Over the last week or so, I’ve come across several interesting articless, &c. There’s also a very interesting interview with Barry Eichengreen in the Berkeley series “Conversations with History.”

And a number of you have continued on the discussion board also posting things. I encourage you all to follow up those links as well. (Great posts, ladies & gents!)

So, this might provide interesting summer reading and listening.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e61e20c-0f44-11de-ba10-0000779fd2ac.html

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13576264&source=hptextfeature

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28241.html

And if you think I’m keen on Locke, see what Hamilton scholar Robert Wright named his son:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122186662036058787-lMyQjAxMDI4MjIxMDgyNjA2Wj.html

Have a great summer!

I’m sure a lot of you are curious how to insert the £–because, like me, you’re always using the £ as your standard currency example. Here’s how to do it:

Mac: Option + 3

Windows: ALT key then press 0 1 6 3

I’ve had mixed luck with the latter. (Typical M$ requires several extra keystrokes for no good reason!)

Here is a link to other useful shortcuts for the :

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Symbols-on-a-Mac

We’ll talk about the Washington Consensus tomorrow. Here are two related links:

http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/paper.cfm?ResearchID=488

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/09/AR2009040903241.html

If you have trouble with that second link, you can access the material through Eres.

Caroline passed on a link to a newstory about local currency:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm

I thought you might enjoy comparing/contrasting local currencies with national and “international” currencies.

Here’s an interesting article on Keynes’ personal sacrifice during the war. It’s in the New Statesman, for which, incidentally, Keynes wrote actively in the 1930s.

http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2008/11/bretton-woods-keynes-british

3-19Thur-Global Trade Regime Today

The following are some videos you may find of interest:

• WTO. “To the heart of the WTO.” Download or stream video via: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/webcas_e/webcas_e.htm#intro
• WTO. “Case Studies of WTO Dispute Settlement.” Download or stream video via: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/webcas_e/webcas_e.htm#intro

As we work through this material on the Great Depression and our several successive responses to it, I’m sure we are all thinking about the potential parallels to the current crisis. As I said last Thursday, I want you to think actively about the ways in which these situations are the same and in which they are different. This will help us contextualize our current situation and, perhaps, investigate additional potential responses to it.

Irwin–whom we are reading again now and whom we’ll host in several weeks–has recently been engaged in this exercise. Here are some things he’s recently written in this vein:

– http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01irwin.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

– http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1474

Here’s an interesting piece from The Daily Show on the manipulation of markets. The clip is making its way around the tubes, so some of you have probably heard about this.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/13/jon_stewart_exposes_apple_stock_manipulation.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/17bb3b20-0fc9-11de-a8ae-0000779fd2ac.html