Today’s links to interesting news and analysis, collected from around the Internet. If you find this useful, pass it to a friend or colleague.
- “Dear Voters: Find Another $6 Billion“, John Myers, KQED, 24 March 2010 — Voters’ fantasies about the budget deficit.
- About the urban farming: “The Problem With Little Teeny Farms“, Nathan Lewis, 28 March 2010
- “Default settings“, The Economist, 31 March 2010 — “Sovereign defaults do not typically lead to economic catastrophe. How much comfort should that give?”
- Another shockwave; how much should we spend to mitigate its effects? “When will a Mediterranean tsunami hit Italy?“, New Scientist, 1 April 2010
- Revelation of the blindingly obvious: “Breaking the Banks“, Christopher Hayes, The Nation, 1 April 2010 — If banks aren’t fighting the financial regulatory bill tooth and nail, then you know the reform isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
- Advice that we should listen to: “How will US savings rate rise if you don’t penalize consumption?“, Michael Pettis (Prof, U Peking), 2 April 2010 — The current plan is resume the consumer borrow & spend policy.
- Rebuttal to an astonishingly dumb article: “An Absurdist Take On ‘Both Sides’“, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Senior Editor), blog of The Atlantic, 2 April 2010 — Even conservatives like to draw false equivalences, a substitute for thought. That Lane put the ex-slaves name in quotes was a nice touch, highlighting his thinking more than his actual words.
- The source of his astonishing resiliance: “Banking on Chalabi“, Aram Roston, The Nation, 12 April 2010 –“What is the secret to Ahmad Chalabi’s success in Iraq? Some say it lies in his close family ties to the country’s leading banks.”
- First class analysis of Afghanistan: “Legitimation Crisis in Afghanistan“, William R. Polk, The Nation, 19 April 2010
- Update: Rebuttal to Polk’s analysis: “Basics, People“, Joshua Foust, Registan, 3 April 2010
Today’s feature story: the master plan of the Left to take over America!
- Here it is “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty“, Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, The Nation, 2 May 1966
- How this became a conspiracy theory that helps unite the Tea Party movement: “The Mad Tea Party“, Richard Kim, The Nation, 12 April 2010