"Ukraine in Turmoil," was the headline yesterday (11/26) in the New York Times.  And no wonder. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is slipping back under Kremlin control, and Ukrainians are deeply angry. Their governments's shock decision to opt for Vladimir Putin's Russia and pull out of EU talks on the eve of a historic deal is a dramatic upset to their freedom - and to the European balance of power. It is the first major defeat for the EU in its eastward march since the fall of Communism. While the region's geopolitics remain fluid, the upset may prove as fateful as the signing of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654 by the Cossack chief Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who turned his back on the West and agreed to let independent Ukraine be absorbed into the Russian Empire. "Ukraine's government suddenly bowed deeply to the Kremlin. The politics of brutal pressure evidently work," said Sweden's foreign minister Karl Bildt.  Here's how they work.

The Chinese Communist Party is trying to continue pulling off the trick that has served it ever since Deng Xiaoping defeated the Gang of Four: more economic freedom combined with less political freedom. The people can choose any good or service they want - except their government. In many ways it has worked extremely well. In 1978 Maoism had left the country horribly poor: more than half the people of China tried to live on less than a dollar a day. Over the next nine years per capita income doubled, then doubled again over the nine years after that. Many a left-leaning Western politician has been heard to muse about how much better we would grow if only we directed the market economy with the single-mindedness of the Chinese Communist Party. See, they mutter, a paternalistic government is best at generating economic prosperity. Yet this is precisely the wrong lesson to draw from China. It's not because it's unfree at the top that China is growing fast, but because, at least in some respects, it is very free at the bottom. The extraordinary fact is that - economically - the average Chinese person is more free from government interference than the average Westerner.

"Climate change" has become a "substitute religion" for people with a "nakedly political" agenda which has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in economic growth and wealth redistribution. Well, we know this. But how nice it is to hear it from the mouth of a statesman as distinguished as former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in a blistering speech last night (11/05) at the Global Warming Policy Foundation here in London. Howard's own record during the great climate change scare is not entirely unblemished. Thus, Howard goes some way towards answering a question which is going to be asked an awful lot by future historians, students of economic disaster and psychologists of mass hysteria: why didn't more people speak out sooner against this costly, environmentally damaging, and utterly specious "climate change" craze?

Be careful what you wish for. The euro's founding fathers dreamt of a superpower currency to match the dollar, freeing Europe from US monetary hegemony. Charles de Gaulle grumbled that America enjoyed an "exorbitant privilege" as holder of the world's reserve currency, able to get away with murder. Now they have one themselves, only to discover that it is a curse. China's central bank has been buying fistfuls of euros as it accumulates a world record $3.7 trillion in foreign reserves, and its motives are not entirely friendly. So have the central banks of Russia, Brazil and the Middle Eastern oil sheikhdoms, all aiming to cut reliance on the US dollar, part of a $9 trillion surge in reserves leaking, with tidal force, into the euro. In China's case, it is deliberately driving down the yuan to capture export share. You could say China is exporting excess manufacturing capacity to Europe, or, in plain talk, exporting unemployment. The euro exchange rate is far too high for two-thirds of the euro states, a key reason why unemployment hit an all-time peak of 12.2 per cent in September. It is pushing Europe's crisis states into Thirties-style deflation, making it almost impossible for Italy, Spain and Portugal to dig their way out of debt.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is to unveil sweeping economic reforms at the Party's Third Plenum next month, with an assault on the state behemoths and the Party patronage machine (really?). Yet he also wants to tighten the grip of the one-party, one-ideology, authoritarian state. Here's a good account from Wiang Xiangwei at the South China Morning Post. The Development Research Center (DRC) in Beijing has published its road map of reform measures. It is being taken very seriously since it is written by none other than reformer Liu Wei and by President Xi's right-hand man on economic affairs, Liu He. The problem is that these proposals skirt over/contradict the core finding of a joint DRC-World Bank report last year. It said China would not succeed in jumping to the next stage of economic development and would languish in the the "middle income trap" unless it embraces the whole package of modern free thinking. It did not quite say democracy, but that is what it meant.

Hi, everyone.  I'm Karma Singh, a longtime TTPer in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley.  I was with Jack Wheeler on his incredible Hidden China adventure last month, and we talked about what's going on in India, the world's second most populous country and China's rival for superpower status in Asia. Our conversations got pretty interesting, so Jack suggested I write an India Report for TTP.  Here's my first effort.  Let's jump right in. India's major drawback is the people administering the country. Plagued with monumental amounts of corruption, there are no words to describe these monstrous looters.   According to an article published back in 2010, unofficial estimates of black money obtained through government corruption is pegged around 1.4 Trillion US Dollars.  The hope for India lies in the elections next spring.  For there is a man being hailed by the Indian press as India's "capitalist hero."  He is the amazingly successful governor of one of India's largest states, and he stands an excellent chance of being our next Prime Minister.  His name is Narendra Modi.

Anyone here old enough to remember the 1929 crash on Wall Street and the 1933 US exit from the Gold Standard under Franklin Roosevelt?  If so, you'll recall the pervading sense that America had already peaked, its capitalist model overtaken by history.  The Soviets were ascendant and soon would overtake us. After defeat in Vietnam and the Carter Malaise, it was the Japanese who would triumph.  This time it is supposed to be China and the emerging powers - armed with $9 trillion of combined reserves - who will humble America, pulling the plug on the dollar and the US Treasury market, and ending the era of "exorbitant privilege." As for China and the chorus of voices from BRICS-land venting indignation at the US over the debt, it is largely humbug.  Taken in the stride of 20th century history, the latest bleatings about America's demise seem more than a little overdone.  Obama will be judged a hiccup of American history, for here is the great salient economic fact of our times.

