On Good Coffee, Jazz, and Economic Data

Let us discuss those things this Cafe loves to talk about.

First, coffee. Finally New York City took their coffee seriously. This is actually a problem for almost all of American cities, that is, low per capita good coffee places. Come on, if you think Illy is the best coffee you can get, then you're in a serious need for better taste caffeine.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe, America needs much more good coffee -- and bread, I must add.

Second, jazz. Brad Mehldau is about to issue a new album, Highway Rider (HT: Sisil). It looks promising and you can listen to some of the sample here. Mr. Mehldau is one of Cafe Salemba's favorites for contemporary jazz --along with Joshua Redman and Branford Marsalis, to mention some. Of course we also listen to Vampire Weekend and Arctic Monkey, while on Lady Gaga, there's been a wide disagreement amongst us.

In this new album, apparently Mr. Mehldau is back to his old style as in Largo album. He seems indeed really good in expressing the melancholy of journey in life.

Third, economic data. Google launched visualization of the World Development Indicators subset (HT: Tyler Cowen). Any serious development economist must have been familiar with this data set at one point or another. The visualization is fun too. You can now see how good (or bad) Indonesia is, relative to other countries, using a real data --not an appeal to emotion.

When Wen Sneezes

Not so long ago, you may recall, when Alan Greenspan sneezes, the world catches cold.

Last Friday, when Wen Jiabao sneezes, I wonder, who catches cold?

Coffee Article of the Day

As your barista, I have tried to provide some timely, popular, yet pretty sensible articles that may help you to get some ideas on what is going on in now troubling US financial market --so that you have some good starts at any cocktail conversation. As interesting as they may look, those are media report or blog's posting. For education purpose (hell, yeah), you need to consult peer-reviewed journal article, that usually takes more time to publish.

As the time goes, now some articles are there. I found one by Brunnermeier of Princeton, in JEP (forthcoming). Don't yawn. Contrary to what you usually get in an economic journal (those Greek alphabets, in case you are not familiar with econ journals), this one is highly readable.

(HT: Håring and Storbeck)

The US Stabilization Policy Proposal

As read in In An Uncertain World by Robert Rubin, in the Asia crisis chapter, Larry Summers was there to push stabilization policy. He even flew to Jakarta, talked to Soeharto, and, despite his credential, was left speechless against that old man.

Now, as the US economic crisis seems more and more resemble the Asia crisis ten years ago, I can't help to think why they are not confident to adopt similar policy for fiscal conservatism, more market based reform, and good governance. If it works for us, it likely would work for them, too.

And it did and does work for us.