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Dear Dr. Colbert,

We must regretfully inform you that, after careful consideration and intense deliberation, we have not included you on the Foreign Policy/Prospect list of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals in our May/June issue.

Although your high public profile and loyal following make you a strong candidate for this honor, we have concluded that the lack of empirical evidence and logical coherence in your arguments disqualifies you for consideration as an "intellectual." While all of us here greatly enjoy your work, we simply did not feel that it contained sufficient analytical rigor to place you in the company of such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, or the pope.

This was not an easy decision to make. It has provoked intense bitterness and division among our staff. Therefore, we feel obligated to inform you that there is another way of gaining a spot on the list. Until Thursday, May 15, members of the public can visit ForeignPolicy.com/intellectuals and vote for the world’s top public intellectuals. The e-ballot will include a write-in option for intellectuals that FP did not initially include. We will publish the public's top 20 choices in our July/August issue, in addition to the top five write-in nominees. If you can convince the people of the world that you are not only an entertainer, but a major thinker as well, you just may have a chance of making the final cut.

Given the high caliber of this year's list, we expect that the competition will be tough, but we invite you to make your case nonetheless.

We wish you the best of luck and commend you on your service to America.

Sincerely,
Blake Hounshell
Web Editor, ForeignPolicy.com

Amr Khaled, an Egyptian televangelist and media celebrity across the Arab and Muslim worlds, jumped dramatically in the rankings today of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals.

Why is that?

His fans have begun a vote drive on AmrKhaled.net and on Facebook, which FP noted earlier this year was a surprising force for activism in the Arab world. Interestingly, the more controversial Yusuf al-Qaradawi saw a boost in his numbers as well, even though Khaled and Qaradawi haven't always seen eye to eye. Qaradawi and Khaled got into a huge spat over the Danish cartoons issue, with Khaled calling for dialogue and Qaradawi basically calling him a big pansy.

Preeti Aroon

GABRIEL MALAYA/AFP/Getty Images

"World to Peace Corps: Skilled Volunteers Needed," by Nicholas Benequista for the Christian Science Monitor. Last year, Ethiopian officials politely told the Peace Corps that they needed people with serious expertise, not just unskilled young adults brimming with enthusiasm. Soon, they could be getting more of what they want. For more on the challenges facing the government agency, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps."

Mike Boyer

"The Truth About Putin and Medvedev," in the New York Review of Books. Amy Night reviews Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov's Putin: The Results: An Independent Expert Report, a publication which the Kremlin has gone out of its way to make sure ordinary Russians know nothing about. And understandably. Its results are damning, to say the least.

Blake Hounshell

"World Bank backs anti-AIDS experiment," by Andrew Jack in the Financial Times. Call it "reverse prostitution." In a novel experiment, a consortium of groups is paying rural Tanzanians not to contract STDs.

Joshua Keating

"Russia's region of 'lawlessness'" by James Rodgers of BBC News. Chechnya, which lies inside Russia's "zone of anti-terrorist operations," is typically entirely off-limits to foreign journalists. The BBC's correspondent hitched a ride with a Council of Europe delegation and found a place where appearances have improved but "something terrible has clearly happened."

Prerna Mankad

"Hedge funds muck in down on the farm," in the Financial Times. James Macintosh and Kate Burgess highlight the latest financial industry trend: hedge funds buying up acres of farmland across Australia, South America, and Eastern Europe. If food prices continue to rise as they are betting, a few rich people will likely get a whole lot richer.

Yesterday, we published several reader reactions to "Think Again: Peace Corps," a new FP Web exclusive written by former Cameroon country director Robert L. Strauss.

Today, Howard Williams, a former Peace Corps volunteer and fellow former country director "with over 20 years experience as a development professional in 15 countries," writes in to say he is "dismayed" by the article:

Among the straw men are "The Peace Corps is a Diplomatic Weapon." Peace Corps is a diplomatic asset, demonstrating the goodwill and basic decency of Americans that, taken with the work of USAID, other U.S. Agencies, and their PVO and NGO partners, show we care about more than ourselves and that a sense of service to others is a basic American characteristic.

