From Prospect, the severity of the credit crunch has taken the world’s central bankers by surprise, but they might have foreseen it had they not been intellectually enslaved by the ideas of the recently-deceased uber-economist, Milton Friedman; the prices of contemporary art works have risen to astonishing levels in recent years; insiders say it’s because we have been living through a golden age of art — nonsense, it is a classic investment bubble; and the curse of Leopold: China’s grab for Congo’s mineral wealth is behind the current wave of fighting, not ethnic tensions. Assembly Line: Jonathan Cohn on debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker. Here are six myths about the Detroit 3 and their vehicles, and the reality in each case. A revolutionary reworking for Marx's Kapital: Treatise on capitalism to be turned into manga comic 140 years after publication. Irony is dead?: Are ironic sensibilities — the detachment of mind, the appreciation of the folly of taking things at face value — really disappearing? With the election of Barack Obama, political correctness ain’t what it used to be; to help you navigate the new ins and outs, here are a few of the words, phrases, ideas and people that have now been officially blacklisted. Welcome to Cyberairspace, where you can fly from Chicago to Atlanta without leaving your living room.
