At long last, one writer has seriously addressed the potential problems with more stimulus spending. (I sent Paul Krugman a question about this more than a week ago, via a comment on his blog, but from what I can see he has yet to address it. And Dean Baker too easily dismisses the issue, in my opinion.)

The problem is not the federal budget deficit, not at least in the short term, but the potential political fallout from bad decision making. That way, says Steve Randy Waldman, indeed lay a possible US currency crisis. And this is ultimately where Friedrich Hayek and his associates were coming from in blaming Weimar for the disasters that followed.

 Looks like President Obama could have an unexpected ally in his push for alternative forms of energy:  small business.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a study of 800 small business owners and their attitudes towards clean-energy policies conducted by several groups, including Small Business Majority, a small-business advocacy organization.

The cover story of the latest issue of Harper's takes direct aim at the flaws in the cap and trade system for dealing with climate change and raises the possibility that such flaws will prevent the system from working anywhere nearly as effectively as intended.

The problem isn't so much that the market for trading carbon credits creates an incentive for banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to mwow, i know she sent that last one to me in a format other than word, so i wonder if the paste from word fnake the system less efficient thanks it should be, thanks to the money that will go to trading profits, as critics like Nasa's James Hansen have claimed.

Looks like more and more top corporate chiefs are willing to acknowledge the obvious--that climate change is real and caused by us humans.

In the latest wrinkle, PG&E CEO Peter Darbee recently disclosed that many U.S. top executives now embrace the idea that climate change is an urgent issue and a man made problem.