100 Notable Books of 2010

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The Spanish Prisoner by Paul Krugman

"The bad news about America is that a powerful political faction is trying to shackle the Federal Reserve, in effect removing the one big advantage we have over the suffering Spaniards. Republican attacks on the Fed — demands that it stop trying to promote economic recovery and focus instead on keeping the dollar strong and fighting the imaginary risks of inflation — amount to a demand that we voluntarily put ourselves in the Spanish prison." Read the full article

I do not entirely agree with him on the Spain's debt issue. Although, by joining the Euro zone they have lost their ability to devalue their currency, but at least their debt remains in Euro (the luxury from which most of east Asian countries were deprived, during 1997 crisis). However, he is right on the money in condemning the latest assaults on the Fed's independence (though despite what he says, the attacks are not coming only from conservatives, but from the liberals as well).

Dear Congressmen, confine the democracy to that dysfunctional Congress and don't mess with the Fed's precious Independence, please!

WikiLeaks: U.S.-Iran Relations "Now What" Moment?

"Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama's Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? Why was Iran expected to accept negotiation terms that relinquished its greatest strategic asset (1200 kg of LEU) without receiving a strategic asset of equal value in return? And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it. " Read the article