Silly Little Country

Doc beat me to it

It is incredible how predictable human stupidity is. I heard about this while watching the Australian Open Tennis in the not quite so wee hours this morning.
Good news is Doc spared me the work of ranting on my own:

One of the realities of being an open economy is that fiscal stimuli tend to leak. But trying to plug those leaks can create massive problems, as happened when the US enacted the Smoot-Hawley tariff, thus contributing to the severity of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Do you think the politicians learned anything from that experience?

The short answer is that they likely learned little as they are beholden to constituents with interests at variance with the greater good.
As a small reflection, the match I watched was in Australia, and featured a Swiss playing an American. The other semi-finalists are Spaniards, each of whom defeated a Frenchman to survive the previous round. Perhaps the US Open should allow only players who are US citizens. Sheesh. This is pathetic, and no major surprise.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:23 AM