Today’s wisdom from Kristofferson:
“I think between us, Bill Clinton and I have settled any lingering myths about the brilliance of Rhodes scholars.”
“Never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself.”
Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Today’s wisdom from Kristofferson:
“I think between us, Bill Clinton and I have settled any lingering myths about the brilliance of Rhodes scholars.”
“Never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself.”
Riffing on U.S. to unveil new citizenship questions — and, just maybe, James McCormick’s phenomenal review immediately below — here’s some ideas:
(Acceptable answer: at least 30% or $3.3 trillion.)
(Acceptable answer: they are approximately equal, as a percentage of arrests.)
(Acceptable answer: ten years in prison and a $1 million fine [Human Cloning Prohibition Act].)
(Acceptable answer: anything with the word “tubes.” Extra points for speculating how long the nation can survive with technologically illiterate leadership.)
(Acceptable answer: at least $18 trillion in 2006 dollars. This figure includes all transfer payments carried out at the Federal level, but none by state and local governments.)
Naim, Moises, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, Doubleday, 2005, 340pp.
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, has written an outstanding summary of the flip side of the post-Cold War economic boom. Think of it as the antithesis of Jim Bennett’s book … a “The Global Criminal Affluenza Challenge: How an Army of Fagins Leverages High-Yield Crime while Civil Society Implodes in the 21st Century.”
The author asks a provocative question. What if we looked at global crime from a purely economic perspective?
What industries would form the MisFortune 500? What criteria would criminals use for market development? How would criminal enterprises adapt to the new technological realities (which are also challenging legitimate business)? In other words, setting morals and laws and national sovereignty to one side, how is crime coping with globalization?
Attentive readers of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle will remember Daniel Waterhouse reading a a number of astonishingly vile newspapers. Some of the most acrimonious articles were from Jonathan Swift, writing for Tory papers. Stephenson didn’t make that part up, the articles can be found here.
I didn’t have time to do more than a bit of browsing, but some of the historical characters from the Baroque Cycle are mentioned, like Marlborough, Bolingbroke, Harley and of course Queen Anne. There also are extensive footnotes explaining the concrete circumstances under which the articles appeared.
A beautiful post from Rachel:
American prestige is no small thing. Loss of American prestige as a result of Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, Somalia and the bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon emboldened Osama bin Laden to bomb the World Trade Center. Loss of American prestige gives Kim Jong Il the idea that he can test his nukes with impunity. Loss of American prestige tells the mullahs in Iran that no one and nothing can stop them from acquiring nukes and arming Hezbollah and Hamas.
Read the whole thing.