Niall Kennedy is leaving Microsoft after four months: I was able to borrow resources here and there, but there was no team being built around the platform in the foreseeable future. I could have stayed at Microsoft, waited for the other 85% of the company to ship their products, and Read more…
The Register reports Gordon Brown's interest in extending the ID cards scheme. In the ID world according to Gordon, on the other hand, ID management will proceed down pretty much the path laid out by the architects of the ID scheme. It won't consider more decentralised and secure approaches that Read more…
Jackie Ashley is good in the Guardian today: To be a liberal does not mean shrugging your shoulders at those who loathe you and hoping that somehow everyone will get on. A world divided between Christian bible-belt fundamentalists, powered by US military and oil interests, and Islamist Qur'an-belt fundamentalists, ruled Read more…
Another Britblog Roundup from Mr Worstall.
This week's Economist asks why there is an invisible hand on the keyboard: Not all economics bloggers toil entirely for nothing. Mr Mankiw frequently plugs his textbook. Brad Setser, of Roubini Global Economics, an economic-analysis website, is paid to spend two to three hours or so each day blogging as Read more…
Arguably Gordon Brown's most successful policy was designed while waiting for office, and implemented as a coup over Labour's first weekend: the independence of the Bank of England. As he waits for the possibility of taking over as Prime Minister, he may well be wondering how he might similarly create Read more…
It is good to see some American voices speaking out against farm subsidies. Here is Jonah Goldberg in today's Los Angeles Times: There are few issues for which the political consensus is so distant from both common sense and expert opinion. Right-wing economists,left-wing environmentalists and almost anybody in-between who doesn't Read more…
SaharaReports.com reports that the Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Okonjo Iweala, who was formerly the Finance Minister, has resigned from the Cabinet, citing “deep personal clashes between her and the president”. If so, that is very bad news for Nigeria. She earned the confidence of donors and played a Read more…
Much of the literature about the effectiveness (or otherwise) of aid revolves around whether aid accelerates economic growth. But there is another purpose to giving aid: to redistribute income and consumption from rich to poor. If aid is taken from people who are quite well off, and used to put Read more…
Bruce Bartlett blames the US in general, and George Bush in particular, for “the death of Doha”: Last week, the Doha Round of trade talks collapsed. Future historians may well conclude that of all the Bush administration’s economic mistakes, this one was the biggest. That is because we may have Read more…