Thursday Linkorama

So much going on now. So little time to blog.

  • It turns out that shovel-ready projects aren’t so shovel-ready. I think the WSJ is being needlessly pedantic. The normal timescale to get a construction project started is years, whereas these projects are on a scale of months (which is why the bulk of the stimulus spending kicks in in 2010). Still, this should be brandished in he face of certain Nobel Prize winners who are already saying the stimulus obviously wasn’t big enough.
  • I wonder if Obama will boast about Caterpillar’s job cuts as vociferously as he boasted about the vague promises to hire. Actually, he’ll probably say the cuts would have been worse without the stimulus. The stimulus must have saved at least 500 million caterpillar jobs a month.
  • I think the increasing protectionism around the globe is the most worrying economic trend of late. We really don’t learn from our dumb mistakes, do we?
  • Good responses to the raw ugly populism surrounding the the AIG nonsense from Harsanyi and, um, me.
  • Why am I not surprised that Bush is going to be more respectful than his Vice-President?
  • How bad is the CPSIA when the government has to retract a demand that libraries pull children’s books off of their shelves due to outrage?
  • Ed Morrissey praises the head of AIG, who was dragged out of retirement, given a salary of $1, then pilloried when Congress allowed AIG bonuses to be paid out. Watching highlights of the AIG hearing yesterday, Liddy was the only one I didn’t want to punch in the face.