Those were the words spoken by John M. Youngdahl, senior economist at Goldman Sachs, after he was tipped off before the official announcement that the US Treasury would stop selling 30-year bonds. Those words could mean a penalty of a quarter million dollars and 33-41 months in jail. After Youngdahl’s words, Goldman Sachs bought almost $318 million in bonds in eight minutes.
Yi Gang, director of the Monetary Policy Department of the People’s Bank of China, admitted that the quick growth in credit was despite the central bank’s precautionary measures. He cautioned that excess lending, if not effectively checked, may lead to serious problems to undermine the entire Chinese economy development:
The Christian Science Monitor runs an interesting report on the absurd attempt by the voters of San Francisco to raise wages by government fiat. The new mandate is for $8.50 per hour. The owner of one restaurant says that he’ll raise wages but only by cutting into employees’ benefits.
Bioethicist Garrett James Hardin, who coined the term “tragedy of the commons,” passed away this September at the age of 88. In his now famous 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin describes how common, i.e., public, property, is overused until it deteriorates or is destroyed.
Bush foreign policy ‘creates risks for US companies’ (FinTimes): “US multinational companies are “acutely worried” about the business consequences of Bush administration foreign policy, according to a new report from Control Risks, a UK-based international security consultancy.
A friend took me to hear a lecture given by Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen on ‘Democracy and Globalization’ — which contained little enough about ‘globalization’ — and whose insights on democracy were of the order that idea that we were ‘racist’ to think Europeans were largely responsible, en masse, for spreading the worship of that great secular god, since the ‘Visigoths who gave rise to the Germans’ knew nothing of 5th century BC Athens ......!
Drudge links to Government Outgrows Cap Set by President (Washington Post): “Confounding President Bush’s pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.
Daniel Drezner at Slate caused a splash by supposedly debunking the study by the Center for Public Integrity (Windfalls of War) that claims to show Bush administration favoritism in Iraq contracts for campaign donors. Robert Murphy has now debunked the debunker.
[Originally published November 11, 2003.]
