Free Republic

Despite the clear economic case against a higher federal minimum wage, "moderates" in Congress are continuing the push the issue. Fortunately, House conservatives are not going along with this misguided effort, and members of the Republican Study Committee circulated this letter on Capitol Hill yesterday.

China increased its bank reserve requirement yesterday by .5 percent to 8.5 percent in an attempt to siphon off excess liquidity. The move comes just after China's second quarter report put its GDP growth rate at 11.3 percent. While raising the reserve requirement is considered by many countries to be a very blunt monetary policy instrument, China's blistering economic growth warrants something stronger than simply raising interest rates to tighten credit. The central bank has even said that a 10 percent reserve requirement by the end of the year is not out of the question.

While attending an ATHGO World Bank symposium last week at the World Bank Group headquarters, I was exposed to hundreds of young men and women falling over one another in their attempts to help the aggregate of the third world population. The set of defined objectives we were all striving to implement were the United Nations eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight goals - crafted in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit - "when achieved, will end extreme poverty worldwide by 2015." The conference itself focused on goals one, two, and six: ending extreme poverty and hunger, providing universal...