For the first time in months I am caught up in my economic reading. Until Monday, that is, when a raft of new reports will come out.

Just thought I would share that.

(This came out of a conversation about how political movements work, and should be read in such a light.)

When you build a team of people, they fall into certain categories. One of them is the "bad cop/enforcer". Another of them is the "good cop/conciliator". In a properly functioning team the two operate, not together, but in cooperation. If someone steps out of line, the enforcer calls them on it, hard, and if necessary hits them with negative effects. The conciliator works with people who are willing to be reasonable, and steps in after the enforcer has does his or her work and brokers a peace. If people abuse the conciliator's good will and flexibility too much, then the enforcer steps in.

G.I. Dies and 2 Are Missing; Bombing Kills 11 in Mosque
Sabrina Tavernise | June 17

NYT - BAGHDAD — Two American soldiers were missing and another was killed Friday after they came under attack at a traffic point southwest of Baghdad, an area with one of the most extensive strongholds of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the military said.

The military did not say whether the missing men had been captured, although a military spokeswoman acknowledged in an e-mail message that capture was possible.

It was a particularly violent day in Baghdad, where a suicide bomber who had hidden explosives in his shoes blew himself up in a crowd of Shiite worshipers in a mosque, killing 11 and wounding 25. In all, 16 Iraqis were killed Friday in attacks across the country.

In a short statement released late Friday night, the military said the Americans disappeared at 7:55 p.m. southwest of Yusifiya, a restive town known as a base for Qaeda fighters.

Iraq Amnesty Plan May Cover Attacks On U.S. Military
Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer | June 15

WaPo - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday proposed a limited amnesty to help end the Sunni Arab insurgency as part of a national reconciliation plan that Maliki said would be released within days. The plan is likely to include pardons for those who had attacked only U.S. troops, a top adviser said.

Maliki's declaration of openness to talks with some members of Sunni armed factions, and the prospect of pardons, are concessions that previous, interim governments had avoided. The statements marked the first time a leader from Iraq's governing Shiite religious parties has publicly embraced national reconciliation, welcomed dialogue with armed groups and proposed a limited amnesty

Can anyone tell me what vital (BTC is not vital) national interest is at stake in the Republic of Georgia?

Failing that, can anyone tell me what vital NATO or NATO country's interest is at stake in Georgia (BTC notwithstanding)?

If not, why does it look increasingly likely that we will invite Georgia into NATO?

Paul Krugman says everyone (i.e. the Fed Board) is worried about inflation:

Fed officials now seem worried that we may be seeing the start of another round of self-sustaining inflation. But is that a realistic fear? Only if you think we can have a wage-price spiral without, you know, the wages part.

The point is that wage increases can be a major driver of inflation only if workers consistently receive raises that substantially exceed productivity growth. And that just hasn't been happening.

Meanwhile tuition: increases wildly. Food: increasing substantially. Energy: have you looked at a pump lately? Housing? LOL. But of course, we don't have inflation, or what I prefer to call wage growth.

Why? Well, Krugman alludes to it:

In fact, the distinctive feature of the current economic expansion — the reason most Americans are unhappy with the state of the economy, in spite of good numbers for the gross domestic product and explosive growth in corporate profits — is the disconnect between rising worker productivity and stagnant wages. Over the past five years productivity, as measured by real G.D.P. per hour worked, has risen by about 14 percent, but the real wages of nonmanagerial workers have risen less than 2 percent.

Exactly: the chief beneficiaries of all that productivity growth since the Bush restoration haven't been the workers. It's been the executives and all the wealth they suck out of companies via option grants.

But that's not a cost center, right?

Well, the money is coming from somewhere because as my Momma said, "it doesn't grow on trees."

This article in the IHT about Iran at the SCO meeting in Shanghai tells us a lot more about China than it does about Iran.

First, it shows us that China is still very wary of embracing the Russian bear against the United States. In this graf:

Iran's status as an observer and candidate for membership poses delicate questions for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a six-member body that so far groups China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. China is in the midst of a carefully measured bid to increase its diplomatic influence without alarming the United States or others, from Europe to India.

And in this graf:

At times, Ahmadinejad's language flirted with formulations that Beijing had studiously avoided, which would cast the Shanghai grouping as a rival or counterweight to the West and to alliances like NATO.

Finally, the article also revealed that China, although mighty thirsty for Iran's oil, isn't quite ready for politics a lá Persia (neither is Russia):

While Ahmadinejad repeatedly stressed the convergence of his country's views and diplomatic closeness with China and Russia, calling China's leader Hu Jintao "my very good friend," he also repeatedly invoked the importance of religion, or what he called "spirituality." China and Russia have a history of problems with Muslim minorities.

A history of problems with Muslim minorities? Really?

I had to re-read this today, I just couldn't believe it. Brazil has erased all of its debt? No way!

