CATEGORIES

The Shocking Waste Hidden Inside The $126 Billion Afghan Reconstruction

“Congress has appropriated $126 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since Fiscal Year 2002,” wrote Special Inspector General John F. Sopko in testimony delivered in May to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management.

The Humbled Science: Economists Reckon With Reality

Not so long ago, politicians had “favorite” economists. Margaret Thatcher’s was Milton Friedman. John F. Kennedy’s was probably John Kenneth Galbraith. President Bill Clinton had a Nobel Prizewinning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, in residence at the White House for his entire first term and was said to light up at the mention of John Maynard Keynes.

California Seeks To Be First State To Limit Plastic Straws

If you want a straw with your drink, you soon may have to ask for it at California restaurants.

The New Keynesian' Fed

The U.S. central bank’s new leaders developed an economic model from the inflation lessons of the 1980s. But is it right for today?

Microsoft Uncovers More Russian Hacking Ahead Of Midterms

Microsoft has uncovered new Russian hacking efforts targeting U.S. political groups ahead of the midterm elections.

Facebook Takes Down 652 Accounts Linked To Russia, Iran

Facebook has identified and banned more accounts engaged in misleading political behavior ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November. 

Can Tech Giants Work Together Against Their Common Enemies?

Facebook, Twitter and Google routinely squabble for users, engineers and advertising money. Yet it makes sense for these tech giants to work together on security threats, elections meddling and other common ills.

Mark Carney: 'Within Nine Months, We Could Have A Disorderly Brexit Stress Test'

Mark Carney seemed revolutionary enough in 2013 when he became the first non-British citizen to be appointed governor of the Bank of England. But the 53-year-old has since had to contend with a much greater upset: the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union. Now he reveals that he spends half his time preparing the financial system and economy for Brexit, which takes effect in March. Born in Canada’s remote Northwest Territories and educated at a public school in Edmonton, Carney graduated from Harvard and Oxford before working at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the Canadian finance ministry. In early 2008 he became the eighth governor in the Bank of Canada’s history, winning praise for his quick reaction as the financial crisis developed. He succeeded Mario Draghi as chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in 2011, becoming the point man on global financial system reform. At the Bank of England, Carney has juggled Brexit, negotiating new regulatory standards, and adapting the 324-year-old institution to its expanded supervisory responsibility. As the BOE’s 120th governor, he says some disruption was in order. “You don’t need an outsider all the time, but at the time it helped.” 

There Aren't Enough Academic Jobs, So NC State Tries To Help

Prospects for Ph.D. earners are dismal in the academic job market, with stories abounding of people who have doctorates serving lattes at Starbucks.

China Cleans Up Its (Trash) Act

Stricter rules on imported recycled goods have mainland businesses buying U.S. plants to get their waste.

Is It Time To Test Drugs On Pregnant Women?

Is it time to test drugs on pregnant women?

The Anti Abortion 'Rescue' Movement Born Again

A radical wing of the anti-abortion crusade has returned, emboldened by the prospect of the end of Roe v. Wade.

Tinder Founders, Execs File Suit Against IAC And Match Group

The founders of the dating app Tinder, along with current executives and some of its employees, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against IAC/ InterActiveCorp and its Match Group subsidiary for allegedly bilking them by manipulating financial information to create a lowball estimate of Tinder’s value.

China Files WTO Challenge To US Tariffs On Solar Panels

China says it is challenging a U.S. tariff hike on solar panels before the World Trade Organization, adding to its sprawling conflicts with President Donald Trump over trade and technology.

A Growing Elder Care Crisis

A growing elder care crisis is making life hell for families. Maine is considering a radical solution.

Russia Hacked Our Voting System, Trump Has Done Nothing To Protect Them

Two years ago, our election systems were hacked. The gop has done nothing to protect us.

Whiplash In Iran As US Sanctions Resume

With the nuclear deal in tatters, Iran faces an uncertain future.

Trump's China Trade War Pulls Consumer Tech Into Crossfire

The prices of headphones, speakers, high-tech lighting and internet service could all go up if the U.S. trade war with China continues.

Meghan Caught In Another Drug Scandal!

She fumes as secret addict ‘sister’ runs off with dad’s dough

How Washington Left Students To Drown In Debt

Why is the nation's flagship debt forgiveness program failing the students it's supposed to help?

The Terror Connection

Does a plot to bomb Times Square reveal the next front in the war against ISIS?

How To Be Trump's Treasury Secretary

If you want to understand U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, you have to know why he sometimes avoids Pebble Beach.

10 Years After The Crash, We Are Still Living In The World It Brutally Remade

Sometimes you don’t know how deep the hole is until you try to fill it. In 2009, staring down what looked to anyone with a calculator like the biggest financial crisis since 1929, the federal government poured $830 billion into the economy—a spending stimulus bigger, by some measures, than the entire New Deal—and the country barely noticed.  It registered the crisis, though. The generation that came of age in the Great Depression was indelibly shaped by that experience of deprivation, even though what followed was what Henry Luce famously called, in 1941, “the American Century.” He meant the 20th, and, to judge from our present politics, at least—“Make America Great Again” on one side of the aisle; on the other, the suspicion that the president is a political suicide bomber, destroying the pillars of government—he probably wouldn’t have made the same declaration about the 21st. A decade now after the beginning of what has come to be called the Great Recession, and almost as long since economic growth began to tick upward and unemployment downward, the cultural and psychological imprint left by the financial crisis looks as profound as the ones left by the calamity that struck our grandparents. All the more when you look beyond the narrow economic data: at a new radical politics on both left and right; at a strident, ideological pop culture obsessed with various apocalypses; at an internet powered by envy, strife, and endless entrepreneurial hustle; at opiates and suicides and low birthrates; and at the resentment, racial and gendered and otherwise, by those who felt especially left behind. Over the following pages, we cast a look back, and tried to take a seismic reading of the financial earthquake and its aftershocks, including those that still jolt us today.

Meet The New Pakistan, A Lot Like The Old Pakistan

Imran Khan brings a charismatic visage to the troubled country. But does he have a fresh vision?

Facebook Finds ‘Sophisticated' Efforts To Disrupt Elections

Facebook said it has uncovered “sophisticated” efforts, possibly linked to Russia, to influence U.S. politics on its platforms. 

Trolls And Snowflakes: Once-Stuffy DC Embraces Tough Slang

The House speaker dismissed the actions of a U.S. president as merely “trolling.” And the nation’s attorney general knocked America’s university students as a bunch of sensitive “snowflakes.”

Sometimes It Rains Rockets In Russia

Inhabitants of tiny villages 250 miles north of a Russian launchpad transform fallen space metal into everyday necessities

Elizabeth Warren, Leader Of The Persistence

Elizabeth Warren’s full-body fight to defeat Trump.

Europe Is Right To Worry About The Trump-Putin Summit

The EU and NATO beware! Years before Trump became president, he and Putin were already simpatico.

Facebook Faces U.K. Fine Over Its Privacy Scandal

Facebook is facing its first financial penalty for allowing the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica to forage through the personal data of millions of unknowing Facebook users.