The Kyoto Protocol on climate change based its targets for 2010 on 1990 pollution levels, a year chosen so that Europe need spend little money on environmental cleanup, since 1990 was the last full year of emissions by East Germany and the former Comecon countries.

One of the features that will make the second “dip” in this recession much nastier than the first will be a tsunami of consumer bankruptcy such as we have not previously seen, which will alter the U.S. economic landscape for a long time to come.

Clearly, the International Monetary Fund’s $30 billion bailout of Brazil will cost Western taxpayers money. The only question is whether it will do more harm than good to Brazil itself.

The endless repetition of bearish predictions for the U.S. and world economies grows monotonous, but I thought it worth recapitulating some of the prognostications made by UPI Chief Economics Correspondent Ian Campbell and me over the last two years, to demonstrate that our track record has been quite good, and then answer the obvious question: […]