Saturday at Sam’s

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I am in Chestertown, Maryland this morning enjoying a bit of a break from DC — planning a retreat to discuss alternative US policy options in Afghanistan. Chestertown is an old colonial American town with great character and characters.

What A Difference 23 Years Doesn’t Make

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Last week I attended an in-house foreign policy discussion with New America Foundation Schwartz Senior Fellow Peter Beinart, who provided a tour of 20th century American foreign policy and introduced me to Walter Lippmann’s concept of “solvency.

Krugman’s Blunt Take: Obama’s Not the One

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On the book jacket/inside flap of Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, Nobel Laureate (too) and New York Times opinion leader Paul Krugman calls Stiglitz an “insanely brilliant economist”.

Obama Foreign Policy: Lackluster or Courageous?

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(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy) GlobalPost‘s John Aloysius Farrell has a fascinating survey up of perspectives on Obama’s year in foreign policy. Read the entire piece, but I’ve put some of the zinger quotes below — including my own.

Sheila Bair Makes a Mortgage Boo Boo

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I just received the seriously disturbing news that FDIC chair Sheila Bair, one of the few national economic leaders who worked hard to curb the excesses and corruption of Wall Street and stand by middle class interests, may have run into some conflict of interest problems.