Distinguished scientist Freeman Dyson has called the 1433 decision of the emperor of China to discontinue his country's exploration of the outside world the "worst political blunder in the history of civilization."
I posted this last weekend about an important history of thought mistake in a recent John Cochrane post. Although I said that his post was "otherwise excellent," I didn't elaborate. Now I do.
President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases — without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections.
California may be parched and arid, thanks to a historic drought. Meanwhile, Sacramento is awash with money – about $6.7 billion more than government bean counters were counting on as recently as January.
Critics of President Obama’s recent deal with Iran have rejected the president’s assertion that the only alternative to his deal is war. They think that more aggressive sanctions could have changed Iran’s behavior, given the economic costs the current sanction regime has inflicted.
It’s not unusual for a person with expertise in one discipline to get into trouble when he expresses opinions in another. An example is William Shockley, a Nobel laureate in physics for his research on semiconductors, blundering into advocacy for racial eugenics.
California Gov. Jerry Brown has ventured from Sacramento to Vatican City this week, to huddle with other concerned American politicians over climate change – a concern shared by Pope Francis (meeting the Pope is every Catholic politician’s dream – just ask John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, who’ll be on hand when His Holiness addresses a joint meeting of Congress in late September).
On July 17th, National Public Radio host Robert Siegel interviewed eighty-nine-year-old violinist Stuart Canin. Canin holds the distinction of being a World War II veteran, a former concert master of the San Francisco Symphony, and the subject of the forthcoming documentary The Rifleman’s Violin, which tells the dramatic story of Canin’s musical performance, given at the age of 19, for Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill during the July 1945 Potsdam Conference. A collaboration between Hoover Library & Archives and Citizen Film, The Rifleman’s Violin tells the remarkable story of how the young GI bearing a “$2, cigar-box violin” came to play Pugnani and Tchaikovsky in front of the most powerful men in the world.
As Greek banks re-open today after a 3-week closure and as the European state works toward reaching a new deal with creditors, it’s still unclear what the full effect of the run on Greek banks has been on the macroeconomy in both Greece and the rest of Europe.
Iran has had a nuclear program since the country restarted it in the 1980s, has been under economic sanctions for it since the 1990s, faced the threat of war over it in the 2000s, and now has come through 20 grueling months of negotiations just to keep part of the program in place.
Heartening as it was to hear the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, dropping hints last week about the raising of Bank Rate, serious doubts remain over the effectiveness of the low interest rate regime in reviving the economy. Moreover, the impression continues to be given that the delay in raising rates carries no cost.
