The word on the street is that Bashar wants to follow the "Chinese model" -- keep tight political control while slowly liberalizing the Syrian economy.
So while the Social Security Administration mails out letters and creates public service announcements, and while Medicare liberalized the eligibility requirements for Extra Help a few years ago, merely informing and reinforming people about the program may not solve this puzzle.
In highly protected economies there is a large effect of capital inflows over the REER, while in liberalized economies the effect can be negligible.
While states had been liberalizing their abortion laws before 1973, they increasingly limited access to abortion after Roe came down.
While the administration tiptoes toward liberalizing federal drug laws, a group of Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans in Congress have taken up Obama's challenge.
Mr. Medvedev has spoken out in favor of liberalizing the political system, while Mr. Putin, who has been criticized by opposition parties as an autocrat, has expressed satisfaction with the current structure.
Countries like Russia and China have little interest in liberalizing their drug policies, while Indonesia spoke out at Tuesday's UNGASS meeting to insist that the UN has no business interfering with its policy of executing some drug traffickers.
Yet, instead, a year later, we're in the crazy situation of paying $5 million in bail to an Egyptian junta to get U.S. democracy workers out of jail there, while likely certifying that this junta is liberalizing and merits another $1.3 billion in arms aid.
Liberalizing the Chinese financial system while rebalancing economic growth toward consumption in the presence of high debt and an overvalued housing market is difficult at best as it could potentially become a systemic threat to financial stability if the easy credit that supports demand runs out of hands.
While the more conservative Republicans genuinely hated the idea of liberalizing the law, Majority Leader Dean Skelos could certainly have rounded up the handful of votes needed to make the change if he'd wanted to.
