1. Tyler Cowen links to his article. He sees an inevitable shift towards fiscal austerity, though through no fault of the conservative movement. It contains a sentence that sums up "politics fails" without being disproportionally pessimistic: "Finally, effective political ideas are those that can still do good in half-baked form." 2. Arnold Kling wonders if soccer fans like the high luck factor because they are vaguely socialist. I agree that the format is off - there probably is about as much luck in a soccer game as in the outcome of a baseball game. The difference is that baseball games are decided by series, which reduces the amount of luck. I think it is more likely that those who complained to Arnold had a position about soccer first, "I like the status quo," and came up with socialist sounding reasons for it afterward in an attempt to justify their positions. 3. Kartik Athreya, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond recently wrote a paper (Link is currently broken) about how those who didn't spend quite a few years of their lives in an economic Ph.D program should not publicly express their views on macroeconomic policy. The reception to his piece in the blogosphere was not very positive. This negative reaction may be why the paper is no longer available. 4. Jeff Matthews explains that government failure isn't always a bad thing when the alternative is policy victory.