BATTLE OF THE ECONO-PUNDITS: Robert Reich disses the Retail Support Brigade. Paul Krugman says it's essential, and calls for government action to reinforce it. I'm with Krugman on this one.

WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA? asks Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times. An excellent discussion of anti-Americanism, from the middle east to London -- don't just read this excerpt, read the whole, wonderful, impassioned thing. But here's a quote:

I am sick of my generation's whining ingratitude, its wilful, infantile loathing of the great, tumultuous, witty and infinitely clever nation that has so often saved us from ourselves. But I am heartened by something my 19-year-old daughter said: "America has always been magic to us, we don't understand why you lot hate it so much."

Anti-Americanism has never been right and I hope it never will be. Of course there are times for criticism, lampoons, even abuse. But this is not one of them. This is a time when we are being asked a question so simple that it is almost embarrassing - a question that should silence the Question Time morons, the sneering chatterers and the cold warriors, a question so elemental, so fundamental, so pristine that, luxuriating in our salons, we had forgotten it could even be asked. So face it, answer it, stand up and be counted.

Whose side are you really on?