Author Archives: mkevane

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of Puerto Rico to junk status on Tuesday, intensifying a cash squeeze for the commonwealth, whose financial condition is of outsize importance to the rest of the United States because its debt is widely … Continue reading →

The lyrics are here.

S&P cut a slew of Puerto Rico bonds to junk territory ahead of a press conference by Gov. Padilla today after the market closes, according to the rating agency’s website. via Reorg Research Intelligence Alert

I am teaching Econ 3, our introduction to international economics and development here at Santa Clara University.  I had a student in office hours today. She had spent last quarter in El Salvador on Santa Clara’s Casa de la Solidaridad … Continue reading →

A mysterious plague has manifested in the world’s starfish population, quickly spreading to several regions in which starfish (also called “sea stars”) are found. Starfish afflicted with the disease tear themselves to pieces, the arms crawling in opposite directions until … Continue reading →

In the morning Thursday, we woke up and the wife of the house made us an “aguatia.” Ok, this does not mean a small glass of juice, tea, or water; this means an entire huge meal. So we ate first … Continue reading →

The subject of comic-related-films or film-related-comics had understandably arisen and, when asked, I had ventured my honest opinion that I found something worrying about the fact that the superhero film audience was now almost entirely composed of adults, men and … Continue reading →

We were talking about this at dinner last night, so I just went online to do 5 minutes of research.  My position was confirmed: for the typical non-finance person (like an ordinary university professor), there is no low-information cost product … Continue reading →

Santa Clara County, once known as Valley of Heart\’s delight due to its abundant fruit and vegetable production, has lost almost half of its farmland, much of it to sprawling urban development with little access to healthy foods.This pattern of … Continue reading →

Read “A Mistake” by Akhil Sharma in The New Yorker.  After the last sentence (of a 30 minute read), take a test on generalized empathy for strangers, neighbors, co-ethnics, misanthropes, bullies and snarks.  You’ll be more empathetic than your “self … Continue reading →

In March 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King traveled to West Africa to attend Ghana’s independence ceremony. King’s voyage was symbolic of a growing global alliance of oppressed peoples and was strategically well timed; his … Continue reading →

It’s not at all clear, for starters, that the fetus has a good chance of surviving inside the womb or of flourishing outside of it. In a study of a few dozen cases of continued pregnancies inside brain-dead women, only … Continue reading →

La rumeur avait annoncé le Larlé Naaba Tigré, Victor Tiendrébéogo à l’état civil, démissionnaire du CDP. Il a avait été le seul des 70 députés du groupe parlementaire CDP a n’avoir pas signé la déclaration de soutien au Président du … Continue reading →