Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC): ”And at the national level, we’ve got Enron accounting galore. The President said two weeks ago on page one of his budget report that we have a $455 billion deficit at the end of next month; that’s when the end of the fiscal year terminates. The truth of the matter is, you turn to page 57 of the report and you’ll see it’s $698 billion.”
George Akerlof interviewed by Spiegel: “Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy. Or we’re going to have to cut back seriously on Medicare and Social Security.... Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting....
Stephen J. Dubner, writing in the New York Times Magazine, pulls off an impressive journalistic accomplishment: an interesting feature article on the economic research of Chicago’s Steven Levitt. Among many interesting passages is this: “Levitt is a populist in a field that is undergoing a bout of popularization. Undergraduates are swarming the economics departments of elite universities.
“Argentines bank on a good time at new debt museum.” And here’s the US National Debt Clock. Note that, according to the clock, since the feds were freed of many restraints in September 2002, they have increased the national debt by an average of $1.72 billion a day. (Courtesy of George Natalino.)
Its states aren’t powerful enough, according to Stephen Haber, Douglass C. North, and Barry R. Weingast in Opinion Journal.
Captured Iraqi “gold” bars turn out to be made of copper and zinc, or so says the Bush administration. It had them tested in Kuwait, since the huge weight difference didn’t alert them. (Courtesy of George P. Zachar.)
Well, the word in any case. “Stable Prices are No Cure-All“ (Christopher Farrell, August 1, 2003): “For the past quarter century, central bankers have preached the virtues of price stability — the elusive, long hoped-for goal, an economic equivalent of the holy grail.
This summer’s City Journal exposes Union U, the latest bogus discipline masquerading as a university department, as if appending the word “studies” to a political advocacy program makes it an subject worthy of academic study. These programs, funded either by state universities or labor unions, give students credit for union organizing and teach classes with a blatantly political bias.
Cnn.com explains why government regulations in France concerning labels on wine are hurting sales in the US. Regulations specify that wine makers use region, not grape variety, on the label. As a result, wines from Chile and Australia are far outselling the French in the hugely important American market--if only because consumers want to understand what it is they are buying.
The article “Prosperity Requires Freedom” (blogged here) is typical of the WSJ’s naiveté about cultural context. It’s this very “innocence,” pinpointed so well by Peter Brimelow, which prompted WSJ editorialist Paul Gigot to venture that a million Zulus would be better immigrants to the US than the same number of Englishmen.
