links for 2007-11-07

• Within the Fed, Resistance to Further Rate Cuts - New York Times
• Citigroup: Too Big to Fail? - William Greider
• Why has healthcare reform failed? - Los Angeles Times
• Republicans paralyze government, blame Democrats - Rick Perlstein
• A little rich (wealth and party ID) - Crooked Timber
• Biofuels can match oil production - Ricardo Hausmann
• Why plutocracy endangers emerging market economies - Martin Wolf
• Why dinosaurs had fowl breath - EurekAlert
• When animals evolve on islands, size doesn't matter - EurekAkert
• Microfinance in the United States - FRB--Bernanke

Comments

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/
http://icga.blogspot.com/

Again, Juan Cole's blog along with the associated scholar's blog is essential for anyone interested in understanding American foreign policy. Columbia's Barnett Rubin happened to be lecturing in Islamabad when national emergency was declared in Pakistan, an event that was easily understood to be forthcoming for weeks, and Rubin's posts are astonishing especially so in comparison to regular media coverage in America.

What is happening in Pakistan, a country of 160 million and critically centered, is of intense importance to Pakastanis and to Americans, and what is happening shows how disastrously uninformed and harful American foreign policy has been. Where we blithefully shocked and awed Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East domino by domino, from Somalia to Pakistan domino by domino our policy has yielded violence and autocracy.

[anne]

So that we understand what the domino theory amounts to as we play as dominos in these surgy months, Iraq has gone from a 500,000 internally displaced people to 2.1 million in a mere 10 months. This is already the bloodiest year for Americans in Iraq even though we have replaced much direct engagement of soldiers for air bombardment, launching 1,140 such bombing in 9 months. Though there have been more than 61,500 American military casualties in Iraq, the media mentions about 28,400 "wounded in combat" when it mentions casualties at all. Last we noticed the estimated excess deaths of Iraqis was 650,000, but that was in June 2006.

From Iraq, the dominos of peace and democracy are obviously spreading through the Middle East though not in any way as to recognized by a sane observer. All the dominos we need to play at for only $2.4 trillion, not counting the price of a barrel of oil.

[anne]

Wish I had remembered to check, but I knew this was coming. * Per capita income in raw dollar terms through the European Union has now matched that of America given the relative loss in value of the dollar. We of course could always start another war and occupay another country just to show what it means to be the best of the best. But, why analysts are forever telling us an Europeans what is wrong with Europe, and while the crazy Franch have elected a fool for President who wants to be American more than French, Europeans are doing remarkably well with, like, peace and health care and free education and all sorts of worker protections. Duh.

* http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/the_poor_house.php

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/falafel/

November 7, 2007

Falafel!
By Paul Krugman

Amazing. *

"The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

"The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area."

* http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002620892

[anne]

Amazing how insane cultivated fear can make us, without making us take measures thsat would make us the least safer but rather the reverse. Me, I will never ever have falafel again and I am thinking seriously of reporting Whole Foods to the FBI for carrying the horrid stuff and threatening our true American for Americans way of life.

[anne]

We have come long way indeed when at the same time as we are finding reasons why we need an Attorney General who does not know when torture is torture and when torture is definitively anti-democratic and immoral beyond compare, at just this time we have come to understand the real threat to America are falafel eaters. Now to take out Iran, having been so successful elsewhere.

[Farrar Richardson]

The above article on the Citigroup problems is not bad, but I think this one has a better analysis. The people at Citi just never knew how to manage risk. This was evident even in the 1960's.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110602145.html?hpid=sec-business