Current Events

Mr. Ritter, in 1998 you were dismissed as a New York City food safety inspector after complaints from the "Taste of Tikrit" cafe. ... In your testimony you insisted - rather strenuously - that the city should forcibly inspect the restaurant again, or bulldoze it and jail the owner. Now you say the restaurant is, and I quote, one of the bright spots in the city's retinue of quality cafes. This, despite the fact that health inspectors have been waved off at gunpoint for nearly half a decade. Could you explain your change in position? [via little green footballs] 

John Robb, in an uncharacteristically pessimistic post, worries along with The Economist about global deflation. Basically, the ongoing threat of war and high oil prices are acting as a damper on US economic growth. Some numbers may help: the world uses about 90+ million barrels per day (averaged over the year — the US represents 20% of that use). Should the cost of gas go down from $28 to $16 (the median oil price has been $15.26 per barrel since WWII) we'd have an extra $1.1 billion per day to devote to more useful capital and consumer expenditures (this is basically a tax we're paying to the tyrants of the Middle East). A peaceful Iraq would help everybody to prosper; the price of crude oil spiked in 1990, but following the Gulf War and first defeat of Iraq crude oil prices entered a steady decline, until in 1994 inflation adjusted prices attained their lowest level since 1973. The $400 billion annual savings would more than offset an expected $200 billion cost of war, if a full-scale war does indeed turn out to be necessary.

Note: the writers at The Economist should know better: inflation and deflation are chiefly caused by manipulation of the money supply by central banks. Read Ludwig von Mises and George Reisman for details.