Equally flawed is the assertion that volunteers are not sent to where they are needed and that whole countries can be "graduated," no longer benefiting sufficiently from volunteers' service. Anyone who works or travels in the field, outside the capital with its agency offices and well-appointed hotels, knows that access to resources and experience managing them is uneven and that there are populations within most countries that can benefit from volunteers' assistance.

For example, many developing countries, Cameroon no doubt included, find great difficulty recruiting qualified teachers to serve in rural and remote sites. Peace Corps volunteer teachers will go there and show up at their classes regularly and well prepared –- something that local teachers often find challenging, given the other economic, social, and health demands they face each day. Students can count on PCVs to be there, in class, helping them learn.

Some countries with a greater overall resource base, like Romania, can benefit from American volunteers by their demonstrated sense of civic duty, resourcefulness, collegial approach to their work, and public transparency, traits that were not well rewarded under the former Soviet system. If a country director knowingly sent volunteers to assignments that were not needed, not useful, or not workable or that did not sufficiently engage the volunteers, as he claims, then he would have failed in his job as director. Complaints on that score are much akin to a ship's captain blaming the Navy for bad weather and rocks.

Denigrating generalizations about local people liking anyone attempting to speak their language and participate in local traditions, or that volunteers do not sufficiently demonstrate their commitment to service, are not supported by facts but by a condescending articulation about the nature of people, including the very volunteers he pledged to support.

Finally, the assertion that Peace Corps has an obligation to justify itself on a "development" yardstick, in comparison with other agencies, completely misses the point of what Peace Corps is. There simply is no such thing as a perfect "development" program. We used to tell volunteers, "Each aid agency has strengths and limitations and each has a unique role to play in development. Some have more money, some have national programs, and Peace Corps has people. You cannot judge one by comparing its limitations to the strengths of another -- and vice versa." I hope we will not lose sight of Peace Corps' unique contribution to local development, goodwill abroad, and Americans' understanding of the world in pursuit of making it look more "professional." If you ask any villager who they can count on to be there each day for them, you'll find that Peace Corps rates very well indeed.

Were you a Peace Corps volunteer or do you otherwise have strong thoughts on this topic? Read the article and comment below or send us your comments by e-mail. Requests for confidentiality will be strictly honored.

Readers are weighing in on both sides of a hard-hitting new Web exclusive by Robert L. Strauss, a former Peace Corps country director. Here's an e-mail in support of Strauss from FP reader JH:

[B]eing a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Morocco 99-00) I think he hit the nail on the head.

I recently attempted to reenlist with Peace Corps after receiving a master's degree in international development administration with an emphasis on monitoring and evaluation of development projects in Asia and the Pacific and was rejected by Peace Corps.

After being 'medically cleared,' they wanted to send me to Africa to work on HIV/AIDS projects and I stated that I would be best utilized in an area and field I'm trained in. I was then told I was cut from the application process for being 'inflexible' when it came to placement. It seems that any questioning about the placement process is taken as a threat to the organization's authority and there are plenty of recent college graduates with no idea about development who are willing to take an available spot.

I'm sorry to say that Peace Corps is not serious about development and it seems they would rather have bright eyed idealist with no experience or idea about sustainable development practices instead of skilled or trained personnel who could point out the flaws in the system and work to improve it while have a positive impact on the community.

Thanks for pointing out the flaws in Peace Corps which could be a development system for USAID, The World Bank, or the UN, but is instead a post-college hangout where little is accomplished.

And here's a complaint from CH, who volunteered in Togo from 2004 to 2007:

The first question that came to my mind as I read this was why a former Peace Corps country director, who spent four years of his life working for the organization, would be on such a vendetta. I question his motivation in publicly bashing the organization and makes me wonder what happened in Cameroon...

It seems that his main and only recommendation is for the Peace Corps to recruit the 'best of the best' to serve as volunteers. While he may be correct in this assessment, I think his opinion makes it obvious that they should do a better job recruiting the staff as well. I have a tough time imagining what my service would have been like had I been a volunteer in Cameroon during his tenure. A country director is responsible for setting the overall tone in the country where he or she is employed and I can't imagine a very positive or motivating environment under Mr. Strauss.

