SOME ECONOMICS

GWB's tax cuts: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that Bush's three rounds of tax cuts helped ensure the 2001 recession was mild and brief and have provided critical stimulus to keep the economy on track. In other words, the Bush tax cuts are the engine that have powered today's recovery."

How outsourcing creates jobs for Americans: "Though the pace of U.S. job creation has quickened recently, some 'Benedict Arnold' companies are still being criticized for outsourcing work from the United States to other countries. U.S. manufacturers have outsourced operations to countries such as China to lower wage costs and escape from high taxes, burdensome government regulations and intransigent unions at home. For similar reasons, service jobs in information technology (IT) are outsourced to India. Less well known, though, is that increased economic globalization has caused jobs to move to the United States as well as away from it."

Ten recurring economic fallacies: "As an American historian who knows something of economic law, having learned from the Austrians, I became intrigued with how the United States had remained prosperous, its economy still so dynamic and productive, given the serious and recurring economic fallacies to which our top leaders (political, corporate, academic) have subscribed and from which they cannot seem to free themselves -- and alas, keep passing down to the younger generation."

Good explanation! "Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. That process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy."

A flying pig!: "Australian farmers are on the cusp of a $70 billion trade victory as negotiators edge close to an agreement to abolish farm subsidies across the US and Europe.... "What they are looking at is the possible abolition of all subsidies for agriculture," Cattle Council president Keith Adams said. "It's really been the last 24 hours that have seen the ground shift."

*****************************