Stuff for a Friday

As I continue my near complete disregard for fresh content on this blog, the least I could do is pass along interesting stuff that other people are doing. And hopefully, once I finish the seemingly interminable project I've been working on, I'll start getting some posts up again.

In the meantime:

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Kevin Drum passes along a Newsweek article about Republican Hank Paulson's thoughts on Republicans during the financial crisis.

Paulson delivers a continual and biting critique of Republicans....Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning is a “cantankerous conservative” (page 275). Meetings with Senate Republicans were “a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything” (page 275). Ideas that Republicans do add are “unformed,” like Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor’s plan to replace TARP with an insurance program. In a rare moment of sarcasm, Paulson goes off on the minority Whip: “I got a better idea. I’m going to go with Eric Cantor’s insurance program. That’s the idea to save the day” (page 285).

Could be a fun book.

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At Gone Mild, Dan has posting with some regularity about the kinds of issues that you would think about if you thought about beer with same frequency most people think about sex.

But I don't want it called "domestic" any more. It's inaccurate, it's insulting to real American brewers, and it siphons money to foreign corporations. SABMiller and AB-InBev are NOT domestic corporations. There are thousands of true "domestics" crafting great beer, and the American beer scene deserves to be recognized as a point of national pride. When you claim that Miller Lite and Budweiser are the "domestics", you are saying that Boulevard and Schlafly are somehow less American. It's just not right.

For what it's worth, I agree.

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Have you ever listened to Minnesota Public Radio's The Current online?

You should.

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Kansas City sucks. At least that is what Forbes Magazine says. And it is the Chiefs and Royals fault:

"High taxes and crime rates hurt Kansas City's standing, but what moved them up our misery list were its two awful pro sports teams. The Royals and Chiefs combined finished outside of last place only once in the past three years."

I suppose this means that if you don't like sports, you may not be so miserable. Plus, we aren't St. Louis. They have a really good baseball team and they still came in 5 places more miserable than us.

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Matt Yglesias points out that ABC tried to do a piece on the economists who thought the stimulus worked versus those who did not... but they couldn't really find any in the second group.

“The stimulus worked,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Bank. Without it, “the unemployment rate would probably be closer to 11 percent” and the economy might not have grown at all last year.

Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com thought the nation would be “still in recession.”

“It played a significant role supporting recovery,” said economist Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial.

Not all the economists who responded to our survey agreed the stimulus was necessary.

“Throwing a trillion dollars at anything will move it,” said Standard and Poor’s David Wyss, “but the recovery would be beginning and the unemployment rate nearing a peak” without it.

“The economy would probably be recovering,” argued Jay Bryson of Wells Fargo, just maybe not “as fast as it is.”

Unanimity!

Happy Friday.