A reader sends this link to Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, who argues: “A lopsided world economy has never been so dependent on one growth engine — the United States. Over the seven-year 1995 to 2002 interval, revised figures now indicate that the US accounted for fully 96% of the cumulative increase in world GDP (at market exchange rates); that’s nearly three times America’s 33% share in the global economy.
NY Mulls Extending Smoking Ban to Cars as Protests Mount (CNSnews.com). Inevitably, the ban has given rise to a thriving underground. “The New York Times Monday included a feature on drug dealers turned contraband tobacco dealers on the city streets in the wake of the ban. According to the article, former marijuana pushers make between $100 and $150 per day selling Marlboros and Newports in Harlem.
As I posted at the LRC Blog, if there’s still anyone out there whose interest in Austrian economics has been piqued but who hasn’t pursued the matter, you really need to drop everything and get Gene Callahan’s Economics for Real People.
by Mark Thornton (Mises Institute)
Hurricane Isabel roared onto eastern North Carolina shores in mid-day, September 18, 2003, continuing on into Virginia and north from there. While Isabel was no Hurricane Hugo, the monster storm that demolished Charleston, S.C. back in 1989, it washed up the usual economic fallacies.
Soft Economy Aids Army Recruiting Effort (NYT): The slumping American economy has proved to be a boon to the Army’s efforts to recruit the 100,000 enlisted soldiers it says it needs this year to fill its active-duty and reserve ranks, senior Army officials say, so far relieving concerns that the turmoil in Iraq could crimp new enlistments.... The Army has raised signing bonuses to as much as $20,000 for badly needed positions like intelligence analysts. It has also increased college aid.
