links for 2008-10-13

• Wall Street's Lemmings - TNR
• The Trust Crunch: Financial Page - James Surowiecki
• Economist Irving Fischer Talking Stocks From 1929 - Paul Kedrosky
• How to capitalise the banks and save finance - George Soros
• What happened — further reflections - The Rational Optimist
• Williamson versus the Washington consensus? - Growth Commission Blog
• Problems with suspending mark-to-market accounting rules - Vox EU
• OHSU to halt expansion due to financial climate - Register-Guard
• Action plan - my foot - Willem Buiter
• The Engine of Mayhem - Robert J. Samuelson
• $700 Billion? So What? - knzn
• The Duelling Guarantee - Arnold Kling
• Ben Stein Watch: October 12, 2008 - Felix Salmon

Comments

[hari]

For those still not awake (yet) Paul Krugman nominated 2008
Noble Economic Laureate!

Lots of congratulations Paul!

[anne]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-see-george-w.html

October 13, 2008

You see: George W. Bush was greatly successful in winning hearts and minds of the Arab people through skillful campaigns of "public diplomacy." Here, Henry Kissinger (a close adviser to John McCain) provides advice on how to win hearts and minds of the Iranian people: "So the challenge for us is this: If one were to talk to an Iranian who is not seduced by visions of Islamic universality, one could say, you criticize us for our relations with the shah, but you misunderstand what that relationship was. That was a tribute to Iran." *

* http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2937

-- As'ad AbuKhalil

[Alex Tolley]

OCTOBER 13, 2008, 10:39 A.M. ET

Paul Krugman Wins the Nobel Economics Prize
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM -- Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel economics prize on Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.
2008 Nobel Prizes

Mr. Krugman was the lone winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised Mr. Krugman for formulating a new theory to answer questions about free trade.

"What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions," the academy said in its citation. "He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography," it said.

The award, known as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is the last of the six Nobel prizes announced this year and is not one of the original Nobels. It was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Nobel's memory.

In addition to his work as an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he has been since 2000, Mr. Krugman also writes about politics and inequality in the U.S. and other topics for The New York Times.

Commenting on the global economic meltdown, he told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone from the U.S. that some of his research was linked to currency crises and related issues.

"This is terrifying," he said, comparing it to the financial crisis that gripped Asia in the 1990s. He said winning the Nobel award won't change his approach to research and writing. "The prize will enhance visibility," he said, "but I hope it does not lead me into going to a lot of purely celebratory events, aside from the Nobel presentation itself."

The citation said Mr. Krugman's approach is based on the premise that many goods and services can be produced at less cost in long series, a concept known as economies of scale. His research showed the effects of that on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press

[Alex Tolley]

Congratulations to PK.

[anne]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2008/10/indeed-idea-of-married-men-cooking-for.html

October 13, 2008

"Indeed, the idea of married men cooking for their wives is viewed in Iran as highly eccentric." * Yes, unlike how things are in the West, where men cook and clean the homes. And then this: "But the official Iranian concept of equality is very different from that understood by Western feminists". Yes, please inform us of the Western notion of equality? Was that the notion that drove the US to invade and occupy Afghanistan? And don't you like it how when Western media speak about women in other countries they make it sound as if Western men are all radical feminists?

* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7657810.stm

-- As'ad AbuKhalil

[anne]

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80883

October 13, 2008

Influx of Migrants Strains Resources - Official
By IRIN

SANAA - The continuous influx of African migrants into Yemen is straining the country's resources.

"This continuous influx has caused concern for the Yemeni government. Their big numbers exceed Yemen's ability to deal with them. They require a lot of services," Interior Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hayel told IRIN.

The security authorities registered 1,038 new African migrants, including 276 women and eight children, in the first week of October. Sixty-six were Ethiopians and the rest Somalis. "During that period, 90 people died off the Yemeni coast," he said.

The coast guard authorities had impounded some 10 smugglers' boats since 1 October, he added.

In one of the worst recent incidents, over 80 would-be African migrants drowned in the Gulf of Aden on 8 October after being dumped 10km off the Yemeni coast, according to Hussein Hajji, the Somali consul in the port city of Aden.

"Over 80 went missing and are presumed dead. Thirty-eight bodies were found on 10 October in two different coastal areas," Hajji told IRIN.

He said only 60 passengers made it ashore. "Passengers had to swim a long way and many couldn't make it," he said.

Hajji attributed the increasing number of migrants to calm seas, and instability and insecurity in the Horn of Africa.

According to Hayel, the main points of arrival are Ahwar in the southern governorate of Abyan; Rajoum in Shabwa Governorate; Baroum in Hadhramaut; and Dhubab on the Red Sea. Very few enter through Aden, he said.

Automatic refugee status for Somalis

Yemen has signed the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its related 1967 Protocol and has received thousands of African migrants since 1991. Somalis are given automatic refugee status, while non-Somalis (mostly Ethiopians and Eritreans) have to apply to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for refugee status.

There are about 800,000 people from the Horn of Africa, mainly Somalia, in Yemen, according to Hayel. The UNHCR office in Yemen said there were 113,000 African refugees, mostly Somalis, registered in Yemen at the end of 2007.

According to the UNHCR, so far this year, about 32,000 Africans have arrived in Yemen; at least 230 have died and 365 went missing.

