Quotes of the day

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.--President Obama, in 2009

I won't release bin Laden death photos.--President Obama, today

I think it's a lot easier campaigning to be President than being President.--Cav

A Republican candidate could mitigate a lot of Obama's advantage on the successful mission against Bin Laden by pointing out that the intelligence that led to locating him was gathered by the Bush administration, using interrogation methods and sites that Obama criticized and promised to shutdown. Had Bush not prosecuted the GWOT in this way, Obama could not have mandated the mission. So Obama loses in 2 ways: one, he failed to keep his campaign promises; and two, he failed to see the benefits/necessities of prosecution and intelligence gathering. Both would weaken him in the eyes of a competent voter.--Cav, comment at NYT

I think thanks are also due to the people who served in the financial front of the war on terror during these ten years—many in the United States Treasury. President Bush announced the terrorist asset freezing operation in the Rose Garden on September 24, 2001. It was before military actions in Afghanistan. It was the first shot in the war on terror.--John Taylor

It's easy to criticize straw men, but even one who tries to make money must realize the value of assuming that markets efficient is useful because otherwise it would be too easy to generate alpha, and any thoughtful person should recognize this is difficult, or at least, rare. ... It's important to know when a paradigm is not working, and clearly macro [economics] is just as unhelpful today as it was in the Great Depression in terms of focusing the debate, eliminating irrelevant distractions. The same arguments are being made for more or less government. I don't have the answers, but I do know that full-time macroeconomists are like active mutual fund managers: articulate, hard working, and basically worthless. --Eric Falkenstein

While his governance style has been quiet, [Stephen] Harper has established an impressive track record. He's cut Canada's value-added tax (the GST) as well as the corporate tax. He's deregulated the telecom industry. And despite strong pressure, he's only modestly given in to the temptation of stimulus spending. The result is that the Conservative Party has credibly promised to cut spending further and to balance the federal budget by 2014. Moreover, based on International Monetary Fund projections, in 2015 Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio will be less than 30%, largely unchanged from the start of the recession—and a third of the projected U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio in that year.--David Gratzer

Medicine, like economics, deals with complex systems that are still not well understood; like economics, it has its share of quacks; but unlike economics, medicine has swallowed many of its ethical qualms about running controlled experiments in difficult circumstances. Randomized controlled trials are now catching on in economics, especially development economics. ... in medicine, academic evidence and everyday practice are intertwined. No doubt this symbiotic relationship is less than perfect in the real world; nevertheless it is something economists would do well to emulate.--Tim Harford

The investigators found that the less salt people ate, the more likely they were to die of heart disease — 50 people in the lowest third of salt consumption (2.5 grams of sodium per day) died during the study as compared with 24 in the medium group (3.9 grams of sodium per day) and 10 in the highest salt consumption group (6.0 grams of sodium per day). And while those eating the most salt had, on average, a slight increase in systolic blood pressure — a 1.71-millimeter increase in pressure for each 2.5-gram increase in sodium per day — they were no more likely to develop hypertension.--GINA KOLATA

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