Despite all this, I tend to agree with many of his arguments. Peace Corps volunteers are generally fresh out of college or untrained in the field they're expected to serve in (as I was) or both. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will be ineffective as volunteers. I'm very proud of what I was able to accomplish in my three years as a volunteer in Togo. I worked with some incredibly dedicated and inspiring volunteers, some of whom did not come to Togo with any particular skills yet who excelled in their assignments.

While in no way do I believe the Peace Corps to be perfect, highly effectual or a model to be used by development organizations, it remains an incredible opportunity for Americans and, at the very least, offers volunteers the opportunity to accomplish wonderful things. It is hard not to take Mr Strauss's bitterness personally and the motivation behind his writing should be explained.

Readers, what do you think? Were you a Peace Corps volunteer? How does his analysis fit with your experience? Read the article and comment below, or send us your thoughts by e-mail. Requests for confidentiality will be strictly honored.

Foreign Policy's May/June issue might not hit newsstands until April 29, but it's already available to our subscribers at ForeignPolicy.com. As you might expect, this issue is packed full of the razor-sharp analysis and counterintuitive arguments that are FP's speciality.

In the cover story, "Think Again: Israel," Gershom Gorenberg exposes the biggest myths surrouding his country's founding and its present predicament. He takes the radical position that Israel should be treated as a real country with real problems. His argument is sure to challenge the deeply held assumptions of Israel's supporters and opponents alike.

In "When China Met Africa," French author Serge Michel looks at China's much-publicized forays onto the continent and finds that "it is beginning to run into the same obstacles the West has faced for years." Richard Lacayo examines why leading architects like Rem Koolhass and Norman Foster are doing some of the most innovative work for the world's least democratic regimes in "The Architecture of Autocracy." And Joseph Cirincione wonders why the United States is spending more each year to combat a threat that is disappearing in "The Incredible Shrinking Missile Threat."

You can also learn about how temporary workers are changing the way the world does business, why the Czech president is on a crusade is disprove global warming, and what Richard Dawkins does believe in.

If you haven't yet subscribed, you can take advantage of our Internet special and get a full year of the print edition plus full Web access for only $19.95. It's the perfect opportunity for loyal Passport readers to check out our flagship product. Sign up today! And of course, don't forget to vote for your favorite public intellectuals.

In our latest issue, FP has teamed up once again with Britain's Prospect magazine to compile a list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. Our first effort in 2005 inspired quite the debate. Since then, dozens of new intellectuals have been added to the list: economists, clerics, neuroscientists, and environmentalists, to name just a few  -- all of them influential in shaping the ideas of our time. 

We're anxious to get your input. So, we want you to vote for your top 5 favorite intellectuals. Voting is easy -- just point and click. There's also a write-in option, to let us know who we should have included but didn't. We'll publish the results in our next issue.

Just what makes a public intellectual? You can check out our simple criteria, but better yet: Read about it straight from the horse's mouth. Christopher Hitchens, one of our top public intellectuals, has penned an essay on the burdens and pleasures of making a living by ideas in our modern age. Voting is free to all, but -- sorry folks -- you'll need to be a subscriber to read what Hitch has to say.

I'm very pleased to announce that Passport has won Media Industry Newsletter's (min) "Best of the Web" award for 2008 in the blog category. It's a great honor to have competed against quality offerings like New York magazine’s Vulture, Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch, PC Magazine’s GoodCleanTech, Variety’s Scribe Vibe, and Bravo TV’s expansive roster of blogs. (For more details on the award, check out our press release.)

When FP first launched the blog in April 2006, we had little inkling Passport would become the phenomenon it is today. For that, we have you, our loyal readers, to thank, as well as the many contributors who have written here or ensured that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes.

And now I have a task for you, dear readers: What should we do differently in the coming year ahead to stay fresh? Longer posts? Shorter posts? More posts? Fewer posts? More open threads? More interviews and guest posts? More coverage of international sex scandals? What editorial features would you like to see added, changed, or dropped? What topics do you think we should cover more/less?

