Martin Wolf described it as “a bloodbath”. The Financial Times editorial called it a “chilling read”. Britain’s budget is one of austerity, the likes of which has not been seen in generations. A 25 per cent cut in public spending; a quarter of a million or more public sector jobs to be slashed. It is just the beginning.

Already there are calls for the next budget to go further. In a country where – even before the crisis hit – over a quarter of the population was considered “breadline poor”, the establishment is crying out: “Everyone has it too good!” It is a call echoing through the corridors of power the world over. Read more »

Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS

As Graham Greene hunched over his desk perched on the wisened teak floors of Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel knitting together the silky threads of naiveté and intrigue to craft his masterful tale of Alden Pyle and Thomas Fowler, he unwittingly foretold a key element of modern Vietnamese politics: what you see is not what you get. Unlike many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, Vietnam has the capacity to keep its politics behind closed doors.

Vietnam is in the middle of the most intense part of its political cycle—the socialist corollary to the last four months of US elections—the lead-up to the Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) 11th National Party Congress (NPC), which will take place in late January and early February 2011. Read more »

Old Glory 51 bright stars and 13 broad stripes. Slate Magazine and an Emory University math professor have figured out how to preserve Old Glory's symmetry in case a new state is ever admitted to the Union. Slate

If Puerto Rico becomes a state, we'd have to add a 51st star to the flag. An Emory University mathematician has come up with a method to do it without disrupting Old Glory's symmetry.

The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2010, currently making its way through Congress, could make it it a necessity. The bill would grant the territory's residents a vote on their status, and options include statehood or independence. Read more »

Author: Ronald I. McKinnon, Stanford University

Nobody disputes that almost three decades of US trade (net saving) deficits have made the global system of finance and trade more accident-prone. Outstanding dollar debts have become huge, and threaten America’s own financial future. Insofar as the principal creditor countries in Asia (Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, China since 2000) are industrial countries relying heavily on exports of manufactures, the transfer of their surplus savings to the saving-deficient US requires that they collectively run large trade surpluses in manufactures. The resulting large American trade deficits have worsened the ‘natural’ decline in the relative size of the American manufacturing sector, and eroded the US industrial base.

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