Duolab 2.0 » Recent Links

Recent Links » January 2009

Pork in the stimulus package → I’m saving this for days/hours/minutes in which I find myself not filled to the brim with rage. #
Predictions from Peter Schiff, the man who forecast the meltdown → “We have an economy that’s based on the same principles as Bernie Madoff’s investments. It’s a Ponzi economy. It’s not real. We don’t save and we don’t produce anything anymore. We simply borrow from the rest of the world, and then we spend it. We’ve had a giant party. We bought all these plasma TVs and iPods. We remodeled our houses and took vacations. But you know what? The bills are coming in.” #
The Economist: Assessing the Bush years → Probably the most even-handed summary of the past eight years around. “The neoconservatives who had such influence over Mr Bush argued that unintended consequences were usually more important than the intended ones. The Bush presidency has proved them right in this, if in little else.…A president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both.” #
Harper’s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era → Depressing figures abound! “Average percentage of Americans who approved of the job Bush was doing during his second term: 37; Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin: 37″ #