Steven Greenhouse had an excellent piece in today's New York Times about sweatshops in Jordan that manufacture apparel for export to the United States. This industry has been developed largely as a result of a trade agreement that Jordan signed with the United States in the late nineties. The article describes slave-like conditions, as foreign workers routinely have their passports confiscated by factory owners so that they cannot freely leave. According to the article, workers can be forced to work up to 48 hours straight, are routinely ripped off for their pay, and are beaten if they complain.

I was struck by the reporting on the increases that the Commerce Department reported for March consumer spending and the personal consumption expenditure deflator (PCE). Both figures were presented as being higher than expected. It seems that the financial markets were surprised by the news, since the yield on 10-year treasury bills rose by 6 basis points.

It would be reasonable to think that a densely populated island with exorbitant land and housing prices would be happy to alleviate its crowding problem. That's not the thinking at the Washington Post.

The Post had an article this morning noting the surprising fact that the number of obstetricians in Japan is declining along with its dropping birth rate. The article notes that Japan's population is currently shrinking, and that if current trends continue, its population will fall from over 127 million to just 100 million by 2050. The Post then describes this drop in population as a "problem."

Eduardo Porter had a very good piece in the Times this morning on the huge run-up in the foreign exchange reserves of developing countries. The basic point is that these reserves are held in short-term deposits that typically pay little or no real return. In poor countries that have great need of capital, diverting money to foreign exchange reserves has a large opportunity cost.

Eric Dash at the New York Times had a very good piece this morning on a backdoor $500,000 bonus that Denny's gave to its CEO, Nelson Marchioli, by allowing him to buy stock at below the market price. Of course Denny's is free to pay Mr. Marchioli whatever it feels is appropriate, but by making the payment in the form of stock options priced at below market values, it was able to conceal this payment from all but the most vigilant analysts. As the article points out, Denny's is not the only company making such surreptitious payments to its top executives.

Proponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are happy to make whatever outlandish claims are convenient to advance their cause. A few years ago, they were pushing the line that drilling in the Refuge would generate 500,000-750,000 jobs, citing a study by WEFA, one of the country's leading economic forecasting firms. We did a short analysis showing the faults of this study. When WEFA refused to stand behind its study, this outlandish job claim quickly disappeared from the debate.

Last Tuesday, I pointed out that a front page Washington Post article had overstated Mexico's growth in the post-NAFTA era by a factor of five (Mexican Deportee's U.S. Sojourn Illuminates Roots of Current Crisis, 4-17-06:A1). It appears that the Post's problems with arithmetic are continuing.