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Category Archives: Developmental economics
News Brief, Pictures of You Edition
Defense David Axe has a great idea, based on the success of targeting pods: “Forget sinking $100 billion into developing a new airframe. After all, an airframe is only as good as its weapons and sensors, and those you can … Continue reading
News Brief, Been Caught Stealing, Once, When I Was Five Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. Defense Ever wondered why the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere seemed eerily reminiscent of the Soviet torture methods we so rightly complained of during the Cold War? Well, we did learn from the best. … Continue reading
Other Fronts in the GWOT
One of the most misunderstood statements that President Bush has made, regarding the Global War on Terrorism, has been that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. While, Iraq is a front, it is not the only … Continue reading
News Brief, My Sundown Edition
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer Defense Are we losing the info war? I think we are, and attacks on al-Hurra for not being propagandistic enough when the channel already faces criticism for exactly that certainly don’t help. We could maybe start … Continue reading
The UN is worse than useless, but it isn’t alone
I want to highlight an item from Joshua’s News Brief on Thursday: What’s even funnier than nostalgic Russians rampaging one of their former colonies for daring to be decolonized? The UN General Assembly electing Zimbabwe to head the agency on … Continue reading
News Brief, Brave New World Edition
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer. The Pentagon Ellen Tauscher wants to create a commission to assess the strategic posture of the U.S. This is a good thing, as I’m not really sure why we need thousands of warheads—the Pentagon’s scare mongering … Continue reading
News Brief, Weekend Blurby Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. The Pentagon It’s funny, these kinds of scare stories about personnel shortages at the country’s spy agencies used to frustrate me. I tried for a long time to get into the CIA, but twice was I … Continue reading
Is Income Inequality such a bad thing?
Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy: Income inequality in China substantially widÂened, particularly between households in the city and the countryside, after China began its rapid rate of economic development around 1980. The averÂage urban resident now makes 3.2 times as … Continue reading
News Brief Is Beyond Thunderdome Today
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer. The Pentagon Remember that time the DoD freaked out over secret Canadian radio tracking coins? Turns out some contractors were spooked by the image of a flower, and their concerns were sent without review or criticism … Continue reading
Who’s Afraid of Paul Wolfowitz?
For no very good reason, I can’t help but find a great deal of symmetry in the current dust-up that will surely end the tenure of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank President and Edward Albee’s award-winning play, Who’s Afraid of … Continue reading
News Brief, I Would Have Posted This Yesterday But Was At The Hospital Edition
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer. The Pentagon Tony Snow declared the milblogging scandal overreported, but then admitted he didn’t know what he was talking about. See for yourself if such a major change in OPSEC rules was over-done. Lockheed Martin builds … Continue reading
“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”
Uh, no. For those who haven’t taken the time to watch these videos, or missed this television series, I give you the most important graph that few people care about as shorthand for your enlightenment. Especially those who claim they … Continue reading
The Death Spiral in Venzuela Continues
Chavez has railed against the rising cost of health care and set up free clinics. Combined with other factors this has resulted in Health care getting far more expensive. His threats to seize the health care sector completely won’t stop this spiral: Continue reading
News Brief, Casimir Pulaski Day Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. The Pentagon Ready for SkyNet? The MULE is. So is the Reaper. “Full spectrum capabilities” and “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)”—however the hell they are defined this week—are how the Air Force is to win the … Continue reading
Venezuela Seizes Oil Operations
Get ready for higher gas prices, as inexperienced bureaucrats take over the operations of 4 major refineries. Venezuela stripped the world’s biggest oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude projects on Tuesday, a vital move in President … Continue reading
News Brief, Pitseleh Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. The Pentagon When START stops, what happens to Prompt Global Strike? Let’s think of this question in the context of Volodiya scrapping arms control accords with Europe. Rumors that the 15-month extension was a bad joke, … Continue reading
News Brief, Do The Whirlwind Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. The Pentagon DARPA wants American snipers to have fool proof sniper scopes that are accurate out to 2000 meters. It also wants to expand its Boomerang sniper-detection system from simple location (which is itself a big … Continue reading
News Brief, I Want to Be Your Sledgehammer Edition
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. I’m going go try to shorten these and better group them thematically at some point, but I just find too much during the day to really limit things. Should I give up the pretense of exhaustiveness? … Continue reading
“The Ultimate Resource” Debut’s Tonight
For more on this television event at 10PM EST on HDNet you can go here and also see another excerpt on video here. This clip introduces you to James Tooley, Hernando De Soto and Muhammad Yunus whose work this show … Continue reading
Don’t Forget The Ultimate Resource
I posted on the upcoming documentary, “The Ultimate Resource” a few days ago. For more read the post: This coming Tuesday, April 24th, Free to Choose Media is continuing the work of its inspiration, Milton Friedman, of bringing the benefits … Continue reading
The World of Wal-Mart
This represents 2001. Several things stand out.
