Global Paradigms

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/premiumstory/0,4574,428966,00.html? Business Times - 05 Mar 2011 The postmodern thinker International relations scholar and author Parag Khanna talks about geopolitics and identity in the post-post-modern world. By Leon Hadar PARAG Khanna, adventurer-scholar extraordinaire, bestselling author, pundit, former geopolitical adviser to generals (US General Stanley McChrystal) and celebrities (Bono), has some great news for the bearish among us. Or does he? Addressing a packed hall in Washington, DC, on the same evening that President Barack Obama is giving a televised speech, a cool and calm Dr Khanna, sans necktie and any prepared notes, explains that we are already living in the post-post-American World that is not very flat, but actually very messy, chaotic, and unruly. Welcome to the 'New Middle Ages' - or the 'Neomidage'. And that apparently should make us all very, very bullish about the future. Say what? The guy seating next to me ...

Business Times - 05 Mar 2011 Tea Party serves up a bitter brew for Bernanke By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IF anyone still had any doubts that the Tea Party movement had become a powerful force on Capitol Hill, he or she would have had to revise the assessment this week. First, the contingency of conservative and libertarian lawmakers who were part of the Tea Party insurgency and who were elected to Congress in last year's mid-term election has forced the Republican leadership to continue playing chicken with the White House over this year's federal budget. Under pressure from the Republicans who now control the House of Representative, the Obama administration and the Democrats had agreed to US$4 billion cuts in spending on a few social and economic programmes in exchange for an agreement by the Republicans to a two-week extension in funding for the federal government. Now Congress will have until March 18 to come up with a budget deal before the government runs out of...