Rumbles in the Desert
While you were all stuffing yourself with turkey and gorging on sweet potato souffle, Dubai World, the Dubai government's investment arm, asked investors for some extra time to make its debt payments.  In normal times, this would be a big problem for Dubai.  But these are not normal times, and the world is suffering from the mother of all debt hangovers.  A big sovereign default--for this is essentially what this is--raises questions about who might be next.Paul Krugman sums up the possibilities:First, there's the view that this is the beginning of many sov

More on ClimateGate
Reader Nimed sends along this short video on peer review in the climate change community: On a more serious note, this interview with the head of the UN's climate experts is ridiculous.  He responds to concerns about the peer review process being stacked by saying . . . all the work was peer reviewed.  I am open to being convinced that I should not care about hacked information, and I am a confirmed believer in AGW.  So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?

Let Us Give Thanks
By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, pe

When the Public Coffers Run Dry
Michael O'Hare will probably be surprised to find that I agree with him (one hopes pleasantly), but I think that his post on higher education is extremely well done.  He makes two important points.  First, the American model of education really is superior to the notion of making it free, and not merely because this usually represents a net transfer to the affluent:One of the less useful tropes of the current California uproar is th

Looking Ahead to Black Friday
Thanksgiving is here, which for some people means the start of a month of overeating.  For others, of course, it marks the start of a month of overspending, kicked off by Black Friday.This year, the competition is particularly fierce, and all eyes will be on the results.  For many retailers, Black Friday marks the point where the year's ledger moves from red to black; hence (some stories have it) the name.  Last year, of course, that didn't happen for a lot of retailers, as panicked consumers hunkered down.  Even at places where spending was up, profits were often down, because they had to discount so deeply in order to get customers through the door.