Egypt: the nub of the issue
Headline from this morning‘s DealBook, the M&A newsletter from the New York Times, edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin: Will Egypt Crisis Hurt Deal-Making? Isn’t that the first question that leapt to your mind too?
New radio product
Freshly posted to my radio archive: January 29, 2011 Mark LeVine of the University of California–Irvine (and author of Heavy Metal Islam) and Gilbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of The Arabs and the Holocaust) talk (separately) about the popular uprisings in the Middle East • Bhaskar Sunkara on the new magazine he edits, Jacobin
Radio guest on Middle East?
Any suggestions for a good person to talk on the radio about the uprisings across the Middle East?
Grand Street articles posted
Back in the late 1980s, I wrote four articles for the literary journal Grand Street, edited by Ben Sonnenberg. They’re on the transformation of the corporate titan (Morgan to Pickens), Yale and the CIA, Greider’s book on the Fed, and a psychoanalysis of money. You can get them here. And thanks to Christopher Carrico (here too: Christopher Carrico) for sending them along.
New radio product
Just posted to my radio archives: January 22, 2011 Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on what the web is doing to our brains and minds • Robert Fatton, author of Haiti’s Predatory Republic, on Baby Doc’s return, the failure to recover from earthquake, the horrid class system
Stiglitz praises LBO
This just in Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, reading a recent issue, looked up to declare that LBO is full of “wonderful rants and some very interesting facts.” If you don’t already, subscribe today! Issue #131 in prep. Stiglitz: likes LBO
Tough, Shorty
Economics proves that tall people deserve more: Andreas Schick, Richard H. Steckel NBER Working Paper No. 16570 Issued in December 2010 Taller workers receive a substantial wage premium. Studies extending back to the middle of the last century attribute the premium to non-cognitive abilities, which are associated with stature and rewarded in the labor market. More recent research argues that cognitive abilities explain the stature-wage relationship. This paper reconciles the competing views by recognizing that net nutrition, a major determinant of adult height, is integral to our cognitive and non-cognitive development. Using… Read More
New radio product
Freshly posted to my radio archives: January 15, 2011 Mark Ames, author of Going Postal and editor of The Exiled, on Tucson and how the U.S. is like a decaying Russia • Jefferson Cowie, author of Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, on the politics of that unfairly maligned decade
New radio product
freshly posted to my Radio archives January 8, 2011 (return after holiday reruns) Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen on the state of energy and climate politics in DC • Lucia Green-Weiskel, author of this Nation piece, on Cancún and Chinese energy and climate politics
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on January 15, 2011 by Doug Henwood
Radio commentary, January 15, 2011
Against civility The horrendous shootings in Tuscon have certainly inspired a lot of drivel from the commentariat. They were heartbreaking, but please let’s not draw stupid conclusions from them. Perhaps most annoying has been the call for a return to civility. Well, no, I don’t feel like being civil. I like being rude. The problem with the rudeness in American political discourse is that it’s often so stupid, not that it’s so rude. The idea that politics can be civil is a fantasy for elite technocrats and the well-heeled. I’m reminded of… Read More