The best thing that ever happened to America is the ascension of Sarah Palin to star status. She is the reigning queen of the political freak show where candidates are invaded, ogled, sliced, diced and spliced by a public hungry for human train wrecks.

Palin, former Republican vice presidential candidate,...

The business case for a national health plan in the US of some kind has been overlooked; but the numbers are conclusive. There are two reforms needed: universal coverage and cost controls.

You cannot control costs as long as you have a private-sector dominated medical system based on profitability, conflicts...

Health care reform in the U.S. appears to be more than halfway home and even a watered-down version will boost its beleaguered economy.

Americans this weekend began crossing their biggest psychological Rubicon: opposition to universal health care. Once on the other side, they will eliminate the single biggest fear among...

Property and casualty insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. of Toronto not only weathered the greatest financial storm since the Depression, but profited mightily and continues to do so. Its 2009 third-quarter results, released Thursday -- it earned US$562.4-million, up from US$467.6-million a year ago, while revenue increased to US$2.21 billion...

The world desperately needs Glass-Steagall on steroids. Banking must be atomized -- a la America's 1933 Glass-Steagall legislation -- in order to separate high-risk investment banking from taxpayer-insured deposits. Canada does a reasonably good job of sequestering these businesses, but the facts are that excessively big banks like ours contributed...

World: step aside for Canada.

Commodities, the Canadian dollar and Toronto Stock Exchange are headed onward and upward despite the world economy appearing to be only halfway through this Great Recession.
The U.S. is undertaking a managed devaluation of its currency to overcome the damage caused by the decades...

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University professor, author and special advisor to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and other global organizations examined the causes of the meltdown and proposes reforms to prevent catastrophic bubbles from being created and then bursting.

Q: What allowed the derivatives to...

It's about taxing them, stupid.
Free trade advocate Jagdish Bhagwati believes that windfall profits taxes on the financial sector and the creation of an independent global risk management board are necessary reforms to shore up capitalism and globalization.

In a wide-ranging interview in Toronto recently, Dr. Bhagwati fleshed out...

I love David Letterman and I love the way he handled the blackmail attempt recently by coming "clean" about his office sexual exploits.

But I have one problem.

It's lousy, probably fire-able, workplace practice. Technically, Letterman is like a CEO and in some places, like Israel for instance, screwing around...

I sat down recently with Peter Kraus. In December, at the height of the market turmoil, he became Chair and CEO of Alliance/Bernstein of New York, one of the world's largest asset management firms. His predecessor had bet heavily on financial stocks and Kraus was brought in because of his...

The G20 in Pittsburgh issued an accord last week that was the financial equivalent of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The governments agreed to collaborate, to devise early-warning systems, to force banks to be open to inspection and to crack down on the type of malfeasance that brought the global economy...

A world expert on economics delivered a cogent and optimistic analysis of the meltdown, its causes, its cure and its effect on the future at the recent Global Business Forum in Banff, Alberta.

Dr. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist with IHS Global Insight, blamed twin "addictions" for 2008's financial catastrophe:...

Oil company CEOs and Canadian, U.S. and British government officials attending the Global Business Forum in Banff last week heard a chilling forecast of military clashes if there is an environmental meltdown due to climate change.

The world's military leaders have been secretly studying the geo-strategic implications of climate change...

The turmoil since August 2007 has not been blamed directly on oil prices but there's a link.
"The US has experienced six recessions since 1972. At least five of these were associated with oil prices. In every case, when oil consumption in the US reached 4% percent of GDP,...

Canada's banking system is one of the best regulated, and modulated, in the world, which is why no Canadian financial institution went bust during the 1930s Depression, nor did any even seriously wobble during this year's meltdown.

The result is that Canada's five biggest banks, with their investment banking subsidiaries,...

The Ides of September in 2008 is simply the latest manifestation of autumnal market turmoil. That day, Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch bit the dust and the world changed dramatically. Of course this is nothing new, which is why there's reason again to break out the stock worry beads. Little...

The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard is populated by smart people who debate and write about the important issues involving the media and democracy. For eight years, the Director of this Center has been a thoughtful and charming southern gentleman named Alex Jones who...

If you were the Founding Father of a new nation, the American health care system would be instructive as the worst example around.
America's really dumb system illustrates what NOT to do and looks like this on paper:

1. Have government insure the highest risk population -- seniors, veterans, indigents.
...

The power of the Internet in helping capture the Presidency of the United States for Barack Obama and his team can now be harnessed to gain control in other political contests. A group of web-savvy Democrats has come up with a means of influencing or conquering the upcoming New York...

Asia suffered jitters last week as the world hurtles toward the traditionally dangerous fall season for stocks.

On September 4, the Financial Times plastered across its front page a photo of riot troops in full gear ready to repel protesters in China's troublesome province of Urumqi. That is a remote...