Will we recover, unbridle ourselves of debt, innovate, pay for our national security? Or, is China fated to become number one, leaving us to live in a Chinese world?

The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to weigh heavily oncredit markets and political systems throughout the developed world. 

Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

Most people know virtually no financial history, so when we have a financial crisis, it seems like it has never happened before. But it has, again and again. As Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, remarked: "About every ten years, we have the biggest crisis in 50 years." 

Housing markets will continue to go sideways, on average, during 2012, then they will begin their cyclical recovery in 2013.

Judging by the financial market's renewed unease about Italy and Spain over the past week it would seem that all that the European Central Bank's €1 trillion liquidity injection in the European banking system bought was around four months of relative market calm.

If ever we need evidence of ideology run rampant, the House vote to eliminate the annual American Community Survey and the Economic Census to provide basic information on the state of businesses and industries in the country and data used for generating quarterly gross domestic product estimates is exhibit A.

Government policies promoted a systematic loosening of underwriting standards in an effort to promote affordable housing, which then contributed mightily to the housing bubble, mortgage meltdown and resulting financial crisis.