First the dominance of China. Benjamin finds this an issue. While I disagree, even if he is right about its effects here, the largest change in the last twenty years has been the astonishingly rapid drop in poverty in Asia. See “Shift happens, No more boring statistics” for a look at the quantitative change. In the 1960′s the number of poor in this world was dominated by Asia. That is no longer true.
News Brief, Karma Police Edition
(Cross-posted at The Conjecturer) The Pentagon Inside the Army reports that the Pentagon has created a council for improving counterintelligence training. The aptly-named Counterintelligence Training Council just might maybe stop the data bleeds to China and Russia we’ve seen over … Continue reading
The Ultimate Resource
This coming Tuesday, April 24th, Free to Choose Media is continuing the work of its inspiration, Milton Friedman, of bringing the benefits of freedom to the people of this world, including its most remote corners. A new documentary, “The Ultimate … Continue reading
News Brief, Mission of Burma Edition
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer. The Pentagon This account of an NSA Recruiting drive wasn’t all that remarkable, except for one bit I had never heard before. “It was mentioned that people who had done a lot of illegal file sharing … Continue reading
Venezuela Under Socialism: An Interview with Manny Lopez
Manny Lopez, editorial columnist for The Detroit News, recently returned to Venezuela after a nine year absence. He filed a striking piece from Caracas which caught my and a lot of people’s attention. It illustrated better than most reporting I’ve … Continue reading
Crying Wolfowitz
You may have heard that former Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Bush Administration, Paul Wolfowitz, is under fire in his current job as President of the World Bank. What many are undoubtedly unaware of is the fact that this … Continue reading
Posted in Developmental economics, Foreign affairs, Media, MichaelW's Page
4 Comments
A BRIC Through Our Window? The Global War for Capital
According to BRIC Consulting, by the year 2040 The BRIC Countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) will have surpassed the combined GDP of the G-6 (US, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Japan) as of the year 2050: The US will of course … Continue reading
The fight against Inflation
Via Lawrence White I discover today a Sri Lankan columnist who goes by the wonderful and apt nomme de plume Fuss-Budget. He wags his tongue at governments need to control inflation, or at least our ability to know about it. … Continue reading
Posted in Developmental economics, Economics, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
3 Comments
Shift Happens: No more boring statistics
(Via: Pajamas) Please watch this. In understanding the world our ignorance is a problem, but greater still are the things which we believe we know about the world that we do not. Luckily for you, this is entertaining. Within minutes … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Developmental economics, Economics, Education, Race, social science, Technology
2 Comments
Alexandra Storr on Venezuela Part Three: History’s lessons
Chavez seems to have learned little from history. My last excerpt is one he should read, but will not. You can of course read the this and more here.
