Succumbing to cancer after several months of treatment, President Hugo Chávez died yesterday, ending his 14-year rule and leaving a radically transformed Venezuela with uncertain days ahead [NYT]. For now, Vice President Nicolas Maduro will assume power for 30 days until a new election is held. Looking over the past few decades, Venezuelan blogger Francisco Toro … Continue reading Venezuela After Chávez
A new angle if you’re interested in figuring out what the heck is going on there. TRUE BELIEVER: “I’m afraid I can’t quite agree with your assessment of Letterman. I fear your image of him is largely dated from who he was in the 80s and perhaps even early 90s. The self-effacing wit and cutting … Continue reading BLOGGING FROM VENEZUELA
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro focuses on the island’s troubled economy: A big part of the calculus informing Cuba’s new openness to the U.S., though, is about economic necessity. With Cuba’s birth rate having fallen below replacement level as far back as 1980 (partly thanks to Cuban women’s universal access to reproductive health and abortions), and its work force shrinking, … Continue reading Why Cuba Needs The US
The Economist declares that the “fall in the price of oil and gas provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix bad energy policies”: The most straightforward piece of reform, pretty much everywhere, is simply to remove all the subsidies for producing or consuming fossil fuels. Last year governments around the world threw $550 billion down that rathole—on everything … Continue reading It’s Time To Stop The Handouts For Dirty Energy
Michael Levi wants to raise the gas tax: [W]hen oil prices fall, fuel efficient cars, homes in city-centers, and public transit investments all drop in value. This can lead to economic waste: underused automobiles, unrented homes, empty subways. A particularly glaring example came on Wednesday when President Obama visited a Ford plant that makes fuel-efficient vehicles: … Continue reading Reasons To Keep Oil Prices High
Michael Levi considers how plummeting oil prices might affect the pipeline: Lower oil prices reduce both the costs and the benefits of approving the Keystone XL pipeline by reducing the odds that it will ever be fully used. There’s an outside chance that, if prices are sustained at an extremely low level, the Keystone XL pipeline won’t … Continue reading The Shrinking Economic Payoff Of Keystone
by Dish Staff As Carl Bialik’s chart shows, Cuban baseball players are on the rise here in the US, and now with the thaw in US/Cuba relations, many are wondering about the implications for their shared national pastime: Baseball has long been the most popular sport in Cuba and the island has long been a hotbed of baseball talent. Cubans … Continue reading Playing Ball With Cuba
by Dish Staff Erik Voeten notes that, in one respect, Cuba isn’t the only country that’s been internationally isolated by the US embargo: The United Nations General Assembly has voted since 1992 on an annual resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” In 1992, with the Cold War … Continue reading Obama Scraps Our Failed Cuba Policy, Ctd
Oil prices continued their decline last week: The price of oil was down more than 9.9 percent Friday afternoon after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries decided it would not cut back production significantly in the months ahead. In other words, even amid a sluggish global economy and a boom in oil production in the United … Continue reading The Oil Producers’ Price War
A frustrated reader lashes out: Jesus, could you get any more generic? Scrub brush, an outcropping with a wooden cross, telephone poles, white buildings with red-tiled roofs, a medium-sized range of hills in the background!? An image is beginning to crystallize in my mind of the typical winner of this contest. He is fat, bezitted, … Continue reading The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #231
