Some of the day’s best reads:
- Ed Rendell calls for investment in infrastructure: “We must focus on infrastructure investment before it’s too late, and in doing so, we can create thousands upon thousands of jobs that will help revive our economy and stimulate American manufacturing, as well.”
- Peter Beinart makes the GOP’s tax cut hypocrisy lucid: “During the Bush years, Republicans mostly insisted, in Dick Cheney’s famous words, that ‘deficits don’t matter.’ Now they say deficits are virtually all that matters.”
- Joseph Nye examines the complex interdependency between the U.S. and China: “America absorbs Chinese imports, pays China in dollars, and China holds dollars, amassing $2.5 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, much of it held in U.S. Treasury securities. To some observers, this represents a fundamental shift in the global balance of power, because China could bring the U.S. to its knees by threatening to sell its dollars.”
- Michael Singh, examining Iranian history, concludes the Green Movement is not dead: “All three opposition movements took years to consolidate before becoming powerful enough to force change on the regime. The Constitutional Revolution, which is thought of as emerging around 1905, as protests broke out over tariffs, was in fact a continuation of events that began in 1891, with the campaign to overturn an exclusive tobacco concession the shah had granted to the British. … Each period of turmoil was distinctive but was propelled by similar undercurrents. … The international community should not worry that the Green Movement is doomed, but it should harbor no illusions that its success would inevitably lead to peace and democracy in the long term. “
- The Brookings Institute released a report emphasizing metropolitan areas as centers for export production.
