Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson

the Obama administration’s white paper on financial regulation reform. (I posted a version of this over at Opinio Juris, but I wanted to put a revised version of it up here, as I plan to do a series of posts commenting on various parts of the Treasury Department’s new report. In some ways, this is […]

if and when China decides to stop exporting the “glut of global savings”? The Walmart Effect was the claim (accepted pretty broadly as having a decent empirical basis, even given the disputes) that Walmart, by lowering prices at the downmarket end of things, added significantly to American spending power and standard of living. And particularly […]

This witty article in Slate, How McDonald’s Conquered France, has sold me on Mike Steinberger’s new book, Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France, from which the article is drawn. Were you aware, for example, that “by 2007, France had become the second-most profitable market in the world for McDonald’s, […]

I’ve been away on a trip to Prague for the past few days, board meeting for a nonprofit whose board I chair, the Media Development Loan Fund. MDLF is a nonprofit, mission driven private equity fund; here’s the description from our new, cool Facebook page, which you too can join: Media Development Loan Fund is […]

for his novel, The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. I recommend blurbing it immediately: hey daddy! i just wanted to let you know that the book you lent me is really good and your students need to read it. it’ll make them consider every side of good important economic issues and let them know that […]

It’s a very interesting article on personal health in the Personal Journal section of the WSJ today, all about looking for various signs of illness or disease from things like skin changes, nails and hair, teeth and gums …. However, though no doubt designed to be inflammatory or at least to sell some papers, the […]

The Iran crisis is perhaps signaling, so far as I can tell watching from the outside, divisions within the Democratic Party and possibly within the Obama administration, not just between idealists and realists, but among an increasingly complicated set of normative foreign policy positions. A couple of years ago I mentioned the rise, as a […]

Over at the international law blog Opinio Juris, Professor Amos Guiora has been offering a set of very interesting guest posts on the Israeli administrative detention model. Professor Guiora was an Israeli JAG officer for 19 years, and has a fascinating discussion going in the series. VC readers might find it interesting – certainly I […]

smile upon the protestors. But like you, I have grave fears. (Update: This op-ed by Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post captures my own overall view pretty well.) I have no special expertise on Iran and so am only able to add my deep concern, sympathy, and support to the brave people in the streets […]

Peter Mandelson, currently Business Secretary in the UK government of Gordon Brown and formerly EU trade commissioner, has an op-ed in today’s WSJ (June 19, 2009), “We Need More Global Governance: The Crisis Reveals the Weakness of Nation-Based Regulation,” (might be behind subscriber wall). (Reader warning: this goes on for a while.) This piece offers […]

The Chicago Journal of International Law has a new symposium issue coming online soon on the topic of a multipolar world. I have a piece in it, so does my co-blogger Chris Borgen of Opinio Juris, John Yoo, and some others – I’ll post a link to the issue when it appears. My own piece […]

on their twenty-five years of marriage, this just past Tuesday.

George Soros has a very interesting opinion piece in the Financial Times, June 17, 2009 (might be behind subscriber wall at the FT, but I received it by email from his office, so I’ll quote some bits from there). The essay outlines in short form his principles for reform of financial regulation. I am still […]

The WSJ money and finance page had a story on Monday, June 15, 2009, about the return of an old financial product in new clothing for the municipal bond market. That market has suffered as concerns about municipal and state finances grows while concerns about the guarantors, explicit and implicit, by banks and financial institutions, […]

The Washington Post ran a news story on Friday (June 12, 2009, A1), titled “Obama Bows on Settling Detainees: Administration Gives Up on Bringing Cleared Inmates to U.S., Officials Say.” The article goes on to describe the situation of the Uighurs and how the administration, faced with revolt by his own party in Congress, and […]