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Interesting, if superficial, profile of Paul Krugman's recent economic writings. Provides yet more confirmation for why I rarely bother to read them.

Soooo, does this mean Republicans oppose lending to small businesses? Politics: what fun!

Why football (soccer) is a bad business: irrational capital. Proposed solution: ownership by fans.

The voodoo economics of the TV/movie business

Yet more evidence of China moving up the value chain: a collaboration with Japanese companies in computer microchip production.

How to help people in developing countries and make a wicked profit while you're at it.

From the previous week:

The biggest problem with Basle III

A conversation with Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough

A conversation with Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore for 25 years after its founding, reflecting on old age and the risk that Singapore's success will be taken for granted.

Globalization at work: Chinese factories that are moving up the value-added chain to stay competitive.

Are emerging market bondholders ignoring history?

Paul Krugman has a bone and will not let it go, no matter how confused his thinking may be. (To be fair, I think Sumner has Krugman's arguments about the link between currencies and surpluses completely backwards, but he addresses this here).

Summary of the state of world trade

"Science: it works." The auto X-prize winners

- Why are women leaving Wall St.?

- Dan Ariely on the darkside of "productivity-enhancing tools"

- "Syntactically speaking, the correct noun phrase to pick to get a target of predication for the preposed adjunct is not the subject of the main clause, it's buried as a genitive determiner in a noun phrase inside a relative clause modifying the object of the main clause" Got that? That is an actual sentence from an otherwise funny post on "an appalling piece of bungled headlinery."

- Sarah Palin: the sound and fury

- the future of playgrounds

- NASA experts to help trapped Chilean miners.

- California moves closer to paying bills with IOUs and monopoly money

- By now you have likely heard about China's epic week-long traffic jam. Maybe they should be taking driving lessons from this guy.

- John Kemp: buying into tail risk will slowly bleed your wealth; instead, buy insurers who sell tail risk

- Argentina's President accuses domestic newsmedia organizations of crimes against humanity

- Can trade liberalization reduce gender inequality?

- Book review of Sebastian Mallaby's review of the hedge fund industry: More Money Than God

1) The globalization of whisky markets, (not) continued - Chavez' currency crackdown hurts whisky sales. Fine by me, retorts Chavez: "Rich people are lazy and almost all of them spend every day drinking whisky." I think he's been watching too much Mad Men.

2) Thank Goodness It's Thursday - Hawaii cuts the school year by a fifth, Colorado Springs plunges into the dark, and other stories from the Great Recession. As a colleague of mine pointed out, somehow all of this is tolerated in lieu of even a discussion about raising taxes. Update: Illinois has been forced to feature in adult films to make ends meet.

3) The Topic of Cancer - "In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist."

4) Gone 'till November - Wyclef Jean to run in Haitian presidential elections this November.

5) The Sauna World Championships - The Finns are weird.

- The great risk rebalancing

- Thoughtful arguments in favour of cosmopolitan eduation, from the point of view of an American

- "A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved." Here.

- Whisky: a liquid investment (har har)

- Iran lectures Canada on human rights following the G20 summit. I have no words.

- 100 greatest movie insults. Redundant Warning: salty language

- The economics of the National Hockey League

- India is planning $50 billion in road projects

- How are the world's markets doing, you ask? Why, check out the map in the top right-hand corner of our new favourite blog!

- The British Election, Summarized (Part II): "Nnnyaaaaaghwooohaaooooororarararararghhhhhhh. That's the message the electorate gave on Thursday. A long, angry, discordant noise that eventually became silly. Hence the result." That's Armando Iannucci, the director of the brilliant political satire film In The Loop.

- Shanghai Expo: Yawn.

- China's central bank continues to turn the screw, gently, by raising lending requirements

- Francisco Blanch of BoA/Merril Lynch presents his theory for why emerging markets have a greater capacity than the rich world to absorb higher oil prices.

- 'Switzerland Should be Dissolved as a State' - That would be none other than Col. Ghadhafi, bringing the AAA-rated Crazy to the table once again. There is some truly fantastic bullshit in here - too much to quote here - so I encourage you to check it out.

- Greece offers to repay loans with giant wooden horse. Suspicious.

- Hey look! Belgian politicians can agree about some things after all: cultural intolerance.

- What makes charities special?

- Nouriel Roubini is his usual cheery self when discussing the fiscal situation in Greece.

- Argentina: stepping closer to a return to international bond markets for the first time since their default in 2001.

- As seen from space: Iceland's ash-spewing volcano, Eyjafjallajokulluafj. (I only made up the last four letters). The parallels between this and Iceland's banking problems are pretty ripe: Iceland explodes; Iceland blows smoke at the UK; Iceland causes economic chaos.... feel free to add your own!

- Property bubble? What property bubble?

- Could self-interest make China's economy go green?

- Cool!

