Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Cash troubles in Afghanistan…

I have a student in Afghanistan. He reports that capital flows are disrupting business there. He says that foreign and domestic money is leaving the country. The most important thing he tells me is that businesses are not paying wages. Many businesses have not paid wages in the past 3 months. He says that many […]

Propane, drying corn, and cold winter

RB Energy describes the problems with commercial and residential propane markets: We’ve been talking a lot over the past year about the need for increasing exports to balance the U.S propane market as growth in production from gas processing plants outruns domestic demand.  U.S. propane production from gas processing has increased by over 100 Mb/d […]

Paul Krugman vs. … um … me. [Updated.]

No, no; of course, I don’t mean that Paul Krugman has expressly disputed something I wrote here on AB.  Or that he has ever read a post of mine.  Or that he knows that I exist.  Those latter two things have happened, but only in my dreams. The first of those has never happened at […]

Guest post: Affairs, Domestic and Foreign

by Joseph Joyce Affairs, Domestic and Foreign Raghuram Rajan, ex- faculty member of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, ex-head of the research department of the IMF research head, and currently Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (its central bank), set off a storm of comment when he warned of […]

Just Go Read

As I said on Facebook, it appears that Tim Armstrong—who got paid $12 million last year alone as CEO of the dead-on-its-feet AOL—is even more of an asshole than anyone previously believed. The pull quote: Until the morning I woke up in labor, every exam indicated that our daughter was perfectly healthy. In fact, had […]