Alexandra Storr on Venezuela Part Two: The Curse of Oil
The discouraging course of nations dependent upon mineral extraction for their wealth has been oft remarked upon. Unfortunately we see the same trends playing out in Venezuela:
Alexandra Storr on Venezuela Part One: Living Large
Alexandra Storr has an interesting essay in the American Scholar on Venezuela entitled Living Large on Oil. (Hat tip: Megan McCardle.) Here is part one and it is a different perspective than what I will be discussing in the coming … Continue reading
Shift Happens
We live in a fast changing world. I consider that a good thing: glumbert.com – Shift Happens [tags] China, India, technology, economics, politics, US, jobs, education [/tags]
State Needs to Help or Get Out of the Way in Iraq
Thomas Barnett has a great post up today about how the State Department is holding back progress in Iraq. State needs to get with the program, or get out of the way. The story on our ag aid to Iraq … Continue reading
Hugo Chavez and the path to mass murder
Lee over at postpolitical goes takes my theme from yesterday and fleshes it out with regard to events in Venezuela. Well worth reading in gaining an understanding of the dynamic that inevitably occurs. Of course not everybody seems to get … Continue reading
Banana Shake-Down
Listening to NPR this morning I learned that Chiquita Brands International, a name that is synonymous with bananas, was fined $25 Million for paying protection money to right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia: In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said … Continue reading
Posted in Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Law, MichaelW's Page
8 Comments
The Ruin of Venezuela
Lee Garnett makes a point that often eludes most Americans, whose view of South America is of vast poverty and squalor as the norm. Most people who would travel to much of the developing world would be surprised at how … Continue reading
Back to Iraq
Over at Michael J. Totten’s place is a lot of discussion of Iraq, to which he is returning, that is worth reading. I missed this from 60 minutes and I thank Michael for pointing it out: If I could distill … Continue reading
China’s challenges and the economic lessons of Japan
I have long felt that the current China vs. US trade relationship is more of a boon to the US than China, and to a large extent it is because I think China is treading in some dangerous waters by … Continue reading
Admitting the Problem – A Good First Step
Finally, someone in a position of some influence saying what many on the “not-left” side of the aisle have been saying since before the disastrous November elections. Now, if only Republicans would listen, and change their errant ways, the Republican … Continue reading
Big Tuna and the Democrats
The fight to raise the minimum wage is about to become a rout. Of course, as we noted earlier that fight doesn’t include American Samoa, and we still have no way to know exactly why. Actually, what I should say … Continue reading
Rotting fish in the Samoan sun-Updated
I am an opponent of minimum wage legislation, and one reason to oppose any regulation is that it is generally rigged to benefit someone somewhere who shouldn’t receive government help anyway. Ironically, one of the situations where minimum wage legislation … Continue reading
If It Bleeds, It Leads
That familiar refrain with regard to newspaper headlines, may be why you have not heard the following news: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16241340/site/newsweek/ Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and—mother of all surprises—it’s doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail … Continue reading
Hugo’s (Invisible) Handiwork
Is Hugo Chavez a gift to mankind? Man’s greatest accomplishment is his ability to adapt. Whether through technological development, increased efficiency, innovation of skill, or just good old fashioned hard work, mankind always finds a way to meet its needs … Continue reading
Is King Dollar sitting uneasily on his thrown?
Dale Franks has been doing a bit of economics blogging and he has some significant concerns about the economy. I do as well and they roughly mirror his own. One of the areas of concern that some people have is … Continue reading
Pinochet: R.I.P…..Actually not – Updated
It is time to memorialize the passing of one of the lesser bastards, but a true bastard, of the last century. Augusto Pinochet has left the scene, my only problem being he never spent time in prison for his crimes. … Continue reading
Brad Delong and Keynes’ star pupil, Milton Friedman
Brad Delong had a nice post on Milton Friedman after he died. One of the amusing aspects of it was reading the debate in his comment section about what Brad had written. The vitriol and hatred was a bit overboard … Continue reading
In Memoriam: Milton Friedman continued
Last Updated at 5:03 PM CST For all of our coverage of the passing of Milton Friedman, and all the links you could ever want, go to our Milton Friedman Memorial page. The government solution to a problem is usually … Continue reading
A Collection of Thoughts on Friedman’s Passing- Continuously updated, just scroll down
Last Updated at 10:23PM Central Time For all of our coverage of the passing of Milton Friedman, and all the links you could ever want, go to our Milton Friedman Memorial page. From Pejman,”That’s right. A lecture concerning a mundane … Continue reading
Milton Friedman R.I.P.
Update: For all of our coverage of the passing of Milton Friedman, and all the links you could ever want, go to our Milton Friedman Memorial page. The long struggle for true human freedom lost its most influential and humane … Continue reading