Year in Review: 2008 Again, a very happy and successful New Year to Sublime Oblivion readers. It has certainly been a successful year for this blog, founded as Da Russophile on Jan 9th 2008. The original site at blogger has nearly 16,000 visitors, while Sublime Oblivion has been graced by nearly 2000 from the date
Green Communism is humanity’s last and only chance to avert environmental catastrophe.
The method, art and philosophy of drinking lots and lots of vodka.
Much like Putin’s Russia, Venezuela has been unfairly victimized by Washington’s foreign policy elite and savaged by the Western MSM, which have caricatured Chávez as a run of the mill Latin American populist strongman. In a previous post on this matter, I drew attention to the work of Mark Weisbrot at the CEPR, who has
As I predicted he would, Obama has won overwhelmingly. As I argued, this was the best possible outcome for America – Obama understands the importance of investing heavily in renewable energy and new infrastructure, and would withdraw from the financially ruinous Iraq adventure. Just by his election, he has bolstered America’s battered image around the
Sometimes, it is much simpler to expound upon one’s views on a subject by replying to and arguing against an opposing view, rather than constructing one’s own thesis. Call it intellectual laziness, a clever short-cut or whatever you not, this is what I’m going to do with the Washington Post article A Long Wait at
A while ago I wrote Education as the Elixir of Growth on DR, in which I noted that in most countries the educational profile is closely correlated to their level of productivity. The major exceptions are nations with resource windfalls (inflated productivity) and socialist legacies (deflated productivity). Furthermore, the greater the gap between the ‘potential
Read these two posts by Krugman at Conscience of a Liberal, here and here. 1. A looming recession, after seven years of stagnation in the US median wage, means that the likelihood of positive income growth this year is very small. Even assuming it’s 0% would mean that the incumbent party’s nominee, McCain, can be
Chavez is frequently shafted in the Western media, who allege that the only reason the Venezuelan economy is doing well is because of record oil prices. This is not to mention all the invective hurled against the Chavez administration for its supposed disrespect for democracy, from refusing to renew the licenses of TV stations support
What are the reasons behind the wealth and poverty of nations? Since this question has exercised the minds of thinkers from Adam Smith to David Landes, Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, I decided to take a look at it myself. I came to the conclusion that while geography, macroeconomic policies, resource windfalls and the microeconomic