EclectEcon

Religion: Opiate of the Masses or Root of All Evil?

Christopher Hitchens has a new book, God Is Not Great, in which he argues that all three of the major religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have been and are responsible for tonnes of evil. In many respects, I fear, he is correct. Here are some quotes from a recent item in The National Post [sorry, no link]:

In the Harry Potteresque Great Hall at the University of Toronto this week, two security men were poised for a confrontation, and with good reason.



Christopher Hitchens was explaining why he hates religion: Islam, because it exhibits a “horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity” while making a “cult of death, suicide and murder,” and Judaism, because it leads to Christianity. “I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion,” the famously contrarian journalist and author told an appreciative crowd of undergraduates gathered to hear him explain why freedom of speech should include the freedom to hate.



“Look anywhere you like, to slavery, to the subjugation of women as chattel, to the burning and flogging of homosexuals, to ethnic cleansing, to anti-Semitism, for all of this look no further than a famous book that is on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and every mosque. And then you’ll see whether you can square this circle: that the force that is the main source of hatred is also the main caller for censorship,” he said.

These views seem to be a logical of extension of Hitchens' criticism of Mother Teresa for being ineffective in reducing poverty, The Missionary Position.



.



[h/t to Jack and to Dave Friedman]

This Is a Good Sign

More from The Emirates Economist. This is about censorship of internet access in Iran and other Arab countries. That the gubmnts there feel the need to limit internet access is a good indication that many residents want more freedom than the gubmnts want them to have. I trust the desire for freedom to have a strong effect.

The Economics of Congestion

The Emirates Economist has one of the more thorough roundups of traffic congestion treatment plans, most involving taxes and/or user fees. Included are summaries dealing with Manhattan, Seattle, Houston, Birmingham, and Taipei. He sagely concludes,

If you want more roads without being charged for their use, then you'll get more traffic creating the "need" for more roads.

For more on London's congestion charge, see this, which I wrote earlier.

A Great Musical Intro to an NFL Telecast

Why does it always have to be country music?



Why not some Beethoven or Vivaldi or Bach?

Why not some Shostakovitch or Bartok?



I confess that when I did radio play-by-play for the London Werewolves baseball games, we used Chicago's great song 25-or-6-to-4 as the intro -- it had great drive and energy.



But if you want great energy, why not use, just as an example, the second movement of Shostakovitch's 10th Symphony? Click here to hear a snippet. Sounds like NFL music to me.

John Lott to Visit The University of Western Ontario

On Monday, December 4th, and Tuesday, December 5th, John Lott will be visiting the Economics Department at UWO.



John Lott has been one of the most productive and most controversial economists of our era. His publications have, in the past, focused mainly on industrial organization, public choice, and economics of law types of questions.



About a decade ago, Lott began researching whether the right to carry concealed weapons caused enough probabilistic deterrence to potential criminals that crime rates would actually go down. This work led to his famous book, "More Guns, Less Crime" and to one of his controversies with Steve Levitt of "Freakonomics" fame. It also led to Lott's examination of biases in the media.



While he is here, Lott will present two papers. The first is a faculty seminar on media bias, at 2:30pm on Monday, December 4th, "Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?: Reagan to Bush II".



The second paper Lott will present is directed to graduate students, but others are more than welcome to attend. He will focus on his forthcoming work that takes issue with the argument (presented by Levitt!) that abortion reduces crime rates. It will be held at 3:30pm on Tuesday, December 5th, "Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-Of-Wedlock Births" .

The Major Source of Inequality

The other day I was rummaging through some links I had saved, and came across this interview with James Heckman, who said,

We have found that for severely disadvantaged children, there are no levels of later childhood skill investments that can bring the children to a level of social and economic performance attainable from well-targeted early investments. We find that both social and emotional skills are essential in producing successful people. These findings change the way economists think about the human capital formation process.



