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Taking the "Con" Out of Economics

A recent “Spreadsheet Scandal” has rocked the economics world. It has eliminated the last remaining technical argument in support of the President’s “chained CPI” Social Security cut. Earlier this year the IMF admitted they had made errors in their modelling of expenditure multipliers. Now, the darlings of the austerity cultists – Rogoff and Reinhart – has been exposed for errors in spreadsheet coding. Who is ever going to take responsibility for these travesties?

Polio's Moving Target

Ewen Callaway Nature
Finding and vaccinating Nigerian nomads may be one of the last obstacles to the eradication of polio. Remote settlements in northern Nigeria remain a challenge for vaccine workers.

'Big Men' Explores Greed in West African Oil Exploration

Katie Van Syckle Rolling Stone
Rachel Boynton has created a film that takes an expansive, yet focused, look at how oil makes its way from deep in an ocean off the coast of Ghana to the U.S. stock exchange, and the ensuing complications. The film explores the connections between the Ghanaian company who finds the oil field, the small Texas oil company who drills, the Wall Street private equity partners who invest, and the Ghanaian government officials who manage the contracts.

Big Tent

Clay Bennett gocomics.com

Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons

Coleen Rowley Consortium News
The revelation that the family of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was from Chechnya prompted new speculation about the attack as Islamic terrorism. Less discussed was the history of U.S. neocons supporting Chechen terrorists as a strategy to weaken Russia.