Here we go again: the spike in global oil prices that preceded the Great Recession is being repeated. Just three years ago, the price of oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $100 per bbl. for the first time, bringing dire warnings about looming economic hardship. Sure enough, the world economy entered its worst downturn since the Depression just months after oil prices peaked at a record $147 per bbl. in July 2008. Now the ...

The headquarters of Peru's Interbank are hard to miss. While the building is not the tallest in the capital, Lima, it is the most entertaining on the city's otherwise drab main drag. A slight tilt has earned it the nickname the "Leaning Power of Lima," and multicolored lights ripple along the façade as night falls, providing eye candy for commuters stuck in rush-hour traffic. What's going on inside the building is also attracting attention, but much further afield. Interbank, like ...

Just past noon, Anna Chernova, a 68-year-old retiree, pushed her black metal shopping cart into an Aldi store here. After arriving from Russia 16 years ago, Chernova regularly shopped at conventional supermarkets like Dominick's and Jewel, but no more. "They're too expensive," Chernova says, clutching her shopping list with one hand. Now she visits Aldi once a week, drawn by the deep discounter's $2.69 1-gal. jugs of milk and 33-cent boxes of salt. "I've got to save ...

For most countries, the existence of a massive fossil-fuel deposit within its sovereign territory would be gratefully welcomed as an economic windfall. But the delight in Israel at the recent giant gas discovery off its northern coastline is tempered by the knowledge that it could provide the spark to ignite the next war between the Jewish state and its mortal foe to the north, Lebanon's militant Shi'ite Hizballah. The stakes are enormous. Both Lebanon and Israel currently have ...

In an attempt to stop the downward spiral of support for his ruling Socialist party, Spanish Prime Minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero ended months of speculation by announcing on Saturday that he will not seek re-election after completing his second four-year term next March. Now high-ranking members of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party will jockey for the job if, as expected, a primary is held after regional and local elections on May 22. Whoever is nominated ...

The New Republic recently asked an intriguing question about the U.S. intervention in Libya: Why isn't Obama getting credit for preventing an atrocity? The answer is obvious when you think about it: because he prevented the atrocity. It's hard to get credit for avoiding a disaster when it's impossible to prove the disaster would have happened without you. Social scientists call this the counterfactual problem. There's no double-blind study to show what would happen in an alternative ...

The struggle has been defined variously as rich v. poor, Southern Hemisphere v. Northern, developed countries v. undeveloped. The protagonists are the advanced industrial nations v. the nations of the "Third World" , an extraordinarily diverse group that, for the moment at least, has achieved solidarity for what it sees as its common purpose. Conflict between the two groups has taken on the proportions of global class war. This week the battleground is situated on the banks of the ...

In early March, Barack and Michelle Obama appeared in an exclusive Facebook video from the White House. The topic was bullying prevention, and it was by far the highest profile in the series of online conversations the social-media behemoth has produced with various members of Congress and federal and state officials in recent months. "You can participate in the conversation online," the President said, "right here on Facebook." That endorsement is one of the most provocative examples of ...

Leaders of democracies, like bear wranglers at the circus, must be experts at reading moods. Most of the time, the leaders of our two major parties seem to have much the same sense of the voters' basic concerns. But for the past two years, the parties have been operating under very different understandings of the public temper. Democrats believed that the economic crisis made the electorate yearn for security, thereby creating an openness to large public programs. They enacted a gargantuan stimulus bill, expensive ...

President Obama's trip to China yielded precious little Chinese cooperation on the Administration's key concerns, ranging from currency issues to Iran. That's a sign of the shifting balance of power between two countries that have been locked in an uneasy embrace for more than three decades. "I underlined to President Obama that given our differences in national conditions, it is only normal that our two sides may disagree on some issues," said China's President Hu Jintao. "What is important is to respect and accommodate each ...