If we don't provide disadvantaged young children with the proper environments to foster cognitive and noncognitive skills, we'll create a class of people without such skills, without motivation, without the ability to contribute to the larger society nearly as much as they could if they'd been properly nurtured from an early age. Neglecting the early years creates an underclass that is arguably growing in the United States. The family is the major source of human inequality in American society. [emphasis added]

[h/t to Craig Newmark, who originally sent me the link]

John Edwards vs. Wal-Mart

From the Union Leader:

In Manchester, the local Wal-Mart store sits right behind the Barnes & Noble. It has more floor space, a parking lot several times the size of Barnes & Noble's, and is easier to access by car or public transportation.



But Edwards would not be caught dead inside a Wal-Mart. Saying that the company pays its employees too little, Edwards has embarked on an anti-Wal-Mart crusade. He instructs his staff members and all Americans not to shop at Wal-Mart.



"Wal-Mart makes plenty of money. They need to pay their people well," Edwards said at a Pittsburgh anti-Wal-Mart rally in August.



So naturally Edwards is holding his book signing at Barnes & Noble instead of Wal-Mart. Which is too bad for his anti-low-wages campaign, because in Manchester Wal-Mart pays hourly employees more than Barnes & Noble does.



The Barnes & Noble where Edwards will hawk his book pays $7 an hour to start. The Wal-Mart that sits just yards away pays $7.50 an hour.



... Unfortunately, people who want to support a company that pays at least $7.50 an hour cannot go to Wal-Mart to buy Edwards' book and then take it over to Barnes & Noble for him to sign it. Wal-Mart doesn't carry it.

What a doink. Isn't that his third strike?

[h/t to Marshall]

BBC = CTV = CNN

This past summer, I spoke with a student (not in economics) who thought the European Union should start its own broadcasting network, "so they can have an unbiased network like the BBC or CBC." I nearly choked.



From Melanie Phillips,

Yesterday, I drew attention in this Diary to the fact that BBC News Online managed to report a vicious anti-black and antisemitic attack in Paris after a France/Israel football match without making any reference whatever to the racist and antisemitic nature of the attack, despite many such details having been reported by various news agencies. Subsequently, the BBC has updated its report with a new version, which contains the racist and antisemitic details it previously omitted. Whether it was shamed into doing so by my post is not known; it may simply have been forced to respond to President Chirac’s comments. However, a reader tells me that both CNN in the US and CTV in Canada also reported the ‘incident’ as merely a football scuffle, with no mention whatsoever of the racist nature of the attack. Did they both draw upon the BBC for their own reports? Or are they simply staffed by journalists with the same morally bankrupt world-view?

My answer: Yes, and the CBC belongs in that group, too.



[with some minor exceptions, like this]

Reason to Worry about a US Slump

Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser seems pessimistic about the outlook for the US economy:

Yesterday's dollar plunge unnerved markets. What's the likelihood of a sustained, drastic decline?



... The presumption that there is investor myopia means that median measures of exchange rate expectations might provide very inaccurate indicators of what will happen in the future. Right now, typical forecasts are for gradual dollar depreciation — 8 percent over the next twelve months (in log terms) from November 17th, according to DeutscheBank. The USD/EUR rate is forecasted to depreciate by 5.3 percent. In contrast, the Economist reports JP Morgan forecast of zero USD/EUR depreciation over the next year from November 23rd.



... [T]he extent to which the rate of return on USD denominated assets is less than those on other assets is too large to be rationalized by standard portfolio balance models.



... a little less optimistic about avoiding a slump if the current strength of the dollar is due to investor myopia, and housing prices exceed those consistent with rationality and the transversality condition (for instance, if there is a bubble). A downward revision in both the relative market-to-book price (i.e., "q") of housing as well as the value of the dollar might induce a slump if the lags in adjustment to the exchange rate are longer than those to housing prices. My own view is that is likely to be the case.



Indeed, the lags to exchange rate changes are more likely to be longer, the harder it is to move capital and labor to the export sector. After the battering taken by the tradable sector over the past decade, I worry. [emphasis added]

I have a strong suspicion that Ed Lazear would have agreed had he not adopted a political stance as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.



Addendum: Also see this from Greg Mankiw who presents additional evidence that the probability of a downturn next year is rising.

