Opening Shot

Romney and Gingrich.

The Ties That Blind US

In this modern world of supposed transparency in all things, it’s sometimes hard to see the correlation between seemingly random events. Butterfly wings in Africa and all that. Read More

Occupy Wall Street

(nytimes.com)

More About the Crazy Uptick In Media Coverage of Occupy Wall Street

Paul Krugman weighed in, twice; MTV picked up the story after rapper Talib Kweli showed up. And now we have Nate Silver with a chart to explain it all. “In the early days of the protests, which began on Sept. 17, coverage was all but nonexistent in the mainstream news media,” writes Mr. Silver. “It has increased significantly in recent days, however, and is now beginning to rival that given to Tea Party protests in April and May 2009.” Even The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart picked up on our “from blackout to circus” meme. Read More

Wall Street

Morning Roundup: Thoughts on the Young New Year

  • A broad section of America is pretty pessimistic about what 2011 will bring, economically speaking. However, a smaller subset of the citizenry, known as “investors,” believes we’re on pace for growth and that the economy may even overheat this year. [WSJ]
  • Paul Krugman is cautioning jobless Americans against getting too excited about Read More

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Krugman: ARC Is Nation’s ‘Most Important Current Public Works Project’

“It was a destructive and incredibly foolish decision on multiple levels,” writes New York Times columnist and eminent economist Paul Krugman in today’s paper. He was referring to Governor Chris Christie’s decision to put the kibosh on ARC, a tunnel that would burrow under the Hudson River, dramatically increasing train capacity between New York Read More

A World War Would Not Help Our Stagnant Economy

There’s been a lot of talk of late about the role a total war — with all its carnage, patriotic fervor and military production — would play in the resolution of America’s current economic troubles. Bearded Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said in a Sunday New York Times column that World War II provided the Read More

CHEER UP

The New Doom

“Life is such a fucking disaster,” a prominent New York hedge fund manager said recently. “We all live in some kind of world we create for ourselves. And I think that what happened is that built into that world were very enlarged expectations about what life was going to be. There’s been this Read More