(This post was revised on August 14, 2013 to add additional references to cholera studies suggested by reader feedback.) Yet another study [PDF] has determined that the U.N. is responsible for having caused Haiti’s deadly, ongoing cholera epidemic. The ne

Dean Baker
Truthout, August 12, 2013
The Huffington Post, August 12, 2013

Glenn Hubbard, along with Tim Kane, had a column in the NYT today decrying the budget deficit. The column begins by repeating the warnings of that well known economic expert, Admiral Mike Mullen, that the debt is the “single biggest threat to our national security.”

There is more than a bit of irony in Hubbard writing this sort of piece. Hubbard was the chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush when he pushed through his tax cuts in 2001. The tax cuts, along with the recession and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, pushed the budget from a surplus of 2.5 percent of GDP in 2000, to deficits of more than 3.5 percent of GDP in 2003 and 2004. While running large deficits was the right move for the economy in response to the recession created by the collapse of the stock bubble (although there were far better uses for the money than tax cuts to rich people and fighting unnecessary wars), there is more than a bit of inconsistency in Hubbard's apparent willingness to use deficits to boost the economy out of a recession in the last decade while at the same time disparaging President Obama's efforts to use deficits to lift the economy out of a far deeper hole.

The double standard in this piece is explicit. It tells readers:

"When Reagan was sworn into office, gross federal debt equaled 32.5 percent of G.D.P. Under President Obama’s leadership, it has risen above 100 percent."

Readers may not have realized that the debt to GDP ratio had been a consistent downward path from the end of World War II, when it was over 110 percent of GDP, until President Reagan took office. It then began to rise quickly in the 1980s and early 1990s, reaching more than 70 percent of GDP when the first President Bush left office in early 1993. (This is the total debt, which includes the bonds held by Social Security and other government trust funds.)

In a piece that was ostensibly intended to dispel myths about Jeff Bezos, the new owner of the Washington Post, "Five myths about Jeff Bezos," the paper seemed intent on creating new myths. Its list of myths included two items which are largely true.

Myth # 1 is "Jeff Bezos is destroying independent booksellers." The piece implies that independent booksellers were already well on their way to collapse before Amazon came into existence telling readers:

"The year before, Barnes & Noble and the Borders Group captured nearly a quarter of all revenue from book sales."

With the two big chains getting less than a quarter of revenue, this means that independent stores and smaller chains got more than three quarters of revenue. By contrast, last year on-line sales, the bulk of which went to Amazon, accounted for 48 percent of total sales. While some of this growth came at the expense of the two big chains (Borders has gone out of business), most of it was at the expense of independent book stores.

It is possible to debate whether the loss of independent book stores is a net positive or negative (obviously consumers value buying items at Amazon or they wouldn't do it), but it is absurd to contend that Amazon did not hugely hasten the decline of independent book stores as his newspaper does here.

The other major non-myth on the list is myth #4 that:

"Amazon's key advantage is that it doesn't collect state sales tax."

This past Tuesday, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald testified before the Brazilian Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations and National Defense (CRE) at a public hearing on the clandestine surveillance activities of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in Brazil.

Greenwald, who has published many top-secret NSA documents leaked to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden, explained how the agency’s surveillance programs go far beyond gathering intelligence related to terrorism and other national security threats, as the U.S. government has suggested. According to Greenwald, NSA spying has focused on foreign business interests as a means for the U.S. government to gain a competitive advantage in negotiations. Greenwald mentioned that he has information regarding instances of NSA surveillance of the Organization of American States (OAS) and secret intelligence documents on economic agreements with Latin American nations. He explained that this type of surveillance has helped the U.S. to make the agreements appear more appealing to Latin American countries. Brazil’s concern about this economic espionage is particularly understandable given that it is the U.S.’s largest trading partner in South America.

During the hearing, Greenwald made reference to a 2009 letter wherein Thomas Shannon, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs (from November 2005 – November 2009) and current U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, celebrated the NSA’s surveillance program in Latin America and how it has helped advance U.S. foreign policy goals in the region. Greenwald wrote a detailed account of his findings in an article entitled “Did Obama know what they were thinking?” in the Brazilian print magazine, Época. In this piece, Greenwald explains that Shannon’s letter, addressed to NSA Director Keith Alexander, discusses how the spy agency obtained hundreds of documents belonging to Latin American delegations detailing their “plans and intentions” during the summit. Shannon asserted that these documents were instrumental in helping the Obama administration engage with the delegations and deal with “controversial subjects like Cuba” and “difficult counterparts” like former President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Bolivian President, Evo Morales. In the same letter Shannon encouraged Alexander to continue providing similar intelligence as “the information from the NSA will continue to give us the advantage that our diplomacy needs,” especially ahead of an upcoming OAS General Assembly meeting in which he knew discussions on Cuba’s suspension from the OAS would ensue.

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, August 9, 2013

Much of New York City grows eerily quiet in the late summer, but on Monday, August 6th one corner of Manhattan – 777 United Nations Plaza – was buzzing with activity.  Argentinean president Christina Kirchner, accompanied by 12 Latin American foreign mini