Dear William,

While we are stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq on a fools errand Sachs offers a close substitute for our $700 million defense budget. Bonus it has the potential to spark economic growth and avoid environmental disaster. An industrial policy for climate change By Jeffrey Sachs 23 February 2009 from http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com I believe that the biggest question on the planet today involves sustainable development: is there room enough on the planet for seven billion to ten billion human beings, tens of millions of other species, and economic convergence between rich and poor? As I argue in Common Wealth,1 the answer is no with current technology, and yes if we focus on sustainable technology. The major challenge for our generation is to overhaul several key technology systems on a global scale, including: power production, food supplies, transport services, and infectious-disease control. These steps should be combined with a massive effort in family planning and voluntary ferti...

The Return of Industrial Policy by Dani Rodrick from Project Syndicate CAMBRIDGE – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promotes it as a vehicle for creating high-skill jobs. French President Nicolas Sarkozy talks about using it to keep industrial jobs in France. The World Bank’s chief economist, Justin Lin, openly supports it to speed up structural change in developing nations. McKinsey is advising governments on how to do it right. Industrial policy is back. In fact, industrial policy never went out of fashion. Economists enamored of the neo-liberal Washington Consensus may have written it off, but successful economies have always relied on government policies that promote growth by accelerating structural transformation. China is a case in point. Its phenomenal manufacturing prowess rests in large part on public assistance to new industries. State-owned enterprises have acted as incubators for technical skills and managerial talent. Local-content requirements have spawned productive ...

Well, the World Cup 2010 is on and today the test of juggling work and watching games surfaced in a most unexpected way. Today's challenge attempting to watch two games, USA v Algeria and UK v Slovenia, both on at the same time 9 am. Originally,the plan was to go to Flossmoor Station and watch with Joe and Roger in Homewood. However, the weather did in cable availability and timing was a concern so I searched the area down Western ave and 115 Bourbon Street assuming that these popular areas would be open, of course they weren't. By this time the game had started and frustration built knowing that I would be unable to watch both games and that I would probably have to drive another 20 minutes home. Heading in that direction down 111th Street just before Pulaski I spotted my opening, Quigley's Irish Pub, cars in the parking lot and cigarette smoking at the door. Relieved I walked in to find about a dozen guys and a Mexican woman sitting at the bar settled having a drink...

What America needs is a jobs plan so toward that end a new research resource, The Economic Policy Institute and this paper from Thomas Palley. Palley writing in 2007 highlights the need for a totally new approach to economic policy thinking beginning with a breakdown of the old foundation and a renewed emphasis on domestic manufacturing and shared prosperity. Economic Policy and the Challenge of Shared Prosperity Over the last 30 years the American economy has exhibited a systematic disconnection between wages and productivity growth. This disconnection means that ordinary Americans are not properly sharing in the economy’s growth, thus contributing to rising income inequality. Rising inequality and the failure of wages to rise with productivity has triggered a fundamental debate among Democrats. One position argues that the underlying structure of the economy is sound, but workers must be offered a “helping hand” in the form of enlightened social policy, in the form of income support...

Continuing our mission to depose the Treasury Secretary in favor of a more capable manager. When you look outside of the "Who coulda known" market fundamentalists crowd there are actually a number of individuals more qualified for the top economic policy posts than those currently occupying them. Continuing on that theme from Joseph Stiglitz via the Indian Economic Times. It’s evident that Greece has no immediate fix and over the next decade, other regions of the world may face similar problems. Isn’t it time for leading nations to sit together and reset the entire global debt? What’s clear is that the current approach in Europe is wrong. The current approach is to try to impose extreme austerity. That will lead to a weaker economy and lower tax revenues, and so the reduction in deficits will be much smaller than hoped. It’s a kind of austerity which failed in Argentina. The current approach of saying that you just have to get rid of the deficit is not going to work and is g...