equal the size of today's entire federal budget according to the US Government Accountability Office.