If online comments and e-mails from friends are any indication, the overwhelming feeling about the American debt crisis here in Europe is that if Barack Obama is now in a position of having to raise the debt ceiling or face default, the crisis can only be traced back to George W. Bush.Europeans are, in part, blaming Bush’s post-9/11 military funding ― yet somehow the phrase “overstretched Greek ar

NEWPORT BEACH ― I don’t know about you, but whenever I am in an airplane experiencing turbulence, I draw comfort from the belief that the pilots sitting behind the cockpit’s closed door know what to do. I would feel very differently if, through an open door, I observed pilots who were frustrated at the poor responsiveness of the plane’s controls, arguing about their next step, and getting no help

RAMALLAH, West Bank ― Right now, Israeli authorities are battling hundreds of activists trying to fly into the country from Europe and the United States, in support of the Palestinian cause. Israel has jailed dozens of them and deported hundreds. They call it the “Flytilla”In Greece, several ships carrying even more activists have been trying to set sail for the Gaza Strip, and on Tuesday Israel p

WASHINGTON, D.C. ― Is the Arab Spring turning into a gloomy autumn? With brutal crackdowns in Syria, a bloody civil war in Libya, and Yemen teetering on the brink of chaos, the number of skeptics is growing. Although Egypt and Tunisia’s pro-democracy movements achieved rapid regime change, uncertainties remain in those countries, too. After a brief period of hope, many observers now wonder whether

Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic, he said, simply, “Government is the source of all our problems.” When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. “The De

NEW HAVEN ― Economists like to talk about thresholds that, if crossed, spell trouble. Usually there is an element of truth in what they say. But the public often overreacts to such talk.Consider, for example, the debt-to-GDP ratio, much in the news nowadays in Europe and the United States. It is sometimes said, almost in the same breath, that Greece’s debt equals 153 percent of its annual GDP, and