Today’s Polls Bush ratings up after Saddam capture. Jackson gets boost in new opinion poll Was the capture of Saddam good for Michael Jackson’s image too? AB

Inflation Still Falling This news surprised most economists: today’s release of the November CPI showed a fall in prices of .2%. The core rate, excluding food and energy, showed a fall in prices of .1%. The 12-month inflation rate in the US has now fallen to 1.20% (see this graph for context). Those economists would […]

Closer to a Yuan Revaluation? Back in August, I wrote that a rise in inflation in China might make the Chinese government more inclined to revalue the yuan against the dollar. Part of Stephen Roach’s commentary this week suggests that that time might be getting closer: Meanwhile, there has been an important shift in the […]

Does This Rule Out Dean-Clark ’04? Salon recently interviewed Wesley Clark, and asked him about the possible “dream team” Democratic ticket against Bush: [J]ust 48 hours before before the capture of Saddam Hussein outside of Tikrit, Clark made his strongest statement to date about why a Dean-Clark ticket is a bad idea. Clark, who says […]

Ugly, Ugly Fratricide This is not pretty. And one wonders why the Republicans have gained such complete control over the US’s political system, given that the majority of American’s are closer to Democrats than Republicans on the issues… Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, had billed his speech here to the Pacific Council on […]

Guest Blogging Just a reminder: Kash and I are looking for guest-bloggers from 12/20 to 1/7 (I’ll be blogging through the end of the year, then taking a week off. Kash is off for 2.5 weeks.) Happily, we have one great guest so far (the much anticipated unveiling will come at the end of this […]

It’s Your Children’s Money. Quick! Keep Taking It! Here’s the new fiscal responsibility plan: cut the deficit in half by 2009. Maybe. There’s a major caveat: In an interview Friday, Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the White House budget office, said Bush would halve the deficit “by pursuing very aggressively his pro-growth economic policies, and […]

Good News The latest news is that Saddam Hussein may have been captured. Clearly, that would be unambiguously good news. But it leads me to wonder whether the opposition is driven by pro-Saddam loyalty or anti-American sentiment. If the former, then things could take a turn for the better; if the latter, then we’re likely […]

Yet Another Miserable Failure From today’s Washington Post: KIRKUSH, Iraq, Dec. 12 — More than half the men in the first unit to be trained for the new Iraqi army have abandoned their jobs because of low pay, inadequate training, faulty equipment, ethnic tensions and other concerns, leaving the nascent 1st Battalion dramatically understaffed just […]

How Do You Decide on a New Constitution? It’s not easy. Just take a look at what the EU is going through this weekend as they try to write their first Europe-wide constitution. The biggest issue is how much representation in the Council of Ministers to give to each country. They have to be careful […]