The New Republic

One of the major reasons why the current financial crisis is so threatening is the absence of what Tokyo-based investor Peter Tasker calls "strong hands"--long-term, patient, deep-pocketed investors that a teetering financial system needs to function in times of great uncertainty and stress. When Japan suffered its financial crisis in the 1990s, the strong hands that invested and kept the system afloat included private equity funds, insurance companies, and banks. But today, those financial actors are too leveraged, weak, or frightened to play a similar role. While… more

Jagdish Bhagwati is a humble man. He will tell you so himself. Describing the effect of his book In Defense of Globalization during a speech at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) last fall, the Columbia economist politely refused credit for single-handedly dampening growing concerns about the fallout from free trade. Fears of trade are "low-key," he said. "I won't say it's because of my book. I have colleagues who would say that. ... People believe I have a large claim to fame, so I… more

In late May, some 40 Pakistani journalists received a summons to an unusual press conference given by Baitullah Mehsud, the rarely photographed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is accused of orchestrating the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, of sending suicide bombers to Spain earlier this year, and of dispatching an army of fighters into Afghanistan to attack U. S. and NATO forces in recent months. Surrounded by a posse of heavily armed Taliban guards, Mehsud boasted that he had hundreds of trained suicide bombers ready… more

With the arrival on the scene of a strange Alaskan who seems willing to say anything, I find myself looking in strange places for solace. News sites don't help, nor do blogs. They offer the reverse of being haunted by a relationship you once had: being haunted by a future relationship you don't want to have. I'm being forced to get to know someone whom I less and less enjoy knowing. My latest attempt to escape the northern chill was spent surfing a site called more

This afternoon, not long after Pervez Musharraf announced that he'd had his fill after almost nine years of ruling Pakistan, I wandered across Islamabad, to the headquarters of the Pakistan People's Party. The headquarters, which include a residence and a secretariat, are referred to collectively as the Zardari House, named after Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widow. The Zardari House has been the nerve center for the push to oust Musharraf over the past year. The last time I was there, on November 9,… more

In their smart and fun new book, Grand New Party, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam urge Republicans to spend trillions of dollars on policies to shore up working-class families. Several critics have pointed out that the Republican Party will likely remain much more interested in spending trillions of dollars on tax breaks for rich people. What's been less noticed is that Democrats could easily adopt much of the family agenda Douthat and Salam propose--and that, more than his opponent, Barack… more

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its… more

...Apropos my question about McCain's cynicism, Mark Schmitt has an interesting piece in The American Prospect arguing that conservatism has been so discredited that McCain's only hope of winning will be a kind of right-wing identity politics that pits "Americans" versus "others," with Obama playing the role of chief "other..." LINK

This article is the third part of a TNR debate between Steven Clemons and Richard Just, deputy editor from The New Republic, on the appropriate response to the Beijing Olympics.

Please click here for the first part of the debate. For the second part, please click here.

From: Steven Clemons To: Richard Just

Richard reads me pretty well. I don't believe that the U.S. government should throw its weight behind an Olympics-tethered human rights rebuke of China --… more

This article is the first part of a TNR debate between Steven Clemons and Richard Just, deputy editor from The New Republic, on the appropriate response to the Beijing Olympics.

From: Steven Clemons To: Richard Just

Hillary Clinton recently called on George W. Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies, and I think she's showing a strategic blind spot that is worrisome.

To add a bit of context, last October, The New Republic's editors ran a thought-provoking editorial, "Gold… more