The military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras took a new turn when Zelaya attempted to return home on Sunday. The military closed the airport and blocked runways to prevent his plane from landing. They also shot several protesters, killing at least one and injuring others.

The violence...

The military coup that overthrew Honduras' elected president Manuel Zelaya brought unanimous international condemnation. But some country's responses have been more reluctant than others, and Washington's ambivalence has begun to raise suspicions about what the U.S. government is really trying to accomplish in this situation.

The first statement from the...

Since the Iranian presidential election of June 12, allegations that the announced winner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was stolen have played an important role in the demonstrations, political conflict, and media reporting on events there. Some say that it does not matter whether the elections were stolen or not, since the...

Plans are already being made for the 2010 elections for the U.S. Congress, and the Democrats would appear to have some advantages. They have a popular president, a 6-percentage-point lead in party identification and 9 points for a generic Congressional ballot. Majorities of the electorate see both Obama and the...

The Obama administration and House Democratic leadership can't seem to muscle the votes they need to pass a $108 billion appropriation for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The stakes are high for both the administration and the world.

The battle is taking place primarily under the radar, with the...

The bailout of private banks and financial institutions has become a touchy political issue in the United States, ever since President Bush's Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson asked Congress for a $700 billion dollar blank check last September.

Now the Obama administration is asking the Congress...

One of the differences between the United States and most other developed countries is that the Congress can have a foreign policy of its own, and one that does not necessarily coincide with the objectives of the executive branch.

This is generally a good thing, since it allows the citizenry...

In the last week the news that has roiled financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic was a warning from Standard and Poor's, the credit rating agency, that the UK could lose its AAA credit rating, the highest bond rating and one that is held by 18 governments worldwide.

The battle over "intellectual property rights" is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It has enormous economic, social, and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture - anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of...

"You don't have to do this." Those are the near-last words of several victims in the Coen brothers' classic, No Country for Old Men, as they try to convince the movie's unrelenting assassin that he should spare them. The assassin, played by Javier Bardem, finds this annoying, because in his...

Three years ago I wrote an article arguing that the political changes sweeping across Latin America were epoch-making and probably irreversible, and that they would fundamentally alter the relationship between the region and the United States. Some of the most important economic causes of the region's shift to the...

What is the opposite of "damage control?" Repair control? Obama's Latin America advisor and director for the Summit of the Americas Jeffrey Davidow did his best to undermine the president's efforts at diplomacy in Trinidad. Responding immediately to Obama's charm offensive, Davidow told reporters that "there is a sizable population...

In February the Congress approved $787 billion of federal spending, in order keep the economy from sinking into a deeper recession. However it is increasingly clear that this is not enough, and a third stimulus (the first was a small stimulus package early last year) will be necessary.

About $584...

The Obama administration is seeking a "new beginning" in the hemisphere, and a "more equal partnership" with Latin America - according to President Obama's point man for the Summit of the Americas. The Summit will gather 34 presidents from the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago on April 17-19.

But there...

Many people, including most of the presidents in South America, were hoping that President Obama would initiate a serious change in U.S.-Latin American relations, after the low point reached during the Bush years. Change will certainly come - it is happening every week -- but there are few if any...

"This is the day that the world came together, to fight back against the global recession. Not with words but a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable," said U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the end of the G-20 Summit last week.

This was...

The run-up to the G-20 meeting has been interesting and colorful. President Lula Da Silva of Brazil declared that "this crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing." His full...

The G-20 summit meeting in London on April 2nd will have a lot on its plate and will certainly fall short of expectations. [The G-20 expands the G-8 countries of Canada -- France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China,...

Last Sunday's election in El Salvador, in which the leftist FMLN (Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation) won the presidency, didn't get a lot of attention in the international press. It's a relatively small country (7 million people on land the size of Massachusetts) and fairly poor (per capita income...

A serious economic crisis can force some rethinking of economic and political dogma. The current crisis is serious for most of the world; the IMF is projecting world economic growth of just one half percent this year - the worst since World War II - and this number could easily...