As a regular lurker, I've grown tired of reading about candidates' characters: Really, I'm not sure anyone is going to change his mind about that in a discussion forum, no matter how well-written.

If there's one word to describe our economy over the past twelve months, I'd say "resilient". The housing bubble burst around a year ago, oil prices have been ratcheting upward and the value of the dollar has been falling to historic lows, yet our economy still grew by 1.9% in the second quarter. I doubt the positive GDP growth will last into the third quarter, especially if the Fed decides to increase interest rates, but I wouldn't put money on it (the GDP or what the Fed will do).

I support free trade....or at least as free as possible. If two competing measures over trade come up in Congress, it's 99.9% likely that I'll support the measure which nets free-ER trade than the status quo...even when the option of Free-ER trade in some managed and messy trade agreement like NAFTA or CAFTA. Why? Because if the option is NAFTA or the maintenance of barriers or more barriers, I'll side with NAFTA. If it's between NAFTA and the abolition of all tariffs, I'll choose the latter (but that never seems to be the choice, sadly).

This is interesting.

I didn't know this. Fuel subsidies in emerging economies are helping to keep world oil prices from falling. In such countries with less disposable income and more political pressure to keep gas affordable, governments have been stepping up subsidies to keep pump prices from shooting up like they have here. So, in case you were wondering why record level oil prices weren't stunting demand and bringing prices down, now you know part of the reason.

I don't know if anyone of you have seen Pickens' timely (think: ELECTIONS) TV Ads about a "plan for energy independence" and reducing "dependence on foreign oil". They struck me as sophistic as soon as I heard them and rife with appeals to mechantilism and benevolent, nice-sounding cronyism. Being certain it was simply that, I just rolled my eyes and didn't give it much thought.

Well, Jerry Taylor of Cato has given it some thought and it's just what I expected.

Says Taylor:

Thats about the only conclusion I can draw from her proposal to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to lower gasoline prices. President Bush has been dead set against this idea and he is absolutely right on this point. Unfortunately we're probably going to see plenty of more dumb ideas from politicians about to how to deal with high gasoline prices as the election gets closer.

Hat tip to The Economist blog for pointing to this NYT EDITORIAL (you like that Spartacvs? ;)) by Paul Krugman.

Passages like the one that is about to follow make me wonder whether the analytical foundations of some talented PhD economists, like Krugman, are so different from mine (and real PhD economists who don't think like Krugman) that he doesn't even see the gaping flaw that jumped out at me as I read it:

That is the title of this WSJ article by Henry Olsen, in light of Obama's visit to Europe, that makes some oft-overlooked points about European economic policy in recent years...from both the European Left and Right.

James Kirchick, assistant editor at NRO opines in the Weakly Standard of the Democrat’s Popularity Fetish.

The gist of his argument resolves to Obama’s positions on Free Trade.

Apparently, the Dems are going to send the homeless to feed the ducks at City Park.