- On how Russia managed to tip the scales in the aforementioned insubordinate, rebellious, and mutinous nation.
- Want to increase financial literacy? Kill all the business journalists.
- The evolution of the English breakfast (and with it, England). I had to stop and eat something half-way through.
- One of my favourite creatures from the Planet Earth series: the nautilus, a living fossil.
- The quote of the day, via Free Exchange. Read the last sentence carefully.

- Get yer T-shirts here: US health care reform is a BFD (explanation here)

- Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan continues to clean house: following an earlier decision to replace the cabinet (entirely), Jonathan has now sacked the head of the national oil company. Despite the herculean efforts of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nigeria is almost a parody of corruption. It remains to be seen whether Jonathan's purges are a step in the right direction, or just more of the same. The BBC is skeptical.

- A brief history of Afghanistan & Waziristan and just what the hell the Taliban is fighting for (not much, it turns out). It has videos and photos and such.

- Average flag 1: weighted by colour (or: the Netherlands)

- Average flag 2: weighted by population

- Just announced: a new central bank for the Gulf region.

- Updated list of the best fucking books on the financial crisis, sorted by fucks-per-page.

- US consumption: gasoline vs. bimbos

- Bernanke's 2005 "savings glut" theory for the global macroimbalances does not match the data - perhaps irrational exuberance played a role as well?

- Talks in Thailand reach a standstill

- Prospect gives its list of the 25 most influential intellectuals during the financial crisis

- From the above list, Simon Johnson's The Quiet Coup. Not sure how I missed this one back in May, but it's a good read for those looking for a Big Picture view of the financial crisis and its implications.

- Free Exchange discusses the same WaPo review of the Fed that I tackled below; suggests that Fed is better equipped to deal with inflation than regulation: "It's time to learn a lesson here. An institution that missed a brewing crisis of this magnitude is an institution not set up to detect and prevent a brewing crisis of any magnitude. Something else is needed."

- Underwater robots help reveal history

- LOLFed takes stock of TIME magazine's love affair with Ben Bernanke

- Failure by global leaders to tackle global warming leads to new investment opportunities

- "We have not yet achieved self-reinforcing recovery... We are on a government support system, both in the financial markets and in the economy." Paul Volcker is interviewed by Der Speigel.

- The Catholic Church gets all up in Berlusconi's face. The Economist explains.

- The award for healthiest teeth in the OECD goes to the British. The British!?

- The rate of return on cancer research: looks good. Now if only we had some numbers like this for green technology...

Your Thursday readables:

- So it begins: emerging markets pass the developed world in foreign direct investment receipts

- The US economy returns to positive growth. Break out the party hats!

- Now listen to this podcast, and put your party hats away. This is excellent.

- What story can you tell in 6 words?

- Very cool nature pictures

Your Wednesday readables are as follows:

- Awesome: The newsmap

- Nutty: The Higgs boson is traveling back in time to sabotage the Large Hadron Collider. I sincerely hope that this does not impact adversely on the sales of the Junior Wizard Supercollider.

- Rant: Careers in investment banking are still popular for recent grads "for the simple reason that... these jobs are f**king awesome."

- Funny: "You must understand what bankers do: we don't make furniture; we don't write novels; we make money."

The shares of General Motors, America's largest automaker, are now worth less than those of Goodyear. In a sense, GM is now worth less than the sum of its part. This is bad news, not only for those employed by GM, but for everyone who is even remotely concerned about the government throwing caution to the wind and bailing out uncompetitive, politically-sensitive industries.

You see, GM and the rest of the Big Three are vying for public funds to keep them out of bankruptcy, or at least to keep them functional during a bankruptcy. For some firms, like United Airlines, it is possible to enter into bankruptcy proceedings and resume flights a short time later. However, unlike with commercial aviation, car consumers are looking at shelling out anywhere from $20-70K for a vehicle with the expectation that the firm will be there five, ten years down the road to provide ongoing support. The worry is that, should GM, Chrysler or Ford enter into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, consumer confidence will plummet and they will never recover. Kaput.

Unlike the airline edition of this series, I have nothing personally riding on the outcome of this bailout debate. Nevertheless, the principle is the same. If a firm with as many assets as an enormous automotive company cannot receive financing, there's got to be a good reason. In fact, there are two good reasons. The first is that, due to the credit crunch, financial institutions are currently de-leveraging their liabilities and are thus unwilling to take on a large-scale financing project of this nature.

The second, more relevant, reason is that these firms have been operating under a failing business strategy for at least a decade. These companies are simply uncompetitive: they have over-priced, lower-quality vehicles (pickups excepted), silly-expensive labour union deals and are failing to adjust to environmental concerns.

Moreover, this bailout plan smacks of thinly-disguised politicking. It is a well established fact that the Big Three have considerable traction in Washington, and a Democrat-dominated legislature tends to lean towards protectionism on these issues. In any event, we'll find out on Monday how this one is going to play out. In the meantime, some questions to ponder and some readables to read.


Opening material sourced from Planet Money.