Clive Crook

National Journal's Michael Hirsh says that US strategy in Afghanistan is coming apart so far that plans for gradual disengagement are likely to be upended. The Koran burnings, this weekend's atrocity, and the dysfunctional alliance with Pakistan have got the administration thinking about a quicker exit. Though the official line is that the U.S. withdrawal timetable is unchanged, some U.S. officials have begun to talk about speeding it up--in part because there are… More »

I wonder if I'm alone in wondering quite where US policy on Iran now stands. More »

Kathleen Parker says that Rush Limbaugh has "united decent people of all stripes and persuasions with his vile remarks about a Georgetown law student". I hope she's right. Her column on Limbaugh's twisted notions of propriety is the best thing I've read on the Sandra Fluke pantomime.After referring to Fluke as a "slut" and a "prostitute," [Limbaugh] offered the following proposition: "So, Miss Fluke, and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going… More »

Kirkegaard is too generous to the EU leadership. More »

The supposedly foundational choices that the Republican party is pitching to voters are a fraud, I argue in a column for Bloomberg. More »

The articles on the state of the Republican party by John Heilemann and Jonathan Chait in the current New York magazine are both really good, I think. Heilemann marvels at the suicidal tendencies expressed in the current primary contest. That Mitt Romney finds himself so imperiled by Rick Santorum--Rick Santorum!--is just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in what has been the most volatile, unpredictable, and just plain wackadoodle… More »

Question is, why can't they? Take a few pointers from Rick Santorum, I advise, or if that's too hard, maybe Bruce Springsteen. More »

I submit that this is no way to run a railroad. More »

Use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, says Philip Verleger of the Peterson Institute. More »

The World Bank's chief has enormous power within the institution, and the Bank needs to follow a substantially new course in future. More »

Germany needs to remember its ambitions for the European Union and why it embarked on this venture in the first place. More »

John Kay has written a good column reflecting on Wilt Chamberlain, Lloyd Blankfein and the fact that we're happy to allow athletic superstars their fortunes but begrudge investment bankers theirs. Both outcomes result from voluntary market processes, so isn't it illogical to be content with one but not the other? No, says Kay, it makes sense.He clarifies what makes an income distribution just or fair. As any liberaltarian would tell you, it's not (or not only)… More »

Gideon Rachman's FT column is very good, but it lets Germany off too lightly. More »

If you ask me, Jonathan Chait, a writer I respect, has made an ass of himself in a fight he picked with Veronique de Rugy over taxes and progressivity. She offended him by saying that America's income taxes are more progressive than those of other rich countries. Chait assailed her "completely idiotic" reasoning, called her an "inequality denier", "a ubiquitous right-wing misinformation recirculator" and asked if it was really any wonder he cast insults now and… More »

Institutional or constitutional fixes for broken US fiscal policy are ever on the agenda: Gramm-Rudman-like fiscal rules, PAYGO schemes, balanced-budget amendments, and so on. In Europe "fiscal councils"--appointed, purportedly apolitical bodies to oversee budget policy--have been catching on, and they've had some success. The US has flirted with this idea too. The Bowles-Simpson commission was a kind of fiscal council, though its fast-track legislative powers were… More »

Advocates like myself of renewed fiscal stimulus for the US, Germany and some other EU countries have to answer a lot of weak arguments. One that especially riles Paul Krugman's cult-followers is the idea that balancing a nation's budget is exactly like balancing a household's budget. Well, they're right about that: it isn't, for the reasons Krugman tirelessly points out. One qualification: when a nation's budget deficit does have to be curbed, the prudent… More »

The most important question in fiscal policy is also the most difficult: how, as a practical matter, to combine short-term accommodation with a credible commitment to medium-term restraint. In the US, this is something nobody much likes to discuss. Liberals don't want to talk about medium-term restraint (except for raising taxes on the 1%) and conservatives don't want to talk about short-term accommodation (they want tax cuts, but they always want tax cuts). I'm… More »

With an unemployment rate of 22.9 percent, Spain shows why structural reform really is needed in Europe. More »

I believe I've mentioned--I hope I've mentioned--how much I liked Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. I don't always agree with him but I think his work is fascinating. Haidt's a social psychologist, liberal by inclination but sufficiently respectful of conservatives to offend his colleagues and the left more generally. (One of his findings is that his colleagues are a subset of the left.) Odd that such an outlook… More »

A new CBO study of federal workers' pay finds that: Overall, the federal government paid 16 percent more in total compensation than it would have if average compensation had been comparable with that in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers. Civil servants with professional degrees do worse than their private-sector counterparts, the others do better. Overall, the federal workers come out ahead. Megan McArdle asks,… More »