The Longest Run

I had the great fortune while at an Executive Education course at Harvard Business School last week to participate in a case discussion with Professor Rawi Abdelal , an expert in international political economy. We studied a case concerning the U.S. current account deficit and the various causes and effects of the issues now affecting the global economy. It would be hard to put in a nutshell everything that was covered, so I'll just share what I left the room thinking about. First, the fact that the savings rate in the U.S. is zero is extremely unhealthy and Americans need to start saving more (understandably hard to do when incomes are stagnant/falling and unemployment is rising). Second, solving the problems will be incredibly difficult and complex because it is likely to require close coordination of many countries around the world and such coordination is difficult under the best of circumstances; in addition, for Americans to save more, we will need to spend less - which doesn...

A couple of years ago I read (and enjoyed) Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . The book is a great look into the food chain in the United States and presents a damning indictment of our current farm policy. Last week's New York Times Magazine carried a new article by Pollan in the form of a letter to our next president: Farmer In Chief . The article provides a condensed summary of the issues reviewed in Omnivore's Dilemma and sets out a series of recommended changes. While I don't agree with all of his ideas, it does seem the system we have now is kind of crazy. To wit: After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil,...

A friend of mine at work reminded me of an article which ran in August in the New York Times: Obamanomics . I think it's worth a read regardless of your political persuasion.....

I found it interesting that James Fallows and David Brooks wrote columns more or less simultaneously about Barack Obama's calm demeanor and what it might mean. Both pieces are worth a read. Fallows: OK, I lied, one more thing about debates Brooks: Thinking About Obama If you read the Brooks column be sure to check out the reader comments; here's a link to 8 of the 636 comments which were judged interesting by the editors. You can also filter the comments down to ones that readers recommend.

I've believed for a long time that John McCain would win the election in November, assuming that people would have a hard time voting for Obama given a variety of factors (mostly having to do with apparent lack of experience and race). Please note - I'm not saying that I wanted McCain to win, just that I've felt he would. Given recent events (Sarah Palin's disastrous Katie Couric interview (see Part I and Part II ) and economic turmoil), I'm starting to think it could be impossible for McCain to win. I was therefore interested to see this chart from the intrade prediction market in a Paul Krugman blog post today: Politics of Crisis . I'm not sure I buy his point that Paulson's decision to let Lehman Brothers fail 'may have delivered the White House to Obama', but the fact remains that it's been a tough couple of weeks for the McCain campaign. As context for Krugmans, point, check out the excellent article on Lehman in today's Wall Street Jo...

A couple of years ago we published a book by George Friedman , founder of a private intelligence service called Stratfor . Leading up to Friday night's presidential debate, Stratfor is running a series of articles The first article, The New President and the Global Landscape , was posted yesterday. It's a great overview of the range of issues the next president will face, how they are interrelated, and what options the President will have to address them. Definitely worth a read.

In his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com , Gregg Easterbrook writes about the recent financial news. I've included a couple of the relevant passages; you can find more at the column link above. Overall, thoroughly depressing stuff, and I have to say I don't have much (any?) hope that either of the current candidates for president are going to bring fundamental change to this situation. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Last week, TMQ asked why no one was paying attention to the fact that the national debt ceiling was quietly raised by $800 billion during the summer. Well, toss that column: The White House just asked the national debt ceiling be raised another $700 billion, for the proposed financial-sector bailout. If that happens, in 2008 alone, $1.5 trillion will have been added to the national debt: every penny borrowed from your children and their children. Stated in today's dollars, in 1979 the entire national debt was $1.5 trillion. George W. Bush and Congress have i...