Just a brief post to let you know that Mark Thoma and I are doing some guest posting this weekover at New Economist.
Perhaps the most interesting dimension is the amicable debate which Mark and I are having about the respective merits of the more activist Fed monetary policy and the rather more quietist approach [...]

Hot on the heels of Dougs update on the tragedy which is taking place while we watch in Louisiana, comes this distressing news from Iraq:
More than 600 Iraqi Shi’ites died in a stampede over a Tigris River bridge in Baghdad on Wednesday, panicked by rumors a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up, an [...]

Imagine the entire population of Munich, of Lyon or of Copenhagen evacuated because of a natural disaster. That’s the situation now in the New Orleans area.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

As I write, [...]

Bloomberg’s Mathew Lynn has the German enigma more or less right: it’s a toss up.
“Flip the coin one way, and Germany may be about to enter a sustained period of growth, after some painful structural change, which would boost exports further and give consumers more confidence. It would be a re-run of the “Wirtschaftswunder,” or [...]

French political life is always full of surprises: while some seem past their best (de Villepin), and others are positively wilting (Chirac), new stars constantly appear in the galaxy. In this case Europe Minister Catherine Colonna. Her agility on the Turkey issue, and her sound sense on the ECB make her stand out against [...]

While Peter Mandelson lectures the Chinese that they have a moral obligation to get the EU out of a mess that he got it into, and while clothing shortages and price-hikes apparently loom, I thought some soothing words from Fr?d?rik Bastiat might help calm our troubled nerves . (Hat-tip to Robert and Bob in [...]

I can’t help feeling that no sooner do I lift someone up than I find I have to knock him down again. I ended the last post offering a best case scenario excuse for Jacques Chirac, but now another topic lands on my in-tray: France and strategic industries.

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Hot on the heels of yesterdays report that road maps using miles instead of kilometres are now in danger, Tim Worstall tells us the story of the Belgian town council which is trying to implement standardised clothing rules. As I suggest in comments this issue is not as trivial as it seems, and Maaseik [...]

Standards that is. The Chinese domestic appliance manufacturer Haier just got voted into the number one slot by FT readers in a survey which included quality, trustworthiness, innovation and management, together with branding. Haier recently hit the headlines when it unsuccessfully tried to buy Maytag - owner of the Hoover brand - now it [...]

[The observant among you may have noticed that two earlier post-ettes have suddenly disappeared. The even more observant will have noted that they are now over at our sister blog - A Few Euros More - where they should have gone in the first place. I've picked up some bug or other and am a [...]