TEL AVIV ― Revolutions throughout history have proven to devour their children. Their final outcomes are seldom congruent with their prime movers’ intentions. Too frequently, revolutions are hijacked by a second wave, either more conservative or more radical than what was first contemplated by the initiators of change.What started in France in 1789 as an uprising of the middle classes in alliance

LONDON ― Speaking in the happier economic times of 2005, Mervyn King ― then, as now, governor of the Bank of England ― stressed the importance of entrenching public expectations of stable, low inflation. He warned that, “if you let inflation expectations drift too far away from the target, you can end up in quite serious difficulty with a costly process to bring them back again.” King must now be

NEW YORK ― Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for school children, and free health care ― including heart surgery ― for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis.After all, rich countries in Europe have increasingly found that they

LONDON ― “The enemy of yesterday is the friend of today.... It was a real war, but those brothers are free men now.” Thus spoke Saif al-Islam al-Gadhafi in March 2010, referring to the leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an armed organization that had attempted to assassinate his father, Muammar al-Gadhafi, three times in the mid-1990s.This may seem surprising. A few days ago, the

NEW DELHI ― The recent ouster of the Nobel Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunus as managing director of the Grameen Bank, which blazed a trail for microfinance in developing countries, has thrown a spotlight on the crisis engulfing a business that was once seen as a harbinger of hope for millions.Yunus’s tussle with the government of Bangladesh, which had tried to retire him on groun

WASHINGTON ― After the radiant sunrise of the Arab spring, here’s a somber shadow: Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries making the transition to democracy are likely to face severe economic problems over the next several years ― ones that could bring chaos if the Arabs and their friends in the West aren’t wise. For the dimensions of this economic transition, think of the Marshall Plan after Wo