Category Archives: Economics

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE DEBT CEILING CRISIS.

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE DEBT CEILING CRISIS. Sandy Levinson says about the Cuban Missile Crisis that: “I also knew that the negotiations with the Soviet Union were a form of kabuki theater without ‘real meaning,’” because he was … Continue reading

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“EYEBALL TO EYEBALL”.

“EYEBALL TO EYEBALL”. Kids, Sandy Levinson’s phrase in his post that “it was ultimately Nikita Khrushchev… who ‘blinked’…” refers to a phrase that was characteristic of the reporting on the Crisis. This BBC article by Michael Dobbs in 2008 says: … Continue reading

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REMEMBERING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS.

REMEMBERING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. My friend Sandy Levinson has a reminiscence about the Cuban Missile Crisis on the Balkinization web site. Sandy recalls that he was a graduate student at Harvard preparing to become a “defense intellectual”. He remembers … Continue reading

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BREW MORE COFFEE AGAIN.

BREW MORE COFFEE AGAIN. I have posted before (see here) about amazing occurrences when everybody on a baseball field—on both sides—forgot what the pitch count was. I made the analogy to the financial crisis where a lot of the problems … Continue reading

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ARCHIVES AND “THE INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION.”

ARCHIVES AND “THE INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION.” In the 1990’s, Jan De Vries wrote about the hypothesis of an “Industrious Revolution” which occurred in a period just before or during the Industrial Revolution. The idea is that workers during that period began … Continue reading

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MORE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DATA IN THE ARCHIVES—HOUSEHOLD INVENTORIES.

MORE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DATA IN THE ARCHIVES—HOUSEHOLD INVENTORIES. Here is another article about the enormous amounts of data in archives that have not yet been investigated (link via Instapundit). Gal Beckerman at Boston.com tells how a graduate student named … Continue reading

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PRICING PORTRAITS BY SIZE.

PRICING PORTRAITS BY SIZE. I posted here about how Rubens said that tapestries were priced by size while pictures were priced “according to their excellence, their subject, and number of figures.” When I made the post, I was amused by … Continue reading

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THE BUSINESS OF PIRACY—A STOCK EXCHANGE.

THE BUSINESS OF PIRACY—A STOCK EXCHANGE. One of the growth industries in these difficult economic times is the piracy based in Somalia. Avi Jorisch had a report in the Wall Street Journal June 16) on the recent business success of … Continue reading

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KENNEDY AND AND REAGAN AND EXPANSION (COMMENT).

KENNEDY AND REAGAN AND EXPANSION (COMMENT). Dick Weisfelder and my brother Elmer commented here on my post on Kennedy and Reagan’s fiscal policies. Both seem troubled by tax cuts. I have some views, many deriving from 40 years ago, about … Continue reading

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UNEMPLOYMENT—OUR MOST IMPORTANT ECONOMIC PROBLEM.

UNEMPLOYMENT—OUR MOST IMPORTANT ECONOMIC PROBLEM. Kids, unemployment does more than damage the unfortunates who are unemployed. Unemployment means that the economy is operating below capacity. A smaller gross national product this year makes for smaller gross national products into the … Continue reading

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