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This week’s issue of The Economist includes an article discussing the Illinois economy, including a brief mention of Deere.  Overall, a fairly depressing article, although they say nothing bad about us.

The picture of the president speaking in front of (ahem) some construction equipment makes me think we need to figure out how to get Obama to come speak at a Deere plant. I remember seeing Bush speak at the Harvester Works in January 2002. It was a pretty neat experience for me (and, I’m sure, the other Deere employees lucky enough to be present), especially as I was an intern in my first year of college at the time.

The Satyam Computer Services scandal has been quite interesting to follow from within India. The local papers have considerable coverage dedicated to the events surrounding the company, including the actions of the government and the company’s executives.

Satyam has been described as “India’s Enron” by some commentators and is exposing gaps in not only Indian corporate governance, but also in the processes and reliability of major accounting firms and America's Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (which itself was created in response to the Enron meltdown).

The New York Times published an article describing Satyam’s early start, mentioning that the company’s earliest “large” client was none other than Deere & Company of Moline, Illinois. (Deere veterans tell me that the story’s claim that Satyam’s success with Deere “helped give birth to [India]’s outsourcing industry” might be a bit overblown, as G.E. and others were apparently already well down that road by that time.) It’s crazy to think that in 1991, the ground work for my assignment to India was being laid in Moline while I was learning state capitals and long division.

Of course, I’m sure that my stellar long division skills helped, too…

I've been doing some thinking about the bailouts that seem to have become all the rage amongst governments around the world. Personally, I have very mixed feelings: on the one hand, I don't like big government and the idea of spending $700 billion of taxpayer money to prop up private enterprises seems anathema. On the other hand, letting systemic institutions fail is probably not a wise course of action. Given that the really fundamental issue is the lack of available credit, it is highly unlikely that private investors are going to be able to invest funds on the scale that is needed.

Thomas Friedman, the (multiple) Pulitzer-prize winning author and op-ed columnist for the New York Times, wrote an interesting column about Governor Sarah Palin's recent comments about patriotism and paying taxes during the Vice Presidential debates.

Dad sent me a pretty interesting white paper from the National Pork Producers Council this morning which discusses the crisis underway in the US pork industry. I attached a copy of the paper to this post, but I thought I'd mention a couple points I found particularly interesting. (If anyone can find a link to the original, I'd rather use that than host a copy myself, so please let me know.)