Day: July 5, 2009

The Importance of Mark Thoma

David Warsh has an article about economics blogging that is focused on Mark Thoma. Mark isn’t the most controversial blogger on the Internet, but he is one of the most invaluable, because he provides long excerpts of lots of economics material, from all different perspectives. (He also has his own points of view, but he is willing to entertain people who don’t agree with him. He is also gracious and welcoming to new bloggers (like we were not so long ago). If you have a general interest in economics and don’t subscribe to him, check him out.

By James Kwak

The Jones Doctrine: Economic Development For Afghanistan

The administration is signaling a new strategy for Afghanistan: “economic development and governance”.  On the front page of the Washington Post last week, President Obama’s national security adviser, James L. Jones, told Bob Woodward:

“The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.”

This is an appealing statement.  But does it make any sense?

Continue reading “The Jones Doctrine: Economic Development For Afghanistan” →

Catching Up with the Bandwagon

Sorry about the recent silence; I’ve been trying to kill off a rewrite of a paper, and sometimes I find that to get things done you just have to be singleminded about your priorities.

In case you haven’t seen them yet, I wanted to point out a couple of things that have been making the rounds of the Internet:

  • Most of the people writing about health care reform on economics blogs – present company included – are not health care economics specialists. Uwe Reinhardt is. So when he writes about “rationing health care,” I recommend reading (hat tip Mark Thoma).
  • Brad Setser is branching out from foreign reserves, holdings of U.S. government and agency bonds, and China – on which he is probably the leading figure on the Internet – to, well, everything. Visit the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Crisis Guide: The Global Economy” and click on Motion Charts. There are four charts in the sidebar to the right. For each one, you can watch Setser on video, or you can click the “Interact with Motion Chart” link and play with it yourself.

Happy reading.

By James Kwak