The Week of April 22, 2026

 
Euro symbol in front of the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

Care
1. Austerity Paper Discredited 
The past week has not been good for supporters of austerity policies as the flaws in the Reinhart-Rogoff paper made known last Monday have now become heavily publicized. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published the working paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” in January 2010, and over time it became the academic foundation for those supporting austerity in the US and EU. The paper concluded that government debt equal to over 90 percent of the GDP resulted in notably less growth. While influential, a Ph.D candidate student at the University of Massachusetts discovered that the paper had several faults, one of which was a simple Excel error. The critique he published may now be just as famous as Reinhart-Rogoff itself.

The apparent refutation of the academic report is being celebrated by critics of austerity in both the EU and US. It is a very public strike against a controversial policy. However, the critique of Reinhart-Rogoff does not mean the end of austerity. While heavily endorsed by supporters of cutting government spending, the paper had always caused controversy in the field of economics. Furthermore, most of the actors who enacted austerity programs were in place or had their fiscal views set before Reinhart-Rogoff became widely known. There will still be supporters of austerity in government after the critique of the paper, just as there were before it existed. However, the thrashing it has received may be a sign that austerity is losing some popularity.

2. STOCK Act Defanged
After outcry from both sides of the aisle, particularly from the left, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act was brought to a vote to decide if insider trading for elected officials was going to be outlawed. The STOCK Act has already passed last year, with citizens seeing this as the end of the debate. However, the Senate recently and quietly passed a bill to gut the act, dramatically limiting the power of the bill. Originally the STOCK Act would require even high-ranking federal employees to disclose their personal financial information online. The recently passed modification revokes this part of the law and roughly 28,000 senior officials that were supposed to be affected are now in the clear.

President Obama further angered his progressive support base by signing this new modification into law and sweeping this news into the Friday White House press conference, which is a newsdump for stories the administration wants to be ignored over the weekend. Congress repeatedly cited reasons of individual security to justify ending the requirement for senior officials. As a result, any information about staffers, lobbyists, or other workers on the Hill is not closed from Congress, it’s just that Congress can no longer trade this information amongst themselves.

3. Ethnic Unrest in Western China
Even with China’s strict system of governance and ability to quiet dissidents, in a nation of 1.2 billion people there is room in the cage for a rattle. The promotion of local governors in the party system for quietly and successfully managing provinces illustrates the Chinese emphasis on keeping the peace. Civil unrest, like the recent ethnic conflict between the Muslim Uighur and the majority Han population in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang is something that the Chinese government tries its best to cover up.

Recently, Uighur protests against discrimination from Han Chinese have led to violent riots and ethnic clashes which have caused casualties and made the streets of the capital city Urumqi dangerous. Han Chinese gangs retaliated against the Uighurs and innocent civilians of both groups have been beaten or stabbed to death. Xinjiang Province is 45 percent Uighur, and many Uighurs believe recent Han Chinese immigration to the region has been changing the local way of life and led to discrimination against them.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese government and media have put the blame for this unrest on foreign Muslim terrorists that are in some ways connected with Chechen rebel groups and Al-Qaeda. This accusation is rooted in Communist Party attempts to convince both their own people and outsiders that Chinese society is united and single-party rule has created a egalitarian nation. Furthermore, it may look for Western support, or at least apathy, by claiming to fight a common enemy in Islamist extremists. The civil and political unrest that sneaks out to Western media outlets seems to prove otherwise.

4. Terror Plot Foiled in Canada
A joint operation between the FBI and Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police foiled two Canadian residentspurported to have planned a train track bombing. The accused, a Ph.D student in the sciences and a permanent resident with refugee status, are said to have trained with Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran before plotting together in 2012. Interestingly, the operation spun out of a warning from a Muslim leader in Toronto. The FBI and the RCMP continue to look for persons of interest, and the two arrests were made early against the FBI's concerns. It is not the first time that the RCMP tackled Islamic extremists; in 2006 it prominently cracked down on the "Toronto 18," militants planning to bomb Parliament and behead the Prime Minister.

Canada, with its liberal refugee laws and consistent influx of Middle Eastern immigrants, has a vocal minority who seeks to fill their lives with meaning through radical faith. However, instead of pumping funds into surveillance, the RCMP adopted a strategy of cooperation with the Muslim community; after Canada did little to protect citizens Omar Khadr and Maher Arar from American detention, the federal police faced skepticism not only from Muslims but also from the judicial system. Since then, Canadian imams have been involved in dialogue with the RCMP due to the benefits of surveying their communities for radical individuals. Compare this approach to that of the FBI, who began an outreach program that ended upa spying operation. In the U.S. a legal system more deferent to the executive has stood idle to breaches of civil liberties, while in Canada a system with reversed priorities has led to more arrests and less crimes.

5. France Approves Gay Marriage
This Tuesday, France finally passed legislation legalizing gay marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples.This latter piece of the proposal, which may seem like a minor issue to an American audience caught up with the marriage debate, was actually the more hotly debated of the two. In France, civil unions or single individuals cannot adopt children, and so the effect of the loss of the traditional family structure on child rearing is a controversial topic.

The formation and passage of the bill seems likely to become a defining element of the Hollande socialist government, which campaigned on the issue. It has also provoked significant backlash across the country. Protests have been numerousand large, even now after the success of the bill. In March, 300,000 protesters marched on the Arc de Triomphe, and in April the situation turned violent when several gay bars were attacked.

France is the 14th country to approve gay marriage. Hollande called his victory an  "irreversible movement of history" but his opponents have already formulated an appeal to the Constitutional Council in a final effort to protest the law.

Don’t Care
0. PolitiFact Checks Cartoons
Recently, the political fact checking site, PolitiFact, ran an article claiming that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie lied when he told a four-year-old that his favorite show when he was four was Scooby Doo—how could that be possible when Scooby Doo didn’t first air until Christie was seven? While PolitiFact serves an important function, it clearly has missed the mark with this specific article. PolitiFacts’ purpose is to keep the public aware of any lies or distortions that a politician has told, but this story is more adorable than muckraking. While probably an attempt at levity during a time filled with bombings, chemical weapons, and divided government, PolitiFact should still be careful not to confuse itself with BuzzFeed. It is important for an independent source to verify whether politicians are telling the truth, but by making a big deal over an off the cuff remark about cartoons, Politifact is at risk of making it seem like it cares more about number of clicks rather than credibility.