Somehow it seems like DC is growing ever more brazenly and unusually insular and self-congratulatory: Bush Honors 3 Ex-Officials Instrumental to Iraq Policy: a killer, and spook, and an enforcer of martial law.
Writing in the Asia Times, Andrei Lankov, Australian National University, tells the remarkable story of how North Korea is making the transition from socialist-made famine in the 1990s to a de facto market economy. It began with a slight relaxation in domestic travel permits, and the propensity of officials to take a bribe.
In this interesting Wired article (which I discovered at Marginalrevolution.com), we learn of a new approach to road design: Anarchy is good! The fewer road signs, the safer people drive.
A nicely sardonic note by Edmund Andrews: “Those who imply that stocks can promise higher returns without higher risk are essentially arguing that Social Security can be fixed with a huge exchange of paper. If that is the government’s strategy, people should by all means push for the right to shift all their payroll taxes to personal accounts and invest the money in gold.”
An ongoing issue in the U.S. has been controversy over the traditional Christmas time display of crèches on public property, (a crèche is a representation of the birth of Jesus often using statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph). Some find this objectionable and sue or pass laws to stop it. Others feel like these legal measures represent the thin end of a wedge to drive Christianity out of public life altogether.
Recent developments in the global economy—specifically, higher skilled foreign workers, lower costs of capital movement, and improved communications—have apparently undermined “the” case for free trade, one of the most bedrock conclusions of orthodox economics. In previous articles (1 and 2) I have restated the case in light of the specific concerns raised by economist Paul Craig Roberts. In