Hearts on Fire

To see an amusing rock video about curling, featuring the Swedish Women's Curling Team, check this out [warning: huge file]



(h/t to Dan York, who provided the link in a comment at Curling)

About Those Israeli Settlements

From Melanie Phillips, whose blog/diary I highly recommend:

Alex Safian of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, shreds the claim by Peace Now that 40% of Israeli West Bank settlements were built on Palestinian-owned land and not, as Israel claims, on public land. Safian shows that the Peace Now claim is based on information which is unsourced and uncheckable and which contains previously acknowledged cartological errors — and, most fundamental of all, that it makes misleading or downright false claims about the legal status of the land, and thus misreprents publicly owned land as private property...



This unmasking of the Peace Now claim is particularly important, since it is a core belief of the Israel-bashers (whom Peace Now has done so much to equip) that the Jews stole Palestinian-owned land in the disputed territories. It isn’t true — just like the related claim that the territories in general belonged to the Palestinians until Israel occupied them in 1967 isn’t true either. They never belonged to them: they were rather a kind of legal no man’s land, owned by the British under the Mandate and then illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt until 1967 when Israel conquered them and retained them in self-defence, as it is entitled to do under international law, pending the ending of the war of annihilation being waged against it. Which has never happened.

University Classes in Beer

From Phil Miller comes this reference.

Students in the hospitality and restaurant administration program at Metropolitan State College of Denver are learning the art of beer in one of the only programs of its kind in the country. ...



It's a six-week course and the first part of the class includes a course on safety issues regarding serving and consumption of alcohol.



They have to be 21 or older to get into the class, and there's usually a waiting list.

A waiting list? Why don't they lay on another section of it? If the costs would be "too high" (i.e. the incremental costs would exceed the incremental revenues), then why don't they raise the price?



Oh, yeah. This is the world of gubmnt-funded academics.

Imperialism

Before you get all apologetic and guilt-ridden about past Western imperialism and all the harms it caused, keep in mind that Mongolian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Islamic imperialism have all been pretty virulent in their day. In particular, you might want to take a brief look at this article by Greg Richards [h/t to Judith]. Here are some choice excerpts about past Islamic imperialism:

At the death of Muhammad in 632, the realm of Islam consisted of northwest Arabia. To the north and west is Christian Byzantium, to the east is Persia. Neither of these were Arab; neither of them were Muslim. But within 100 years, the territory from Persia to Spain was controlled by Muslim Arabs. How did this happen? Egypt, for instance, was not in 632 an Arab country. It was of a different ethnic stock and had been in existence for 3600 years.



What happened was conquest, one of the most impressive in history. Here is a very brief timeline:



1. 630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.



2. 632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.



3. 636 – conquest of Syria. Victory in battle over the Byzantines gives Syria and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq – to the Caliph.



4. 636 – 642 Persia conquered by the Muslims.



5. 642 – conquest of Egypt. The Arab/Muslim conquest moves west along North Africa into hitherto non-Arab/non-Muslim lands.



First Muslim invasion of Europe: from the West



6. 711 – Tariq (after whom Gibraltar is named: the Rock of Tariq – Gib al-Tariq) invades Spain. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.



7. 718 – conquest of Spain complete.



8. 732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers (also called the Battle of Tours). This is regarded as one of the turning points in world history. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France....



Second Muslim invasion of Europe: from the East



9. 1453 – Muslim Turks conquer Christian Constantinople and make it the seat of the Caliphate



10. 1456 – Muslims conquer Athens



11. 1478 – Serbia, Bosnia, Crimea come under Ottoman control



12. 1480 – Otranto in Italy taken by the Ottomans



13. 1529 – Vienna besieged by the Ottomans



14. 1683 – Battle of Vienna. The Turks are defeated by the Polish king Jan Sobieski leading a combined Polish-Lithuanian army. This is the high-water-mark of Turkish/Muslim conquest of Europe from the East.

There's much more in the article.