In 2007, 29,500 Africans arrived in Yemen and over 1,400 died while trying to cross the Gulf of Aden.

Over 5,000 without shelter

....

[anne]

People who are displaced in poorer regions have seldom in recent years been able to recover in any reasonable fashion, and there is absolutely no sign of this changing while displacement has been a continually growing regional problem in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and surrounding effected countries. This is another but little attended to effect of war, and the numbers involed are above 1 million simply from Somalia from the war we fostered in December 2006.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/opinion/13krugman.html?ex=1276315200&en=2017e619329d5716&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 13, 2005

One Nation, Uninsured
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Harry Truman tried to create a national health insurance system. Public opinion was initially on his side: Jill Quadagno's book "One Nation, Uninsured" tells us that in 1945, 75 percent of Americans favored national health insurance. If Truman had succeeded, universal coverage for everyone, not just the elderly, would today be an accepted part of the social contract.

But Truman failed. Special interests, especially the American Medical Association and Southern politicians who feared that national insurance would lead to racially integrated hospitals, triumphed.

Sixty years later, the patchwork system that evolved in the absence of national health insurance is unraveling. The cost of health care is exploding, the number of uninsured is growing, and corporations that still provide employee coverage are groaning under the strain.

So the time will soon be ripe for another try at universal coverage. Public opinion is already favorable: a 2003 Pew poll found that 72 percent of Americans favored government-guaranteed health insurance for all.

But special interests will, once again, stand in the way. And the big debate among would-be reformers is how to deal with those interests, especially the insurance companies. These companies played a secondary role in Truman's failure but have since become a seemingly invincible lobby.

Let's ignore those who believe that private medical accounts - basically tax shelters for the healthy and wealthy - can solve our health care problems through the magic of the marketplace. The intellectually serious debate is between those who believe that the government should simply provide basic health insurance for everyone and those proposing a more complex, indirect approach that preserves a central role for private health insurance companies.

A system in which the government provides universal health insurance is often referred to as "single payer," but I like Ted Kennedy's slogan "Medicare for all." It reminds voters that America already has a highly successful, popular single-payer program, albeit only for the elderly. It shows that we're talking about government insurance, not government-provided health care. And it makes it clear that like Medicare (but unlike Canada's system), a U.S. national health insurance system would allow individuals with the means and inclination to buy their own medical care.

The great advantage of universal, government-provided health insurance is lower costs. Canada's government-run insurance system has much less bureaucracy and much lower administrative costs than our largely private system. Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private insurance. The reason is that single-payer systems don't devote large resources to screening out high-risk clients or charging them higher fees. The savings from a single-payer system would probably exceed $200 billion a year, far more than the cost of covering all of those now uninsured.

Nonetheless, most reform proposals out there - even proposals from liberal groups like the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress - reject a simple single-payer approach. Instead, they call for some combination of mandates and subsidies to help everyone buy insurance from private insurers.

Some people, not all of them right-wingers, fear that a single-payer system would hurt innovation. But the main reason these proposals give private insurers a big role is the belief that the insurers must be appeased.

That belief is rooted in recent history. Bill Clinton's health care plan failed in large part because of a dishonest but devastating lobbying and advertising campaign financed by the health insurance industry - remember Harry and Louise? And the lesson many people took from that defeat is that any future health care proposal must buy off the insurance lobby.

But I think that's the wrong lesson. The Clinton plan actually preserved a big role for private insurers; the industry attacked it all the same. And the plan's complexity, which was largely a result of attempts to placate interest groups, made it hard to sell to the public. So I would argue that good economics is also good politics: reformers will do best with a straightforward single-payer plan, which offers maximum savings and, unlike the Clinton plan, can easily be explained....

[anne]

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/just-stress-more-often-diagnosed-in-women/

October 13, 2008

Women’s Heart Symptoms Often Blamed on Stress
By Tara Parker-Pope

Signs of heart disease are more likely to be blamed on stress when the patient is a woman, new research shows.

In two studies, 230 family doctors and internists were shown sample cases of a 47-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman. The ages of the patients reflect an equal risk for heart disease. Half the vignettes included sentences indicating the patient had recently experienced a stressful life event or appeared anxious. The doctors read the case and offered a diagnosis and treatment recommendations.

When the case study involved standard heart symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath and irregular heart beat, there was no difference in the doctor’s advice for the man or the woman. However, when stress was included as a symptom, gender differences emerged. The presence of stress changed the way doctors interpreted a woman’s symptoms, prompting them to suggest psychological factors rather than physical causes. But the presence of stress didn’t change the way men were assessed.

When stress was listed as a symptom, only 15 percent of the doctors diagnosed heart disease in women, compared to 56 percent for men. Only 30 percent of the doctors referred the women to a cardiologist, compared to 62 percent for men, and 13 percent suggested medication for women, compared to 47 percent for men.

The findings, presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics scientific symposium, could help explain why there is often a delay in the assessment of women with heart disease, said Dr. Alexandra J. Lansky, a cardiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.

[anne]

"Women’s Heart Symptoms Often Blamed on Stress"

Sort of like women and and mathematical monsters who threaten them being women and all. Me, I am stressed just knowing all this stress I am under.