Maggie's Farm

John Updike died. I read all of his Rabbit books, and a few others. But I like his essays best.

Germany's choice: Power, or sitting cold in the dark

What Euroland is up against in recession

Mankiw on Barro on stimulus

JR Dunn on Obama's first week and the economy:

Human beings are not economic robots mindlessly following ironclad laws. They are, in Isaiah Berlin's acute formulation, "Kettles that watch themselves come to a boil". Most of the problems of today's economy aren't economic at all, but functions of mass psychology. We'd be far better off if people like Bernanke, Greenspan, and Obama himself weren't continually quoted about how bad things are and how much worse they'll get, if reporters who insist on using the verb "deteriorate" were treated the same as the Iraqi shoe guy, and if the president's entire economic staff were given copies of Canetti's Crowds and Power and Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.