Beta software that I recommend

A few suggestions:
QGis- GIS software that opens shape files. Almost an ArcView replacement;
PSPP- SPSS for the poor. Still very far from the real-thing, but it works;
Ubiquity- fantastic firefox extension.
All are cross-platform and free. BTW, why don't you install Ubuntu? This Thursday a new version (8.10) is going to be released.

The causes of the Great Depression

Mankiw summarizes the research on the causes of the Great Depression. Eichengreen, Romer and Temim among others have shown that there is a lot to do in the field. As Bernanke said: “To understand the Great Depression is the Holy Grail of macroeconomics”. I must add: ",especially in interesting times".

Resource curse and the current crisis

Recent international experience supports the resource curse hyphotesis : resource rich countries, mainly when the resources are extracted from a narrow geographic or economic base, tend to have bad institutions and slow growth in the long run. Dube & Vargas have shown the relationship between coffee and oil prices and civil conflict in Colombia (HT Dani Rodrik).
Commodity prices are tumbling, so what will happen? Now there will be no money for useless stuff and the economic reasons for a coup have weakened. I am afraid however that there is a ratchet effect: dictators will stay in power, playing the nationalist card.

Why Krugman got the Nobel?

Dixit dixit.

Always look on the bright side of life

An inconvenient recession

In fact the only upside of all this is that the massive slow-down in economic growth will rapidly cut the growth rates of CO2 emissions. Pollution is tightly linked to the level of economic activity, so that a few years of negative growth would lead to reductions in pollution levels not seen since the 1970s. It seems ironic that the greed of Wall Street may have inadvertently achieved what millions of well intentioned scientists, activists and politicians have failed to achieve – a slowdown in global warming.