• Especially relevant for those who think low-interest rates cure recessions: Japanese economy at a standstill. All euphemisms aside, the R-word is finally being used with reference to Germany: “German economy has slipped into recession.”      
• The New York Times business page headlines th

It was only a matter of time: US attempts to confiscate citizens’ guns in Iraq. Meanwhile, barbarism is what the US victory  in Iraq has wrought. 

“The Pacific Northwest is known for Microsoft, Intel, lattes, breathtaking natural beauty, alternative music, rain, stock-option millionaires and Ichiro Suzuki. We do not associate this forward-looking, entrepreneurial region with economic distress,” says E.J. Dionne. 

“The 100 or so former military officers standing in the midday sun didn’t look like much of a menace. But the threat was there: Pay up, or else,” reports Robert Collier. 

Japan Today runs a meditation by Charles Olson entitled “Why Isn’t Japan Broke?” It includes this welcome observation, implying an Austrian-like understanding: “many things have delayed the facing of the music and extended the downside. Politicians are the major authors of delaying tactics to resist drastic solutions, preferring schemes to prop up prices or limiting the amount of write-downs.

• Karen Kwiatkowski today on LewRockwell.com points out that the New York Times handled its plagiarism problem with “a kind of accountability that makes a newspaper great, and keeps it vibrant.” She further contrasts the NYT’s meritorious response to that the of US government during the war on Iraq, in which which lie after lie was exposed but never admitted.     
• More 

In that Rediff.com item, Sudhir Mulji tells the following story: “That during the period of sustained unemployment Kahn asked Hayek the question: ‘Is it your view that if I went out tomorrow and bought a new overcoat, it would increase unemployment?’ Hayek: ‘Yes, but it would take a very long mathematical argument to explain why.’”