Yes way, says Morgan Stanley's Steven S. Roach:

Brazil, now the poster child of external debt reduction, is on a trajectory to eliminate its foreign indebtedness altogether within the next month or two -- an amazing transformation from the angst of January 2003, when the country’s net external indebtedness stood at $64 billion.

Are we witnessing a multigenerational wealth transfer from "developed economies" to "developing economies?" A reversion to the pre-colonial mean?

Sean-Paul Kelley | San Antonio | June 16

The Agonist - As we reported late last night, North Korea, missile-wise, is heating up. Today we bring you letters from the Senate to President Bush:

Dear Mr. President:

We write to express our concern that North Korea may be approaching a milestone in their drive to develop the ability to attack the United States with a nuclear weapon. If North Korea tests its intercontinental Taepo Dong-2 missile, it will be one step closer towards reaching this goal.

More after the jump.

I honestly cannot believe I read this and this today.

What bothers me more, however, is what's got Jim Henley's goat as well. Henley notes:

This is the worst sort of irresponsible, jingoistic tripe. It’s not as bad as starting a needless war, though plenty of Democratic politicians had a hand in that, but it’s a good way to keep one from ending.

I'm with Jim on that 100%. This comes from the Democratic Party?!? And it is clearly nothing but an ill-thought out, shortsighted, juvenile, vindictive political stunt. Trying to out flank the Republicans from the right at the expense of our troops? Are we nuts? I've never seen anything like this. We Democrats and Progressives cry foul every time the Republicans use the troops as a political stunt and yet here we are doing the same thing.

More after the jump.

Standard Life in the UK is undergoing demutualization. Over the last ten years or so most of the major life insurance companies in the US and Canada have demutualized. At one time, as measured by risk under management, mutual companies were the largest part of the industry, but that's no longer the case. I think it's worth a brief discussion because demutualization is more important than it seems.

My second job in life insurance was helping prepare a major insurer for demutualization. (My first was helping pay out a class action suit we had lost.)

Seems Bush's new Senior Policy Advisor believes in jail for doctors who perform abortions.

WATTENBERG: So you would feel comfortable putting a doctor in jail for performing a procedure that a woman wants? And not just on-demand, but it could be rape, incest, life of the mother.

We got a phone call from a friend we hadn't heard from in years. Through the grapevine of mutual friends we'd heard he was doing fine, keeping busy, all that sort of stuff. So, his call was a pleasant surprise, for a short while. What he was calling about was to inform us that he decided to turn his whole career around and dedicate it to serving the underserved in this country: the religious right. He feels that the religious right doesn't have any say in how this country is run, their voices aren't heard when it comes to politics, and that they certainly don't have anybody to do what he can do for them (he's an actor of sorts), and he feels that is just wrong. So, he's dedicating his career to those downtrodden religionists.

More after the jump. Elevated from the diaries ~spk

I forgot to blog this yesterday:

As Fort Sam Houston finished celebrating the Army's 231st birthday on Wednesday, soldiers faced the possibility of needing candles for more than just a cake.

In a notably embarrassing moment for one of the nation's oldest and most historic posts, Fort Sam has received 1,300 CPS Energy service termination notices. It's three months behind, with the last bill paid in March.

I'm glad CPS is going to cut them off. They'd cut me off if I were three months behind too! But wait. . . I spoke too soon. They're not going to cut them off.

Any other bases experiencing similar episodes of such staggering incompetence from DoD?

More after the jump.

Stephen S. Roach | New York | June 16

Morgan Stanley - Needless to say, this has been a rough month for emerging markets. At its low on 13 June, the Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets equity index had fallen 25% from its 8 May high. Over the same period, spreads on a composite basket of emerging market debt have widened by about 45 basis points from their lows. Are these corrections mainly a market phenomenon, driven by a powerful risk-aversion trade, or are there more sinister forces at work?

Marketwatch reporter Chris Oliver quoted Hirokaza Yuihama, head of strategy for the Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong, last night (which has since disappeared) as saying, "The potential for U.S. economic slowdown is probable in the third quarter."

If that's what they are saying in Hong Kong . . .

An Agonista asks for Senator Dayton's position on net neutrality:

Thank you for contacting me regarding network neutrality, a principle which would ensure that all content over the Internet, no matter where it comes from or where it goes, be treated equally.

The debate in Congress over network neutrality is whether this industry needs specific regulations that preserve that principle. Internet operators or providers, such as telephone and cable companies that offer access to the Internet, want the right to charge Internet content providers, such as Google and MySpace.com, certain rates for certain speeds of content, video for example, on their web sites.

The Internet content providers argue this is discriminatory and anticompetitive and would suppress free speech. They also argue that the high cost would make it impossible for new Internet content providers to survive.

