The Wintry Economics of the Arab Spring  Most of the coverage of
the turmoil in Egypt and Syria (the latter of which has
decreased in proportion to an increase in coverage of the
former) focuses on political, religious, and social factors.
These are all obviously important. But once you read David P.
Goldman‘s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the economic
underpinnings of the Arab revolutions, you may see things
differently. A few key excerpts:   This is the crucial
background to understanding the state failure in Egypt and civil
war in Syria. It may not be within America’s power to reverse
their free falls; the best scenario for the U.S. is to manage
the chaos as best it can.     Assad‘s belated attempt to reverse
course [with his water-management program] triggered the current
political crisis, the economist Paul Rivlin wrote in a March
2011 report for Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center: “By
2007, 12.3 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty
and the poverty rate had reached 33 percent