While it looks for now as if Monday’s Wall Street sell-off was a momentary blip within the market’s steady recent ascent, questions remain as to the long-term growth of the global economy as the Delta variant of COVID-19 spreads and fears about inflation mount. With the pandemic seemingly resurgent or, in many countries, still ever-present,...
This week, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in protest, demanding government action to address severe economic want and the COVID-19 pandemic, while also calling for the resignation of President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the end of sixty years of Communist rule. In response, the Cuban government has arrested over one hundred protesters and called...
This past Monday, President Biden ordered U.S. Forces to carry out airstrikes against targets along the Iraq-Syria border. The Pentagon stated that these targets had been housing munitions for Iranian-backed militia groups. At least four Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada milita members were killed in the attack. A day later, militia units retaliated against U.S. forces in...
With a little less than six weeks before hardline conservative Ebrahim Raisi is inaugurated as the new President of Iran, President Biden’s top aides are engaged in a high stakes game of ‘telephone’ in Vienna. As Iranian negotiators refuse to meet their American counterparts in person, European intermediaries have shuttled between hotel rooms with messages...
On the heels of a European tour intended to galvanize traditional American rivals for an era of great power competition, President Joe Biden yesterday arrived in Geneva – “the city of peace” – for a much-anticipated summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. News conferences for both leaders followed the formal meeting — the contents of...
In San Salvador on Tuesday evening, after a proposal and hard-sell by populist President Nayib Bukele, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed a slim three-page bill enshrining Bitcoin as a legal tender currency within the country – a designation previously held solely by the U.S. dollar. In the West, Bitcoin has been generating a...
This week, G7 finance ministers will meet in London to discuss, among other things, the Biden Administration’s proposed global minimum 15% corporate tax rate. The idea is simple (to crack down on multinationals’ tax arbitrage schemes) and comes gift-wrapped with a timely justification (to pay for pandemic-induced recovery packages). The proposal, with U.S. Treasury Secretary...
Last weekend, Belarus dispatched a warplane to divert and ground a commercial Ryanair flight in Minsk. After landing, authorities swiftly moved to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich, a longtime critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who, in a predictable turn, defended the move as an internal matter. In response, the EU banned Belarusian flights over the...
Ahead of a diplomatic swing highlighted by an encounter with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has broadcast the Biden Administration’s concerns about the militarization of the Arctic. Against the backdrop of increased Sino-Russian cooperation in the region, united by shared economic interests in its control, Blinken has stated that the...
