BusinessWeek

At some point in the coming months, the confrontation between the West and Iran over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program may reach a breaking point. Even assuming the two sides manage to avoid full-fledged military conflict, the crisis could still cause significant disruption to the world economy. An embargo against Iranian oil exports, or a move by Iran’s leaders to close the Straits of Hormuz—or both—could send the price of oil soaring and jeopardize the re-election hopes of leaders from Paris to Washington.

“The conventional wisdom and the general fear is right, that some Republicans, and some of the most important Republicans with the loudest microphones, are digging a very big hole for themselves that's going to be hard to get out of,” said Tamar Jacoby ...

By historical measures, there’s really not all that much to be angry about. Since 1981, the proportion of the developing world living in extreme poverty has fallen from 50 percent to less than 20 percent, according to the United Nations. Infant mortality is down across the board; the number of girls in school is up. Terrorists and tyrants get their comeuppance with toe-tapping regularity. The chances of dying in war have never been lower. In 2011, the 7 billionth person was born into a world that’s richer, healthier, and safer than at any time in history.

The 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place this month in Durban, South Africa. Two things to note: First, climate change shows no sign of abating; second, it’s the 17th meeting. This was also the Seventh Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement that legally binds some countries to agreed reductions in their greenhouse-gas emissions. The flaw in Kyoto is that it binds none of the world’s three largest polluters, which are responsible for nearly half of all emissions. The U.S.

The three experts are Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University professor who was President Ronald Regan's chief economic adviser; Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; and Daniel Feenberg, a research associate at ...

On Nov. 2, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke confidently predicted that in 2012, the U.S. economy will grow at a rate of 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent. A few months earlier Bernanke predicted that the economy would expand 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent next year. A few months before that, the Fed projected growth in 2012 to be somewhere between 3.5 percent and 4.2 percent.

These shifting forecasts tell us two things: The U.S. continues to experience excruciatingly slow growth, and economists continue to have little success predicting it.

... I came to the conclusion that I'd support it. It would have been easier to just go along with the surge from the beginning. I'm glad I didn't. By the time we undertook the decision to go forward, it was a better decision. — As told to Romesh Ratnesar.

It is now a foregone conclusion that China’s economy will become the biggest in the world sometime very soon. According to the World Bank, the size of China’s economy is $10.1 trillion, compared with $14.6 trillion for the U.S., based on purchasing power parity (which adjusts exchange rates to account for the different prices people pay for goods and services across countries). But China is narrowing the gap in a hurry. Over the past 10 years, the annual real growth of China’s gross domestic product averaged 10.5 percent, compared with 1.7 percent in the U.S.

But as Shannon Brownlee reported in her book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer: “The company sold billions of dollars' worth of Vioxx over the four and a half years the drug was on the market, most of it after worries ...

With more than 14 million Americans out of work and the U.S. facing the prospect of a double-dip recession, it’s heartening to know that Democrats and Republicans agree on at least one way to kick-start growth: support small business. “Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin,” President Barack Obama said in his Sept. 8 address to Congress, unveiling a $447 billion jobs bill.