Fire up your popcorn poppers and invite over all your friends: On Wednesday night, PBS stations nationwide will air the new National Geographic documentary Illicit: The Dark Trade, based on the bestselling book by FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím. You can check your local listings for times. (If you live in Washington, D.C., it's on WETA TV 26 at 8:00 p.m.)

The film explores the dark underbelly of globalization, from the counterfeiting of luxury goods to money laundering to human trafficking. Highlights include live footage of a raid on a counterfeit warehouse and a moving sequence illustrating how the contaminated cough syrup that killed dozens in Panama last year originated at an unlicensed Chinese chemical factory. It also features extensive interviews with Naím and our Carnegie Endowment colleague Minxin Pei.

Here's a preview:

FP subscribers can also check out Naím's 2003 cover story, "The Five Wars of Globalization," to see where it all began.

Preeti Aroon

"Cubans now can enjoy cellphones, DVDs ... legally," by Sara Miller Llana of the Christian Science Monitor. Cubans can now own cellphones and DVD players, as well as stay at hotels once limited to foreign tourists, thanks to Raúl Castro. But given that the average Cuban's monthly salary is $17, the new president's changes may be more politically symbolic than economically liberating.

Blake Hounshell

"Caution: NAFTA at Work," in Miller-McCune. Princeton's Douglas Massey argues that only by massively deepening its economic integration with Mexico can the United States solve its illegal-immigration problem. (Hat tip: Matt Yglesias)

Joshua Keating

"After America: Is the West Being Overtaken by the Rest," by Ian Buruma in the New Yorker. Buruma reviews the "grand thesis" of the West's decline and Asia's rise as it appears in new books by Fareed Zakaria, Robert Kagan, and Bill Emmott. He concludes that, even in the new Asian order, the U.S. will continue to play an indespensible role. "Democracy would be a far more persuasive model than Chinese or Russian autocracy," he cautions, "if some of its main proponents were less eager to believe that the open society comes out of the barrel of a gun."

Prerna Mankad

Carolyn O'Hara

"The New E-spionage Threat" in BusinessWeek. In a recent interview with FP, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke describes Chinese hacks on U.S. government and defense industry computers as "massive espionage." BW's cover story this week examines the growing threat.

I've been remiss in not mentioning here that Foreign Policy has a special subscription offer available right now: Just $19.95 for six issues of award-winning content, plus unlimited access to our copious digital archives. By my calculations, that's just $3.33 per issue -- about the price of a Big Mac, just as satisfying, and far healthier for you. If you like reading the blog, you'll love the print mag that makes it all possible. Subscribe today!

(As an added incentive, there's an internal bet here whose successful outcome could supply your humble narrator with a much-needed drink. You can help put me over the top.)

UPDATE: With just over 7 hours remaining, we've got only 12 seven four subs to go to meet our goal. Yes, we can!

UPDATE2: We did it! Thanks for your support.

Preeti Aroon

"Looking Towards the Future," in Tom Ricks's Inbox in the Washington Post. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey briefs the military, PowerPoint style, on his predictions of what's going to be happening in international relations. One prediction: "The death of Castro... 250,000 refugees in 36 months."

Blake Hounshell

"The Obama Doctrine," in the American Prospect. "Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades," Spencer Ackerman writes. But what does that really mean in practice?

Carolyn O'Hara

"The Sahel," by Paul Salopek in National Geographic. Salopek, a stone-cold great writer, weighs in beautifully on the invisible lines that crisscross the Sahel, fomenting conflict and poverty – and at one point, landing him in jail. Don’t miss Pascal Maitre's accompanying photographs.

Joshua Keating

"After Putin," by Sen. Joseph Biden in the Wall Street Journal. The former presidential candidate deserves credit for advocating that the U.S. take a tougher stance with Russia without indulging in the lazy Russophobia common to such arguments. But while Biden demonstrates that he probably understands the nuances of Russia politics better than any of the remaining candidates, his op-ed is short on specifics about what he thinks the next president should actually do.

