Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Navy and Air Force escaped the budget drill mostly intact while the Army endured the bulk of cuts. But the truth is that all of the services are shrinking and aging under the Obama budget.

Indian chief minister Narendra Modi proves that good governance can be good politics.

The European Union has taken the dramatic approach by offering a massive economic bailout to its members facing financial crises, making bailouts the new norm.

The Bowles-Simpson plan to reduce the federal deficit is as good as economics gets.

It is hoped that President Obama's misadventures in foreign and security policy are due to inexperience and naiveté,and that he can learn from mistakes made in his first year in office to improve his foreign policy going forward.

Are we in a recession? The empirical answer is "no."

There are important differences between the current situation in Afghanistan and that in Somalia in 1993, but Somalia remains a cautionary tale.