Fed Res outright debt holdings + Fed Repos + Foreign CB Custody accts = Total (blns)

End Dec 04 ....... $717.8 ....... $33.0 ....... $1340.3 = ....... $2091.1

End Dec 05 ....... $744.2 ....... $45.3 ....... $1522.0 = ....... $2311.5

Difference .................................................................. $220.4

Outstanding Marketable debt issued by UST

Dec 04 ................................................................. $3943.6

Dec 05 (est) .......................................................... $4164.0

A recent article from the Guardian joins the growing outcry against free trade. Its central message is that countries adopting “neo-liberal” market reforms, recommended by academic economists, have done worse than those countries that ignored the supposed experts and spurned free trade. Every time I reread the article—with the subtitle “A look at Vietnam and Mexico exposes the myth of market liberalization”—I discover more and more fallacies.

Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics.

By Michael J. Sandel. Harvard University Press, 2005. 292 pgs.

Kwame Antony Appiah, in a piece for the NYT Mag designed to be the “it” article of January 2006, says that trade does change culture but it doesn’t erase it; exposure to technology and universal media content improves the good parts of life while discouraging the worst aspects of tradition.

I have some vague memory of a time when the idea of American conservatism had something to do with a suspicion of an omnipotent autocratic state. William Kristol, though, is doing his best to erase that bit of intellectual history. (via Eschaton)

Well, the grouches didn’t ruin it for us, did they? You get it from all sides around this time of the year—”Xmas has become too commercial, too materialistic, lost its spirituality, blah, blah, blah.” At the same time,of course, we also hear a lot of people urging us to be generous, give of ourselves, give to those who are in need, etc.