Prerna Mankad

"Put a Patent on that Pleat," by Reena Jana in BusinessWeek. A look at the latest efforts elite designers are making in order to curb the unauthorized reproduction of their designs by mass retailers. Although some legal cases have been won, it's clear that designers are facing a steep uphill climb in protecting their IP -- and that's not even taking into account the international challenges.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Marc Sageman, author of "The Next Generation of Terror" in the current issue of FP, has been getting a great deal of praise for his provocative take on the newest wave of global jihadists. To Sageman, this next generation -- lacking in any kind of formal leadership, united only through the Web, and motivated purely by vanity -- is even more dangerous than their forebears. Why? Precisely because they're more difficult to detect and don't answer to a single authority. They're volatile, self-recruited wannabes, and they're the future of terror. But, as Sageman explains, their movement is also vulnerable for these very reasons.

Now, it's your chance to ask Sageman questions about the next generation of jihadists. Send us questions by 5 p.m. this Tuesday, March 25, and we'll post Sageman's responses here on Monday, March 31.

FP Editor-in-Chief Moisès Naím explains:

At first sight, the scandals that brought down Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, and Klaus Zumwinkel, the former president of Deutsche Post (the German corporate behemoth), didn't seem to have much in common. Spitzer fell two weeks ago for hiring prostitutes; Zumwinkel, two weeks before that, for tax evasion. Yet there's a thread that binds them together: money laundering. Both men were brought down by a new system for tracking money that was created in reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—but that has since spread its net far beyond jihadists.

See also Naím's commentary on how Ugly Betty explains the Latin American economy.

Carolyn O'Hara

Kill The Cliche -- a new site by journalist Evgeny Morozov that tracks journalistic clichés found in major newspapers and calls out the worst offenders.

Preeti Aroon

"Beyond the Border of War," by Tamara Jones in the Washington Post. More than 16,000 American troops have deserted the military since the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly five years ago. An estimated 200 of them crossed into Canada, where ageing, Vietnam-era draft dodgers are offering them support. 

Blake Hounshell

"Israel, Syria and the failure of Annapolis." On his personal blog, Economist correspondent Gideon Lichfield discusses an alarming new poll showing that Hamas leader Ismail Haniya would defeat Mahmoud Abbas in a presidential election.

Mike Boyer

"Last Days of the Rickshaw," by Calvin Trillin in National Geographic, April 2008. Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, has one of the world's few remaining large fleets of hand-pulled rickshaws. Local authorities aren't necessarily proud of that fact. Are rickshaws a symbol of exploitation, or just a convenient form of transportation?

Prerna Mankad

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," in Portfolio. Jesse Eisinger surveys the grim trend that has developed in today's economy, where busted firms and their CEOs take plenty of "responsibility" for their failures, yet suffer few consequences for their reckless or misguided actions. His conclusion? Don't expect things to change any time soon.

A power-sharing deal has been signed in Kenya, but it will take far more than a handshake in Nairobi to heal the wounds -- more than 1,000 dead and 600,000 displaced -- of the past few months. Here, Massai warriors battle a rival ethnic group in western Kenya with bows and arrows.

It's an image that brings to mind what former Kenyan corruption czar John Githongo recently told FP:

Negotiations are taking place in Nairobi, mediated by Kofi Annan, but it is the realities on the ground that will likely drive things, not the talks.

Looking at the image above, I'd call that an understatement.

Preeti Aroon

“An Earthquake That Shifted the World Around Us,” by Faiza Saleh Ambah in the Washington Post. The Saudi hip-hop group Dark2Men had never rapped in public before, due to their country’s social restrictions, until the recent MTV Arabia competition in Dubai. Check out this video of them rapping. As an FP article put it last year, it’s a hip-hop world.

Mike Boyer

"The Patton of Counterinsurgency," by Fredrick and Kimberly Kagan in The Weekly Standard. Gen. David Petraeus may have been the brains behind the successes of the "surge," but the task of turning theory into reality was largely left to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno. Petraeus may be the headlines, but Odierno will "be remembered in military history as the man who redefined the operational art of counterinsurgency."

