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This week world leaders have been delivering speeches at the United Nations, a very contentious and unproductive exercise. We have seen world leaders lose credibility (e.g., Bush, Chavez) and lose their country (sorry, Thaksin). But what has largely gone unnoticed is the President’s latest policy decision: banks are not free to conduct business with Bank Saderat, Iran’s export bank.

Here is the relevant excerpt from yesterday’s Washington Post:

The U.S. Treasury said on September 8 that Iran’s Bank Saderat was blocked from any dealings with U.S. banks, even through third parties, an action taken as Washington sought sanctions against Iran for its refusal to obey a U.N. order to halt nuclear enrichment activities by August 31.

The directive is forcing the world’s largest transactional banks — like UBS, ING, CreditSuisse, and HSBC — to decide whether they want to conduct business with the United States or with Iran. While the United States is the largest financial trading partner, the banks could find ways around this prohibition. It would be better for them to continue to deal with Bank Saderat. Why? Petroleum. Oil. Black Texas tea.
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Thanks to Al Gore’s new movie, as well as rising prices at the fuel pump and rising temperatures everywhere, the idea of becoming “green” is beginning to gain popularity. Auto makers are beginning to make more efficient vehicles (at least the automakers outside of Detroit). Environmental consciousness is beginning to meld with marketing. But what exactly does it mean to go green?
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In an effort to curb pollution, city and state governments are forming agreements with other municipal, state, and international governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions. For example, California Govnernor Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed last week to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and to trade carbon pollution credits (although I’m not exactly sure how this will work, since the United States, and thus California, are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol). Also last week, President Bill Clinton brokered a deal between 22 of the worlds largest cities to reduce carbon emissions by those cities.

With all of these agreements between cities, it would seem that the nation is on the right track to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and finally doing something constructive about carbon pollution, right? Wrong.
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Thanks to the Washington Post, I’ve now proven that I’ve earned my B.S. in Economics. Check out the Federal Reserve Board’s Kids Page. Make sure you take the quiz to prove that you, too, are as smart as any 10-year-old.

I just hope this was an intern’s project.

This morning’s Washington Post wrote an article on the growing wage gap both nationwide and in the Washington Metro Area. While the article makes some conjectures about the source of the problem, the ultimate source is simply one of supply and demand. For whatever reason, there is a near endless supply of unskilled labor, with only a finite number of positions, a problem not found in the pool of skilled labor.
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I was reading this article at nature.com, and I thought the premise was rather interesting. Apparently, nudity makes men economically rational. The theory is that men who ordinarily would drive a hard bargain suddenly become rational, at least in an economic sense. Thus, claims the article, answers the question “why does sex sell?”

Maybe we need a change of staffing at the Fed?

As described in this Economist article, the US and the EU are beginning to negotiate the reduction of agricultural subsidies. The problem? No one wants to make the first move, and, according to the article, groups like Oxfam International say the reductions don’t matter because they are trivial at best.

Regardless of whether or not these reductions are trivial, the US needs to make the first move and begin reducing farm subsidies. While this measure alone will not solve poverty, the gesture will be a symbolic measure that should have the effect of getting people back to the WTO table. With the reality that subsidies can be eliminated, the parties can get down to the real business.