Despite the high-profile debate over the merits of for-profits, little is known about how these institutions differ from traditional schools. In "Crossing to the Dark Side? An Interview-Based Comparison of Traditional and For-Profit Higher Education," education expert Ben Wildavsky of the Kauffman Foundation interviews leaders from both sectors to take a closer look at the differences.

From the perspective of the corporate profit and loss statement, a trading loss is one expense item in the context of all revenues and expenses. So $2 billion should be compared to the bank's $26.7 billion in pretax profits for 2011, suggesting a reduction of something less than 10 percent in annual profit.

The Cold War is an increasingly distant memory in American military minds, except in the minds of the arms control community, and in particular those who seek the elimination of nuclear weapons. Alas, our president is a member in good standing of this community—indeed, an organizer.

Financial cycles teach that as asset prices rise and optimism grows, leverage and loan-to-value ratios should fall, rather than rise, as they typically do.

Austerity measures in Europe have been the topic of a heated and mostly confused debate in the economic world. During the May summit of the leading industrial nations at Camp David, German chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders pushed for continued European austerity. Keynesian critics argue that these policies destroy economic growth.

IBMoffers a good model for reforming Social Security.The U.S. government will have a sounder fiscal future when, like IBM, it stops treating adult American workers like children.

The question of what enables some militaries to innovate effectively is of great interest to both scholars and commanders. However, the traditional models of military innovation fail to capture the complex innovation process.

AEI Director of Educational Policy Studies Frederick Hess argues in the newest issue of Phi Delta Kappan that American needs to rethink what makes public schools "public."