An immigration bill that tries really hard but looks really ugly

I’ve been thinking it’s my duty as a business/economics blogger to say something about the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, but I’ve struggled to figure out what. Happily, Clive Crook takes care of at least part of the job in today’s FT (subscription required): At a glance, the Senate proposal has much to be [...]

The view from Battery Park

This morning, at about 9 a.m. The orange-ish blob in the middle is the Staten Island Ferry. And I know, the cameraphone isn’t really doing the job. But it was really nice down there, and I felt the need to share.

The U.S. is still the world’s biggest manufacturer!?!

From the FT: China will gradually take over the role of the US as the world’s largest manufacturer but will do this only by 2020, with the US’s position in the global league table of manufacturers remaining surprisingly strong, according to an authoritative economic study. Global Insight, a Washington-based economics consultancy, forecasts that the US [...]

A more typical view of the Hallo Berlin cart

The other day I encountered the famous Hallo Berlin cart on 54th Street with only one guy in line and blogged about it. Here’s a shot of a more normal state of affairs, taken today around 1:30. To readers tiring of the superficial, heavily food-oriented nature of my recent posts: Sorry, I’ve been busy (and [...]

Time to move to Rochester

Two words: garbage plates.

Lo res photo of hi net worth individuals

Another in my continuing series of really low-quality cameraphone photos of book parties, this time from the hoedown for Peter Bernstein’s Capital Ideas Evolving at the Mercedes dealership on Park Avenue Monday night. I took the photo from out on the sidewalk. Inside were a bunch of people who make a whole lot more money [...]

Beckham: Not washed-up just yet

With David Beckham’s hugely expensive arrival in Los Angeles coming ever closer, it might be worth revisiting just what he’s been doing back in Madrid. From Richard Williams’ blog at Guardian.co.uk: Last January 13, two days after he announced that he would be moving to Los Angeles next season, Fabio Capello said the Englishman would [...]

Bob Herbert gives hedge fund managers a big raise

From Bob Herbert’s column in today’s NYT (available to subscribers only): A lot of New Yorkers are doing awfully well. There are 8 million residents of New York City, and roughly 700,000 are worth a million dollars or more. The average price of a Manhattan apartment is $1.3 million. The annual earnings of the average [...]

Why not tax trans fats?

Last week, Montgomery County, Md., joined New York and Philadelphia in banning partially hydrogenated oils in restaurants. Washington Post columnist/blogger Marc Fisher decried this development: It’s fairly clear that trans fats are bad for you. And lots of food businesses are reacting to the widespread public opposition to trans fats by working on new recipes [...]

Wolfowitz a “disastrous” leader, says the man who ousted him

One last bit of Paul Wolfowitz fun, from an interview in this morning’s Volkskrant with Herman Wijffels, the Dutch executive director at the World Bank who led the internal commission that investigated the Wolfowitz scandal. (And yes, I too find the repeated involvement of Netherlanders in this mess–former World Bank ethics chief Ad Melkert is [...]