The Costs and Benefits of Automatic Door Openers

Actually, this posting draws attention to some additional benefits from having automatic door openers installed in many places. [Courtesy of the NYTimes (via BenS)]:

SIMON SASSOON saw the future in a dream. Mr. Sassoon, a former watch designer, dreamed he was standing in a women’s public restroom, which his hygiene-conscious girlfriend had just left. Attached to the door above the knob was a white plastic box.



As Mr. Sassoon’s dream self watched, the box made a gushing sound. Out from the bottom sprayed a fine dry mist, which bathed the metal knob and killed every germ on it.



“I felt I’d found my calling,” Mr. Sassoon said last week, very much awake as he demonstrated a prototype, which he said looked exactly like the box in his dream. “There’s a tremendous ‘ick’ factor when it comes to doorknobs.”



The girlfriend is now an ex, but two years and $250,000 of investment capital later, the HYSO, an acronym for Cantonese words meaning “happy hands,” is starting to roll off production lines. Mr. Sassoon, 44, a nephew of the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, is betting there is a vast and rapidly expanding market for a $60 device that sprays a hospital-grade disinfectant on doorknobs every 15 minutes.

$60 plus the disinfectant plus the maintenance. This seems to me like a strong argument that installing automatic-opening doors using infrared to sense someone's approach would have some additional, widespread benefits in many locations (not all, I realize). Automatic doors are more expensive, but they have the added benefit that we don't have to touch hospital-grade disinfectant all the time, we wouldn't have to touch the door knobs or handles at all, and they open even if our hands are full or in our pockets. Ditto for infrared-operated toilet flushers.



Installing infrared door openers probably would not be sensible in small restaurants that have single-person bathrooms and real doorknobs (vs. door pulls), but when I see people sneeze or cough and cover their mouths with their hands and then, within the next minute or so, grab a door pull, I'd just as soon have those doors open automatically.

One Drawback to Teaching in Canada

The Canadian academic scene is generally very pleasant:

• Classes begin after Labour Day, unlike many universities in the US.
• We often have a break of nearly a month over Christmas and New Year's Day (with a few exams thrown in during that period).
• We have a one-week "reading week" or "conference week" in February with no classes, during which students allegedly read for their term papers and confer with their professors; in reality, it is called "slack week", and everyone travels.
• Best of all, classes end in early April (followed by another exam period). That's right, we have a 7-month academic year.

So how can there be any drawbacks (unless you don't like cold weather)?



Here is one: Today is US Thanksgiving; I have classes this afternoon and will not be able to watch the NFL games scheduled for this afternoon. That would ordinarily be a major drawback for me.



However, today my economics and sports class will have a "field trip" to an on-campus pub, where we will watch the first afternoon NFL game, so it's not all that bad! (except it is the Dolphins vs. the Lions, two teams with not-great records.)



[No deep-fried turkey, though]



embarrassing addendum: another drawback is being in the office and forgetting that people in the US typically are not available for work calls today. Apologies to those of you in the US whom I called this morning.



Not-so-embarrassing update: Here is a photo of our "field trip":

How Much Attention Is Too Much Attention?

We recently received an e-mail in our faculty from an administrator asking for submissions for a display of research. My thoughts were, "Okay, how do we make this stuff seem sexy and put it on a poster or two?" Phil Miller has one suggestion. My proposal was this:

We should submit a poster display with this across the top:





Economics and Crime Prevention:

Guns or Abortion?

Which reduces the crime rate more?

• The right to carry hand guns or
• abortions of unwanted foetuses?

With summaries and displays of the books and articles by Lott and Levitt and their critics.



It would be a big attention-grabber!

A different administrator replied, "I have all the attention I can handle already, John."

The Political Economy of Nigeria

Nigeria has had a troubled past. Colonialism, followed by intense tribal rivalries and civil war, left the country with a very weak political framework, making economic growth and development difficult, to say the least. Steve Poloz is cautiously optimistic about its future:

Nigeria is the largest country in Africa by population, with 140 million people. A Commonwealth and OPEC member with annual GDP exceeding $100 billion, it is a major producer of cocoa beans and, of course oil – 2.3 million barrels per day, or about 3% of world output, on par with Kuwait. Nigeria produced at such levels as long ago as the mid-1970’s.



