Why the Economic Recovery Is Slowing Down

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the most famous practitioners of the high-minded guessing game known as economics, once noted that in the dismal science, “the majority is always wrong.” How else to explain the fact that so many economists upgraded their growth forecasts for the American economy at the end of last year, often to well above 3%, when the numbers so far this year have come in below 2%? The plunge is due to many things, from higher food and oil prices to supply-chain disruptions in the wake of the Japanese nuclear disaster to a terrible housing market.

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Show Business: I’ve Got to Get My life Back Again

After his labors, the mythmaker plans to rest and perhaps retire From his office window, George Lucas looks out over a pleasant little valley to a pleasant little mountain, Mount Tamalpais. Small as it is, this friendly peak has an important if unheralded role in his life: it blocks the summer fog that often rolls in from San Francisco, eleven miles to the south, and makes the side on which Lucas lives and works that much sunnier

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