Written by Michael Kulla

A long healthy life starts with good genes but it also depends on good habits. Thanks to National Geographic (November 2005), a display of great photos and lively text tells the story. Although a few years old, it's still pertinent.

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Written by Elliott Morss, Morss Global Finance

Introduction

For more than I year, I have been documenting that special interests groups rather than the will of the people determine what Congress legislates and what actions the US takes internationally. It does not matter whether it is health policy, bank reform, educational standards, energy, or where/when the US launches the next war.

Last Wednesday, the 17th, the US Senate documented better than anything to date just how broken the US democracy has become. In a series of votes, interests of the gun producers and their lobbyists prevailed.

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by Dirk Ehnts, Econoblog101

The Wile E. Coyote moment is when you realized that there is nothing below you and that a free fall seems inevitable. I think that many investors are slowly realizing that this is what happens. At the New York Times, quantitative easing is declared a failure:

The effect the central bank hopes to produce hasn’t materialized. Despite modest growth, the economy remains a wellspring of misery, with mass unemployment, wage stagnation and factories going unused. In March, a smaller percentage of working-age people were actually working than at any other time since 1979.

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Written by Sig Silber

Editor's note: Sarcasm detected.

I only took one course in International Trade and was very impressed with the Marshall Lerner Condition which needs to hold to have devaluation improve your balance of trade. The Marshall Lerner condition has never applied to the US mainly because our demand for imports is very insensitive to the price (currency ratio determines the price of imports and the exports to the nations to whom we sell) which is why we have always had a negative current account. At the time that I took the course, the only medication recommended for treating this unfortunate condition was a Great Depression.

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Written by Hilary Barnes

The case in which the president of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, is being investigated in France for "abuse of public funds" and "complicity in wrong-doing" has its origins in 1991 when President Francois Mitterand asked a French businessman and TV personality, Bernard Tapie, to join his government.

What then happened would not have surprised anyone had it happened in, shall we say, Russia, but it was not something one expects to see in a country such as France.

On joining the government (with a ministerial portfolio for doing something about conditions in suburban townships dominated by immigrants from North Africa in the Paris region and in other big cities), Mr Tapie had to sell his all his businesses, which included the Adidas sportswear company.

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