... Nigeria has managed its increasing oil wealth carefully, paying off debt and creating a rainy day fund. This has given them an international debt rating of BB-, which puts them in a league with such countries as Turkey and Brazil.



... [A recent] attempt to change the constitution so President Obasanjo could stand for a third term in April 2007 was turned down by the Senate. If combined with an orderly election in April, this will demonstrate a degree of democratic maturity that will buttress confidence in Nigeria’s reform progress.



... While Nigeria is clearly very rich in minerals and metals, the sector lies mostly undeveloped because the government has focused on oil and gas in the past. No doubt prompted by a growing conviction that commodity markets are in the ascendant, Nigeria is now in the process of reforming its mining code to pave the way for future development.



The bottom line? Investing and working in Nigeria is still no picnic, as attitudes toward foreign investment vary widely, some regions are prone to violence and the reform process has a long way to go. But the fundamentals are improving, even as the business opportunities multiply.

Just How Bad a President Would Hillary Clinton Be?

Greg Mankiw quotes Brad Delong:

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

Handel's Messiah: The Most Exciting Performance Ever

As I told BenS the other day, I heard a performance of Handel's Messiah last weekend that was by far the most exciting I have ever heard. It wasn't perfect (so how many live performances are?) but the interpretations of tempos and styles were terrific, and the performance was technically among the best I have ever heard. [much quicker tempos for some sections, and much more staccato than many people would expect, but all well-researched by the conductor]



The conductor/harpsichordist is Ron Greidanus. He played a Chopin piano concerto when I was playing French horn in the Blyth Festival Orchestra, and I had the pleasure of conducting that orchestra when Ron performed a Bach piano concerto. He was raised just north of Clinton and despite his late start in music, he developed a terrific reputation for his knowledge and talent. The "orchestra" for this performance of Messiah is 2 violins, a viola, a cello, a bass, a baroque (valveless) trumpet which was played extremely well, and tympani (in addition to Ron on the harpsichord).



Most of the time during the performance, I was smiling and saying (to myself, I hope) "Yes!"



Here's the website for his group's concert schedule in and around Georgetown (Ontario, not DC)



As you can see from that page, they are doing repeat performances of Messiah this coming weekend on both Saturday and Sunday:

The Messiah

Georgetown Bach Chorale and Chamber Orchestra perform the quintessential Christmas work in an intimate Baroque style.



Saturday, November 25, 2006, 8:00 p.m.

Knox Presbyterian Church, Georgetown

and



Sunday, November 26, 2006, 3:00 p.m.

St. James Anglican Church, Caledon East



Tickets: $25.00

Here is their home page.



I highly recommend their performances. At the very least, you will be intrigued, and most likely you will be enthralled. It will be worth the drive for any of you who live anywhere near the Georgetown or Toronto area.



Update: Ron wrote me this morning to say,

It is a different approach, that's for sure — the choruses fast, articulate and sublime; the arias and recits for the most part rather dramatic, if not theatrical. It certainly makes the music come alive — you actually know what is going on.



I love the Baroque approach, and will never change back. If I had to conduct a large choir, I don't know what I would do. The lightness and precision is so much fun to make happen.

New Housing Starts? Way Down.Building Permits Granted? Way Down.

James Hamilton presents the data at Econbrowser.

Housing starts, which had been up an encouraging 4.9% during the month of September, surrendered those gains and a great deal more with a 14.6% drop in October. That puts them down 27% from October 2005.



... Building permits for privately-owned housing units continued their free fall, down 6.3% for the month and 28% year to year.

It looks as if Ed Leamer's forecast from over a year ago is still on track.

Where Does a City End and the Countryside Begin?

The standard answer has been to fly over the area at night and look for areas of more or less light density. This explanation has some intuitive appeal, though of course there are still some problems with identifying just what densities over what areas constitute the boundaries of urban areas (and what about North Korea (see below)?).



