February 2012
1 post
6 tags
“There is, surely, a fundamental difference between lending money to a household,...”
– Buttonwood’s Notebook: “Political Commitment”
January 2012
10 posts
5 tags
“The infuriating thing about this tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary....”
– Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times: “The Austerity Debacle”
9 tags
5 tags
“In 1643 Fang Yizhi, a Chinese scholar, wrote that smoking tobacco for too long...”
– “Yunnan’s Tobacco Boom: Poisonous Gift”
6 tags
7 tags
“Politically, however, the problem is that Mr. Hester is working for a (largely)...”
– Buttonwood’s Notebook: “How Can You Judge a Bank CEO?”
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4 tags
“Early on in the era of New Labour, it is claimed, Mr. Prescott was due at a...”
– Bagehot’s Notebook: “Seen and Thus Believed: Britain Falls Back in Love With Its Dutiful, Tireless Monarch”
6 tags
“Fix the value of money and the burden of adjustment falls on other parts of the...”
– Buttonwood’s Notebook: “How Fixed Would a Gold Standard Actually Be?”
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“For Mr. Salmond to act dismayed by anti-English grumbling requires a degree of...”
– Bagehot’s Notebook: “Alex Salmond, Little Englander”.
October 2011
1 post
5 tags
“It is a little like a group of old soaks in the golf club bar, deciding to vote...”
– Bagehot’s Notebook: “The House of Commons Ponders Free Love, or the EU Equivalent”
September 2011
1 post
7 tags
“Something about money makes people a little crazy. Perhaps it’s the...”
– Free Exchange: “Monetary Policy: Money Delusion”.
April 2011
2 posts
7 tags
“At the moment, retirees in America are entitled to Medicare, an all-you-can-eat...”
– “Praising Congressman Ryan”.
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A Special Report on Pensions
“Falling Short”:
When Gertrude Janeway died in 2003, she was still getting a monthly cheque for $70 from the Veterans Administration — for a military pension earned by her late husband, John, on the Union side of the American civil war that ended in 1865. The pair had married in 1927, when he was 81 and she was 18. The amount may have been modest but the entitlement spanned three centuries,...
March 2011
18 posts
6 tags
“The Onion, a satirical website, recently called Facebook a “massive online...”
– Facebook’s online comments system is beating back the trolls.
But civil conversations come at a price.
7 tags
“[O]n Monday morning Amazon turned off the content tap that feeds the site; it...”
– Babbage: “Internet Business 101”
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“Until the Japanese catastrophe of last weekend, the biggest nuclear mess in the...”
– “Nuclear Waste: From Bombs to $800 Handbags”
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“Her mother, a travelling player-turned lay preacher, never thought sexy acting...”
– Bob Hope once introduced Jane Russell as “the two and only”. Our obituary bids her farewell.
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“The problem lies in creating a solution less flawed and distrusted than...”
– “Public Sector Pay: The Cap Doesn’t Fit”
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“Parties are indeed where a lot of the most interesting conversations happen,...”
– Babbage: “SXSW Blog, Day Four: What Makes a Good Party?”
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“A deal may have arrived early, but it was lightweight, too. That largely...”
– “The Euro-Debt Crisis: Muddle, Fuddle, Toil and Trouble”
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“Mainstream parties would do better to address the extremists head on. Instead of...”
– Europe’s Far Right: Pause and Engage
7 tags
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“The modern religious activists like Mr. Pawlenty, though, commit the worse...”
– Religion at the Founding: Faith of Our Fathers
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“Despite the agonies of reform, the increases in pension age have not gone far...”
– “Pension Reform and Life Expectancy: Running Faster but Falling Behind”
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“It could have been worse. If the zirconium melts, the fuel pellets embedded in...”
– Babbage: “The Japan Syndrome”
Please consider donating to the Red Cross to help fund relief efforts in Japan. You can also donate to the American Red Cross using your iTunes account.
7 tags
7 tags
“The immediate impact of the catastrophic failures at Fukushima is not yet clear....”
– “Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The Risks Exposed”
Please consider donating to the Red Cross to help fund relief efforts in Japan. You can also donate to the American Red Cross using your iTunes account.
8 tags
December 2010
5 posts
6 tags
4 tags
7 tags
“[I]n the case of tax and spending, the big problem is not [Miliband’s] lack of...”
– “British Politics: Who’s Miliband?”
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“I think we all understand that the work of even the most decent governments is...”
– Democracy in America: “In Defence of Wikileaks”
September 2010
6 posts
7 tags
“[M]any other Europeans recognise these ‘virtues’. But their natural...”
– European Voice: “Europe’s Northern Lights”
4 tags
7 tags
“Democrats will note that many of the ideas in the plan are either contradictory...”
– Democracy in America: “Party of No” No More
5 tags
5 tags
“Jane Jacobs identified a number of ways that income diversity keeps cities...”
– Free Exchange: “First, Define the Problem”
6 tags
August 2010
12 posts
6 tags
“Jonathan Cohn takes the JetBlue incident as a bellwether of the rising...”
– “Take This Flight and Shove It”
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“Americans tend to boast too often about aspects of American society that...”
– “Go Back Where You Didn’t Come From”
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“There are real risks to the American economy, but I don’t see many of them...”
– Free Exchange: “America’s Jobless Recovery: A Little Perspective”
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Can the U.S. Manufacture Employment Through... →
While export promotion is often seen as a strategy of increasing manufacturing employment, in the past decade U.S. employment growth has all been in the services sectors. Even though manufacturing is important in itself, the promotion of U.S. exports is likely to generate more indirect jobs in wholesaling, transport, and professional services than direct jobs in manufacturing.
(Via Link...
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“Stephen King’s excellent book Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western...”
– Buttonwood’s Notebook: “Checking the King”