Which Way the Dollar? The dollar has done pretty well this year, compared to what many people expected. The chart below shows the dollar against the euro over the past two years (expressed as euros per dollar). While the dollar fell throughout most of 2003, so far in 2004 it has mostly held steady, despite […]

The White House Response The White House has responded to all of the attention that the Democratic ticket of Kerry and Edwards has been receiving this week: WASHINGTON – The United States is tightening security in the face of a steady stream of intelligence indicating al-Qaida may seek to mount an attack aimed at disrupting […]

Changing the Tone In comments, Kosh alerts me to yesterday’s gaggle with Mr. Scott McClellan: Q I guess it’s the way you describe the differences. And my question is, what would be out of bounds? What do you consider out of bounds? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I mean, that’s kind of a speculative question, Terry. I […]

John Edwards: Slave to Big Children Giblets on Edwards: He is a trial lawyer! As a trial lawyer Edwards repeatedly stole money from poor corporations to give to greedy children crippled by their products! Do we really need a vice president who is a lackey of Big Children? Giblets thinks not! AB UPDATE: Slacktivist brings […]

Bush’s Trade Protection Extends to Shrimp One might hope that aquafarming would both increase income for Asian suppliers of shrimp as it allows American consumers to enjoy lower prices from this excellent source of nutrition. But the trade protectionists rule the Bush White House: Shrimp, the most popular seafood in America, may become more expensive […]

Labor Versus Leisure in the US and Europe Today’s NY Times has a story about the amount of time off that people in Europe enjoy. The author of the piece seems to detect a reversal of the trend in countries like France and Germany toward working fewer hours. Intentionally or not, the piece is quite […]

About Those Falling Oil Prices We Promised… I guess it turns out that invading Iraq isn’t going to have the effect on oil prices that many of the war’s proponents said it would — looks like oil prices won’t be falling next year after all. At least that’s the only thing regarding the benefits of […]

Edwards as the Anti-Cheney One of the reasons I like Edwards so much as Kerry’s pick for VP is that he makes the perfect anti-Cheney. The way in which this is most obvious is probably in the careers outside of politics that each had. Edwards was a lawyer who spent much of his time and […]

Medicare CalPundit highlights this excerpt from a story on the investigation of Medicare honcho Thomas Scully’s squelching of Richard Foster’s estimate that the Republican Medicare Drug Plan would cost $540 billion rather than the advertised $400 billion: The new report…found that on five occasions between June and October 2003, [Foster’s boss Thomas] Scully blocked the […]

The Cockroach Exchange Rate Index In an earlier post, I noted how Ragout properly criticized this attack post from Don Luskin. But it seems that Brad DeLong felt it was necessary to get some stronger bug spray to finish off what he calls the intellectual cockroach (comparing cockroaches to Luskin strikes me as a but […]