What effect would an international mission to send people to Mars have as an economic stimulus?

Such a project would require a large outlay of funds, creating thousands of highly skilled and well-paid manufacturing, research and engineering jobs in countries around the world. The need for international collaboration to make such a project work would help counteract the recent and disturbing trend towards protectionism and isolationism.

Last but not least, it would create an inspiring and exciting goal for the nations of the world to work towards, an antidote to the 1930s-style fear and pessimism that led to such horrible consequences in Europe and Asia.

Any thoughts?

"Ever."

"Too bad there's no salacious sex angle to the plight of the third world. If there was, there'd be no shortage of interest."

Criminal syndicates are heavily involved in prostitution and sex slavery around the world. Salacious doesn't even begin to cover it. There aren't words in the English language fit to describe the horror.

I'd also like to add "McMafia" by Misha Glenny to cabdriver's bibliography of evil. Here's a link to Salon's review of the book from last year: http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/04/16/international_crime/index.html

Read it and weep.

...which means we get to string you up by your ankles with piano wire.

And God help you if you utter the word 'proactive' in our presence!

...head for Vancouver or Montreal. You've been Canadian this whole time and just haven't realized it.

I'm not a Geithner fan (he still seems far too compromised by Wall Street ideas and money) but my beef is different from the press corps'. The reason none of your colleagues are asking any substantial questions concerning policy is very simple: they don't give a rat's ass. To most political reporters, personalities and power plays are the real stories, with actual facts and policies serving merely as the equipment with which the game is played. Since what Geithner does is only relevant to them in relation to how it affects the power balance in Washington, is it any surprise that their questions are so banal? Or, when he tries to direct the conversation to matters of real importance, so vicious?

And yet, at the very same time, media concentration, the dismal state of the publishing industry and the dumbing-down of popular culture have given us fewer, lower-quality materials TO read with every passing day (the present blog excepted, of course).

Good thing the classics keep so well.

...I thought an increase in personal savings rates was a bad thing during a recession, since it's keeping money out of circulation. If people were rational, they'd have saved during the boom times and not at a point when squirreling money away beggars their neighbours.

Lewis' piece for the now-kaput Portfolio will probably be looked back on as the best essay about the Wall Street disaster ever written. I think I got the link from you, but for those who may have missed it:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?print=true

Read it and weep.

Nothing like a little Malthusian horror to start your day off right.

Given that the rate of global population growth has slowed significantly in recent years, I'm not too worried about population as a number. What's worrying is that the people who are already here are consuming resources at a greater and greater rate, and for the same reason birth rates are falling off - increased prosperity in the developing world.

Ending poverty and freeing women could kill the planet. My lefty heart wants to rip itself in two.

I hate how honest people are always forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs because they aren't willing to sink to the level of these mendacious pricks. What should reasonable, honest people do when confronted with this kind of madness? Telling them the truth doesn't work, shouting them down doesn't work, ignoring them doesn't work. How do you deal with it?

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contest in vain." Friederich von Schiller.

Anyone who works in the arts will cringe in recognition after reading that one. Good job!

"How bad does it have to get before it's called hyperinflation?"

When you need to bring a wheelbarrow full of cash to the grocery store, you're in hyperinflation country.

How can rental vacancy rates be so high given the huge number of homeowners who have been booted from their homes in the last two years? Wouldn't rental housing be the logical place for them to end up? Are they all living in tents or under bridges?