The Week

Apropos of Bernie Goetz, this one is going the rounds in New York City: There’s a new drink, called the Subway. It’s a screwdriver with four shots of vodka. To get it, you have to ask for five dollars.

The latest reports show wholesale prices up by only 1.9 per cent, and GNP up by a robust 5.6 per cent—both figures slightly worse than Japan’s, but better than anyone else’s. It is unwise, as well as bad form, to feel complacent about great economic statistics, since they never stay great forever. But we can’t help remembering that for the past two years the pundits have mostly been split between the 60 per cent who thought recession was about to come back and the 60 per cent who thought inflation was about to come back. (The extra 20 per cent were the ones who thought we’d get both.) The Law of Contrary Opinion strikes again.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Apropos of Bernie Goetz, this one is going the rounds in New York City: There’s a new drink, called the Subway. It’s a screwdriver with four shots of vodka. To get it, you have to ask for five dollars.

The latest reports show wholesale prices up by only 1.9 per cent, and GNP up by a robust 5.6 per cent—both figures slightly worse than Japan’s, but better than anyone else’s. It is unwise, as well as bad form, to feel complacent about great economic statistics, since they never stay great forever. But we can’t help remembering that for the past two years the pundits have mostly been split between the 60 per cent who thought recession was about to come back and the 60 per cent who thought inflation was about to come back. (The extra 20 per cent were the ones who thought we’d get both.) The Law of Contrary Opinion strikes again.