The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary.Today’s required reading is “The Quiet Coup” by […]

George Orwell’s Animal Farm was rejected by Faber & Faber before being published a years later by another publisher.The editor who wrote the rejection was TS Eliot.“Eliot wrote: “After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact there couldn’t have […]

At long last I have brought my taxes under control, and will deliver them to the accountant tomorrow. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I tend to watch action films when I’m absorbed in digging through old envelopes full of receipts. Action films don’t require a lot of my attention, except in the parts where […]

I’m leaving town for a few days— not, alas, on a signing tour or anything.I don’t know how much I’ll be able to check online, so play nice while I’m gone.