Daniel Czamanski has a different method that uses fractals.

Based on these data, here is a suggestion for a precise identification of urban boundaries that does not require a plane trip at night. It is based on the concept of fractal. This indicator permits the identification of self-similarity.



By starting at the historic core of a city and by marginally increasing the area of the old core we can repeatedly calculate the fractal dimension of the area.

In general, if you are interested in questions about urban economics, take a look at what he has on his blog.

Left or Right?

Which way has the road been diverted? I guess you could go either left or right, but I doubt if you could obey both arrows and fit between the signs.

Family Planning Advice?

Stephen Pollard noticed this sign for family planning advice at the Northampton General Hospital.



Be sure to check out the comments, too.

Corruption and Culture

For those of you who missed this in the comment to my earlier posting on corruption, I am reproducing it here [with thanks to Acad Ronin]:

The following paper: Sanholtz, Wayne, and Rein Taageprera. 2005. Corruption, Culture and Communism. International Review of Sociology (Jan), has two major findings. First, the effect of culture on "elite integrity" is such that the rank, from highest to lowest, is European Protestant, European Catholic, East Asian, Orthodox, and Muslim. Second, if a country is Communist, or has a Communist past, the effect is to cause a downward shift in elite integrity for all five cultural backgrounds. The absolute downward shift is strongest for European Protestant countries because they start out at high levels, and least for Muslim countries, because they start at relatively low levels.



S&T go on to link Elite Integrity to values on two dimensions, Survival/Self-Expression and Traditional/Secular-Rational. Though they don't explore the issue further, one can assume that poor countries are likely to cluster towards the survival and traditional ends of the two value continua.

On the Street Where I Live

Actually, the hallway where I work.



Depressing, isn't it? Seems a bit like this place.

Maybe some pink and lavendar swirls now and then would help.

Milton Friedman Died Today

Milton Friedman died today at the age of 94. I am sure others will have much to say about his death. Let me add to whatever others say that reading Capitalism and Freedom back in the mid-60s helped me decide to leave theological seminary and re-enter the study of economics.



Back in August of this year, he participated in a conference (via video hookup) and presented a compelling paper on the importance of maintaining a stable rate of growth of the money supply. [Update: I just learned that this paper was Friedman's "last contribution to academia." It will be part of the publication of papers from that conference, being edited by Robert Leeson, et al.]



Coincidentally, yesterday I recommended Free to Choose to some students. It is one of the strongest pieces of work there is that promotes freedom and the reliance on market forces.



Milton Friedman's contributions to economics and to freedom were tremendous.

Testable Hypothesis: Men Who Take Parental Leave Will Be Less Productive

Both Tyler Cowen and Matt Yglesias link to a paper that concludes women who have children are not promoted as rapidly and/or are less likely to receive tenure-track, tenured, or full-professor jobs in the sciences. The economics explanation is that time off work reduces their productivity, on average.



This is not a new argument. The Fraser Institute in Canada did a study on discrimination about two decades ago and found that women who had never married did as well or better, on average, ceteris paribus, as men [no link, yet, but I'll see if I can find one (see below); Update: also see this. ]. Both results follow from the argument that raising children takes time away from investment in one's human capital and thus leaves one less productive. To the extent that the three Ps of pay, power, and prestige are related to the fourth P, productivity, it follows that women who give birth and take time to engage in child-rearing activities will end up earning less and not being promoted as often or as high.



If this explanation is correct, then the growth in the number of males taking parental leave when a new child is born or otherwise acquired should show up in declines in their productivity. If so, testing this hypothesis should yield significantly lower wages and ranks, on average, cet. par., for these males. The important variable will not be whether the couple has children, but who takes how much time off for child-rearing activities.