On the other hand, the telephone and cable companies argue that consumers alone should not have to bear the cost of infrastructure that's needed to provide high-speed access to the Internet and its content. Legislation - S. 2686 and S. 2917 - has been introduced in the Senate to address network neutrality. Should either Bill come to the Senate floor, I will keep your views in mind.

That really clears things up, doesn't it?

You will all want to be reading this post if you have been following the Nigergate story closely. It's got every thing you need to get caught up to speed and some important new developments.

They took a pay raise this week while ignoring the flames of two wars in the middle east, and the decline in respect, indeed, the growing distrust for America all over the world.

They accepted a pay raise of over three thousand dollars a year per do nothing congressperson while ignoring the joblessness, the stagnant wages and the economic deprivation of their constituents.

They used a cheap trick to put a few grand in their already overstuffed pockets while ignoring millions Americans without health care.

While they were stuffing thirty additional hundred dollar bills in their Louis Vuitton wallets, Americans who have waited over six years for this cynical and corrupt administration to come up with a coherent energy policy were canceling vacations due to high fuel prices.

Pile on!

....after the jump.

Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Anna Fifield in Seoul | June 16

FT - North Korean preparations for a possible long-range missile test have advanced to where Pyongyang could launch a Taepodong-2 missile on “very short notice,” a Bush administration official told the Financial Times on Thursday.

I've been following this story for several days now via a foreign policy expert listserve I am on. Lots of back and forth last week about whether this was real or not, and now this week lots of back and forth about whether (and why) the Koreans are going to do it. I hope to have a post up tomorrow on the benefits to North Korea and all the other 6-Party players for a launch and the drawbacks. This is a damn serious development if the NORKS do launch this missile. I've basically been told: "it's on the launch pad." And I wish I had satellite access.

This is just weird. McPaper has it too.

The article is about an alleged blueprint found among Zarqawi's documents (but maybe they were found in an earlier raid, as well, no one is really saying, wink-wink) "for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran" as AP writes. I read the whole article. It's just weird, weird, weird. My first thought is that this is some of that black-ops Pentagon propaganda stuff we taxpayers have been paying for that unfortunately made it back to the U.S. traditional media. It just reeks of it, if you ask me. Like this line from the article:

For another view see Juan Cole. Like I said, this thing is weird.

More after the jump.

Jefferson Morley at the Washington Post writes a semi-daily round-up of global opinion on various topics that I enjoy reading. On Tuesday he wrote about Iran and there are some interesting nuggets worth mining.

First, Morley tells us:

More after the jump.

Senator John Cornyn, (R-TX) today in the Senate:

CORNYN: IRAQI AMNESTY DEBATE IS “A DISTRACTION.” “It makes no sense for the United States Senate to shake its finger at the new government of Iraq and to criticize them… it really is a distraction from the debate that I think the American people would want us to have.”

Seriously, is he talking about Iraq or the U.S. immigration debate?

Paul Kapustka writes:

One idea I kicked around a bit at this past weekend's Vloggercon (in no small agreement with fellow blogger Matt Sherman, who is about 179 degrees away from me on most net neutrality matters) was the idea of Google (or Microsoft, anyone with buckets of folding money and a desire to get into online apps) buying or building an online application that would show anyone who wants to use it exactly what's happening to their packets as they course to and fro.

Sure, that's a simplistic view but it's the consumer version of what all the self-proclaimed net wizards are talking about when they tell you how to "ping" a server. Why not use some of that Google cash, some of the otherwise wasted programming talent chasing Web 2.0 dreams (how many social network/hookup/map mashups do we need, anyway?) and build something we'd all like to see -- a desktop dashboard that could flash red when an ISP tries to block or degrade service, or starts narrowing the pipe for Skype?

I've seen all the flashy demos from the equipment providers who are mining enterprise dollars in this territory, so I know it's possible. Maybe not easy, but one little app -- call it the Google Desktop Bandwidth Detector (tm) -- could go a long way to keeping Big Ed and his pipes honest and open.

That would just be too easy.

Note Bene: More required reading in this post of Paul's, too.

Bart Mongoven | June 15 | Austin

Stratfor - Activists who label themselves as "progressives," from the liberal wings of the Democratic Party, met June 12-14 in Washington, D.C. Organizers had two apparent objectives for the conference, called "Take Back America" -- to organize the Democratic Party around specific themes, and to send a message to the party's idealistic base that the Democrats still have a place for activists. High-profile leaders, including Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., were featured speakers.

Evident at the conference was an interesting schism between the idealism of the party's liberal activists and a newfound pragmatism among those on the political left. The idealist strain was obvious when activists cheered Democratic Party leaders who called for the Bush administration to withdraw troops immediately from Iraq (and jeered others, including Clinton, who did not make such demands). But pragmatism was evident with every other issue discussed -- and particularly when the issue at hand was taking back power in Washington.

This is very, very interesting coming from Stratfor. What do you think?

More on the flip. Excerpts to follow ~ eds