Hypnotic Wow, now this is a story from today’s Guardian that has nothing to do with anything, but is simply bizarre.

Semi-Daily Agreement Brad DeLong also finds the simmering protectionism among IT workers interesting: link. I agree with Brad that, at least in part, this is a reflection of the quintissential (and predictable) rise in protectionist sentiment during economic downturns. The new thing about it this time is the population that’s feeling those anti-trade urges — […]

Rising Interest Rates, Falling Consumer Spending… Looks like yet another down day for bonds, which means another up day for interest rates. The sharpest climb in long-term interest rates in US history is continuing, from about 3.2% to about 4.5% in just two months. (See chart below of the yield on the 10 year government […]

Bush Administration Revises History (Again) This is too good. The White House is going around their websites and adding the word “major” to pages that for the past 3 months have read “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” Here’s the link. After all, why admit you were wrong when you can just […]

Grim Possibilities in Iraq Those of us who talked about the dangers of invading Iraq back in 2002 are — unfortunately — being completely vindicated. In October 2002, at a public talk on the possible economic effects of invading Iraq, I mentioned the probability that the post-war would require hundreds of thousands of US troops […]

The “China Problem” on the Economic Agenda Along similar (trade-related) lines… There’s is an interesting story in CBS MarketWatch about Snow’s trip to China, and the US-China economic relationship more generally. On the surface, maybe it doesn’t seem that interesting to people who aren’t international economists, but there are several things contained in the article […]

International Trade Hits a New Group There an interesting discussion going on on Brad DeLong’s blog about outsourcing to foreign countries. DeLong discusses international trade in general in a nice way, and tries to convince people that trade is good for them. For the record, I generally agree with him about the benefits of international […]

Some Ideas Spread Like a Virus Take a look at this tidbit in today’s Washington Post: Ohio Republicans may take a cue from state legislators in Texas and Colorado and tinker with the lines that shape their congressional districts. Ohio Democrats emerged unscathed from redistricting after the 2000 census when district lines were redrawn to […]

Bush’s Opportunism You have to hand it to him: Bush never lets an opportunity to push his agenda slip by without taking full advantage of it. Last week’s blackout is now apparently a good reason to allow drilling in Alaska. Over the last couple of days Bush has been saying that the blackout proves that […]

Buy Now! Via Atrios, Franken’s book release date is being moved up: So far, the legal action has only helped sell the book, which for the past week has been in the top 10 on Amazon.com. Penguin originally planned a print run of 250,000, but announced Monday that it had ordered an additional 40,000 copies. […]