Devika Patel

Devika Patel, a native New Yorker, writes about finance for people who like that sort of thing. She moved to Tennessee ten years ago and still considers the South more foreign than Europe

Losing the Great Game in Afghanistan

Ten years ago, I watched the Twin Towers fall. A San Francisco Examiner headline the next day summed up my feelings fairly well: “Bastards!” Of course we had to fight back. I thought there’d be a bit of a scuffle, much like the first Gulf War, and we’d be done with the whole affair in a few ...

A Fiscal Quarrel Called The Civil War

Confederates are a misunderstood bunch. April marked 150 years since the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, launching the Civil War. Though hostilities didn’t last half as long as Vietnam or even our current Afghan skirmish, it’s the war that killed the most Americans and also is believed ...