Yep, I think you got it right. I watched some of the returns last night on CNN and caught some of Clinton's speech. She sounded robotic to me, utterly without fire or passion. Now, I must admit that I absolutely loathe what passes for political rhetoric in this country and I generally avoid it. So I don't exactly have a big database to compare her speech to. But gee, it was a victory speech to her own supporters in her own state and she couldn't let go just a little bit?

But you're ignoring economic basics. You and most of the professional economists who've grown up since the Econ 101 textbook stopped using the term 'aggregate demand.'

Capitalism, wherever you find it has one consistent problem - overproduction. Overproduction or underconsumption results in rising inventories, falling prices and falling wages. That's what's happening now here in the U.S. and happened in the 1920s. Marx identified the problem and Keynes attempted to solve it by involving the government in redistributing income downward to enhance an economy's ability to consume what it produces. To the extent that an economy decides not to do that, as ours has in a number of different ways ("free" trade, lower taxes on the wealthy), it runs the risks Marx outlined. Globalization does that too, just on a larger scale.

Yes, for a time Chinese workers will improve their standard of living, but eventually they will run into the same problem that other captialist economies run into - what to do with all that stuff. For the past several years the Chinese have depended chiefly on the U.S. to solve their problem for them, but productivity is increasing at 8-10% per year over there. It increased in the U.S. at a little over 5% per year in the 1920s and look at what that got us.

It's not a question of point of view at all unless you favor falling prices, falling wages, masses of unemployed, etc. Chinese industry, just like that in the U.S. will cut labor costs where it can. That's good for Chinese industry and private profit, but it's bad for everyone else.

have gone from a gazelle-quick team of shooters with no center and no power forward to a team with a big center and a power forward to die for. In short, they've become a standard NBA team which means they have a chance to win it all. The run and gun team they've been for the past few years has been great in the regular season. The fact is that in about half the games played in the NBA regular season one team or both just don't care who wins. That means they slack off on defense which allows teams like Phoenix to compile monster regular season records. But when it comes to the playoffs, every team is focussed on every game and some teams, like the Spurs, are focussed on every possession. Therefore the defense is better and the scores are lower, and teams like Phoenix are eliminated by teams like San Antonio. All the talk about Phoenix being the prototype for teams of the future is bunk. It's fine for winning in the regular season, but if you want to win when it counts, you won't do it the Phoenix way. 'Twas ever thus.

This is a bid by Phoenix to win it all by cutting off the paint to penetration and rebounding on defense, and passing out of the low post to spot-up shooters, with Nash and Barbosa still penetrating on offense. It's a huge change and it's rightly calculated to win in the post-season.

this seems like good news for the Dems. ALL the press attention will be on Clinton/Obama for the next several months.

The one that wants women taxed at a lower rate than men. It's true; they've adopted that Spanish feminist hobbyhorse as their own. Gee, that gender equality thing sure is hard to understand.