Saturday, March 08, 2003

Friday, March 07, 2003

Is Bush Nuts? War as Religion

Conservative columnist, Georgie Anne Geyer, no neoconservative her, raises the ultimate question: Has GWB gone off the deep end? I suspect there is also a bad case of Foggy Bottom Hubris to explain the unfathomable attitude of the administration.
Euro touches fresh four-year highs

Dollar continues to fall.

Thursday, March 06, 2003

Playing Texas poker, Bush bets all on Iraq
Bob Novak
WorldNetDaily: Why the French behave as they do Pat Buchanan writes on the French experience.
Why War with Iraq? Follow the Money

The Dollar vs. the Euro? Here is an interesting angle: Iraq in recent months decided to contract for future delivery of its oil in euros, not dolllars. The fiat American dollar greenback serves as the world's reserve currency, essentially since Bretton Woods and more particularly since 1971, and its acceptance gives the U.S. a free ride in a variety of ways. The euro is the creature of Germany's conservative central bank and the european common market (sans the United Kingdom) and -- in theory at least -- contends to serve the same purpose as the dollar as a reserve currency. The last time the Arab world rejected the dollar as the standard for the pricing of oil was about 1974 when it noticed that the dollar had depreciated violently against gold. The result was not pretty and probably cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election.
"The Emperors of Ice Cream" -- Donald Luskin on FTC & Ice Cream on NRO Financial

When the FTC's annoucement hit the news I had a similar reaction to Don. As the old antitrust regulation saying goes: "You let me define the market and I can find a level of concentration which needs a remedy or at least 'strict scrutiny'." Here we have a market defined as the market for "superpremium ice cream"? Where is the dissenting opinion tearing this decision apart?