Update: Here is the Fraser Study I mentioned:

Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity: An Economic and Social Perspective

Edited by Walter E Block and Michael Walker

$14.95, Book: 0-88975-039-4; 1981



It is no longer available from Amazon.ca, but you can probably still order it from The Fraser Institute:

Web site: www.fraserinstitute.ca

Email: [email protected]

Deficits: Fiscal and Trade

Commenting on a speech by Olivier Blanchard, Menzie Chinn writes at Econbrowser,

...[S]ensible policies aimed at reducing the current account imbalance should focus on the sources of the deficit. Hence, like Blanchard, [I believe] trade restrictions are almost assuredly counterproductive. Unlike Blanchard, I think the budget deficit is a major source of the current account deficit.

As Chinn said in the linked item, referring to some empirical work he summarizes here,

This shouldn't deny the fact that international factors may have an impact on our current account imbalance. But those who hold blameless U.S. fiscal policy should reconsider the empirical evidence.

Purses, Backpacks, Briefcases, and E Coli

I was reminded of this information at Snopes by Judith:

This e-mail describing a segment on the evening news about bacteria found on women's purses reached us in May 2006. It describes the news piece done on this topic by a Fox affiliate TV Handbag station in Cleveland on 3 May 2006 and re-broadcast by numerous Fox stations in the U.S. on 3 May 2006 (including Fox 5 in Atlanta, the station named in the e-mail).



In that news story, swabs from 50 purses were sent to a lab for analysis. While a few of the samples did not show evidence of bacterial growth, most did, and nearly 1/4 of the handbags tested proved to have E. coli on them.



... [W]hile a great many folks do remember to wash their hands after being out in public and handling a variety of items, they tend not to think about sanitizing the handbags, briefcases, and backpacks they tote with them. Given how often such carry-alls get handled by their owners and how seldom they are washed with soap and water or wiped with an anti-bacterial solution, it's surprising more contagions aren't passed this way.



Here are some things you can do to decrease the likelihood of spreading illness with your pocketbook:



* Clean your purse or tote bag regularly. If your handbag is not the sort of item that can be tossed into the washing machine with any hope of its surviving the process, scrub its outside with a soaped-up wet facecloth or take an anti-bacterial spray or disposable wipe to it. Don't forget to tend to its handle or strap as well as to its sides.



* Keep in mind that bacteria and viruses latch on far more readily in wet or damp environments than they do in dry ones (see our article about the supposed 5 second rule governing dropped food for more information about that conclusion) — if you set down your carry-all on a damp or wet surface, clean it once you're home, even if you only just washed it recently.



* Don't set down your purse on any surface where food will be prepared or eaten. That means keep it off tables and kitchen or break room counters. If you are in the habit of eating at your desk, don't place your handbag there.



* Remember that your purse comes into contact with most every surface your shoes tread on, and treat your handbag accordingly. If you wouldn't eat a hotdog after running your hand across the sole of your shoe, don't eat one after handling your purse. If you wouldn't place your sandals on the kitchen counter, don't drop your pocketbook there either.



* All the advice just given about handbags applies to briefcases and backpacks too. Your briefcase should also get a soapy wipe-down on a regular basis, as should your backpack. Both should also be kept off all surfaces where food is likely to be prepared or eaten.

Do a brief estimate: what are the incremental costs of keeping such bags off the kitchen counters and tables? What are the expected incremental benefits? This piece makes it look as if the expected benefits probably outweigh the expected costs.

Islamic/Arab Nations Vote in UN to Condemn Israelbut Canada Did Not

From the UN Watch,

As everyone expected, the one-sided resolution—sponsored by the Arab and Islamic members and automatically supported by China, Cuba and the like—was adopted by a strong majority, with 32 in favor, 8 opposing and 6 abstentions. Israel was condemned for the "willful killing" of civilians, and yet another UN "high level fact-finding mission" will be disptached to the region.



What matters most, however, is that the leading democracies refused to support today's charade. With the help of our campaign's swift action, not a single European Union country voted to support the anti-Israel text. This determines how intelligent public opinion the world over will interpret today's events.



In addition to Canada, there was the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom who all voted "No" to the one-sided condemnation. (The U.S. and Australia firmly spoke against it as well, but neither is currently a voting member of the 47-nation Council.) Although France merely abstained, this was nevertheless an improvement from their "Yes" vote last week at the Security Council.