Here's some good news from America. A Big Oil company - Chevron - is taking legal action against a group of environmentalists for fraud and extortion: aka greenmail. The sums involved are eyewatering: $19 billion (billion with a B).  Phelim McAleer has the details. It's fitting that Phelim McAleer should be reporting this story because, of course, he visited similar territory in his documentary FrackNation. Like Crude, Josh Fox's anti-fracking movie Gasland was feted at Sundance and lauded by the usual Hollywood suspects. The polite explanation for what's going on here is "noble cause corruption." You'll lie, you'll fiddle with the data, you'll bully, you'll smear, you'll abandon the scientific method -- not because you're a bad person (or so you persuade yourself) but because you're a person so good that you're even prepared to sacrifice even your personal integrity for the higher cause of saving the world from The Greatest Threat It Has Ever Known. Finally -- finally! -- business has begun fighting back.  And Chevron's case is really good.

Global warming has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don't know what I am talking about, and so forth. At first, I thought this was just their usual bluster. But then I realized that they are genuinely unaware. Good news is no news, which is why the mainstream media largely ignores all studies showing net benefits of global warming. And academics have not exactly been keen to push such analysis forward. So here follows an entire article on the net benefits of global warming.

The International Monetary Fund has thrown in the towel on emerging markets. After years of talking up the BRICS club of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, it now admits that these countries have either exhausted their catch-up growth models, or run into the time-honored problems of supply bottlenecks and bad government. Yes, China too. The Fund has cut its forecast for the developing economies by 0.5% to 4.5% this year in its latest World Economic Outlook, and by 0.4% to 5.1% next year. The 2013 estimates have been slashed by 1.8% for India, for Mexico by 1.7%, and 1% in Russia, compared to forecasts made in April. Similar damage is expected for Turkey, Indonesia, Ukraine, and others with big trade deficits as details are fleshed out. In what amounts to a mea culpa, the IMF hinted that it had for long been blind to festering problems in the BRICS and mini-BRICs. It said the economies of Brazil, China, and India will be 8% to 14% smaller in 2016 than had been assumed just two years ago, a revision that calls into question some of the giddiest claims that the newcomers will soon surge past the decaying West. But the West, especially Europe's eurozone, is rapidly decaying just the same.

The Republican Party of John McCain and Mitt Romney lost two presidential elections, the second to a weak candidate in a weak economy. Left to its own devices, it will lose the next presidential election and all the following ones. By picking a fight on Obama's least popular position, namely health care, the conservative wing of the party led by Ted Cruz galvanized the party base and forced the House leadership into a fight. In a recent poll, the Gallup organization found that just 22% of Americans expected Obamacare to improve their family's health situation, while 47% expected it to make it worse. As my old partner Jude Wanniski used to say, the electorate is like a diamond, waiting to be cut at exactly the right spot. Ted Cruz pointed the chisel correctly. It well may be true that shutting down the government hurts the Republicans in the short run. That is immaterial; there is no way to get from here to there except by making a stand against Obamacare. There is no downside, for the Republican Party as presently configured already is a guaranteed loser. A reinvigorated conservative leadership has a chance of leading the party to victory.

Most everyone has seen the nature documentaries of Sir David Attenborough and is familiar with his name. Publicizing his imminent new series about the evolution of animals, Sir David said in an interview last week that he thought a reduction in human population during this century is impossible and "we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse." People will look back in another 100 years "at a world that was less crowded, full of natural wonders, and healthier." His is a common view. He longs for people to enjoy the open spaces and abundant herds of game that he has been fortunate enough to see. To that end he thinks it vital that there should be fewer of us. I would now passionately disagree with the two premises of his argument. It's actually quite likely, rather than impossible, that population will be falling by the end of this century and it is also quite likely that the people alive then will have lots more wilderness to explore and wildlife to admire than today. The facts that show this and disprove Sir David are fascinating.

If any business were to submit a prospectus as patently false and deliberately dishonest as the ones used to advance the cause of the global warming industry, its directors would all be in prison by now. One candidate for prison would be whoever tweets under the name @BarackObama. When he Tweeted: "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous" he was promulgating a demonstrable untruth. No one has ever doubted that climate changes. Pretty much everyone - probably more than 97 per cent, even - agrees that there is a degree of anthropogenic input, even it's just the barely measurable contribution of beef cattle farts or the heat produced by cities. But the dangerous bit? No one has come even close to demonstrating it, there is no reliable evidence for it, and very few scientists - certainly far, far fewer than 97 per cent of them - would ever stake their reputations on such a tendentious claim. So how do the eco-swine go on getting away with it? Jamie Whyte provides a fascinating, erudite and original answer in his new paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs: Quack Policy - Abusing Science in the Name of Paternalism. 

Contrary to what you may have heard, there is no "bee-pocalypse." There is lots of alarmist talk about "colony collapse disorder," people are blaming pesticides and talking about hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. But a closer look tells a very different story. Yes, honeybees are dying in above-average numbers, but the most likely cause is the varroa destructor mite and associated viruses. Moreover, if you look at the actual numbers, they undermine much of the catastrophic rhetoric. In the United States, where we have good data, beekeepers have adapted to CCD. Colony numbers were higher in 2010 than any year since 1999. The beekeepers are not passive victims. Yet, scare stories abound. We are being warned that "bee deaths may have reached a crisis point for crops," and some commentators go as far as invoking an impending "bee-pocalypse" or a "bee-mageddon." They fondly  employ a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live." The implication seems to be that if the smartest guy on the planet was alarmed, we should be too. However, the quote seems to have been made up, first appearing in 1994 in a pamphlet distributed by French beekeepers, protesting the high cost of sugar for feeding bees and opposing a proposed reduction of tariffs on imported honey.