Blake Hounshell

"What Microloans Miss," by the incomparable James Surowiecki in the latest New Yorker. What the developing world truly needs most is investors willing to take risks, not more small-scale lenders.

Joshua Keating

"How a tiny West African country became the world's first narco state," by Ed Vuilliamy in The Observer. This article is a truly depressing profile of Guinea-Bissau, a failed state with no prisons and almost no police that is now completely dominated by the Colombian drug traffickers, who use it as a transfer point to ship cocaine into Europe. The value of the drug trade now exceeds the national income and dozens of gaudy mansions are being built in the world's fifth-poorest country. Worst of all, crack-cocaine addiction is spreading among the country's own citizens, who are often paid in kind for helping the traffickers.

Prerna Mankad

"Riots, Terrorism, etc" in the London Review of Books. LRB contributing editor John Lancaster brings into sharp relief the problems with British journalism today through his favorable review of Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. From sloppy fact checking (or none at all) to ubiquitous PR-generated stories, Davies -- and Lancaster -- fears that the illness of British media is terminal.

News this morning that "Merchant of Death" Viktor Bout, one of the world's top arms trafficker to guerillas and governments alike, has been arrested in Thailand. FP readers will be familiar with Bout from our profile of the notorious arms dealer, who made his fortune running guns and other illicit cargo for everyone from Qaddafi to the Pentagon.

Bout, who has openly been living the high life in Moscow for the past few years, is apprarently being held by Thai authorities on the basis of a U.S. DEA warrant accusing Bout of supplying guns to Colombia's FARC rebels. Given that attempts to capture Bout -- or at least disrupt his business -- have been hobbled by the lack of international enforcement mechanisms and toothless sanctions, it'll be interesting to see whether these charges stick and Bout's network is actually dismantled. Regardless, there are no doubt dozens of traffickers waiting in the wings to soak up Bout's clients. A formal announcement from the DEA is due today. Check back with us for rolling updates.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Prerna Mankad

Warren Buffett's 2008 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders (pdf). Considered a "must read" for any investor every year, Buffett's often humorous letter on his company's progress in 2007 includes some sound investing advice, a few anxious reflections on the state of the U.S. economy, and a number of notes on his own errors during the past year.

Mike Boyer

"China's new intelligensia," in Prospect. Mark Leonard makes a characteristically smart attempt to find a pulse among China's intellectual class and finds it to be surprisingly alive, if somewhat camouflaged.

Joshua Keating

Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh. Note to aspiring sociologists: Don't begin studies of urban poverty by asking housing project residents, "How does it feel to be black and poor?" Venkatesh (of Freakonomics fame) learned this and other lessons during six years of studying the underground economy within a Chicago housing project. Some have found the close relationship he maintained with a prominent crack dealer to be morally questionable, but it's hard to imagine that the stereotype-breaking insights in this memoir could have been gained any other way.

Travis Daub

"Wind Power in Paradise," by Erico Guizzo in IEEE Spectrum. The Galapagos Islands, home to 20,000 residents and 120,000 annual visitors, now generates half its power via wind turbines, which means less pollution, less oil consumption, and a lesser chance that a tanker will run aground on the islands' delicate reefs.

"Space Wars - Coming to the Sky Near You?" by Theresa Hitchens in Scientific American.

Lucy Moore

Thomas Bender's A Nation Among Nations retells the American story, but in a fully international context. From Columbus to the present, Bender asks us to rethink American exceptionalism, recognizing its role as an actor among many on the global stage.

Blake Hounshell

"The Gaza Bombshell," in Vanity Fair. David Rose alleges there was a secret U.S. plan to arm Fatah against Hamas in Gaza. It's kind of a silly claim, since it was reported at the time and the Bush administration made little attempt to hide its plan. Still, Rose adds new details and quotes neocon stalwart David Wurmser criticizing the Bush administration's support for Mahmoud Abbas.

The Financial Times published three stories yesterday that represent more bad news about the U.S. economy: the dollar is reaching new lows against the euro and a trade-weighted basket of currencies; the Federal Reserve is so concerned about U.S. growth that Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled there would be yet another rate cut in March, in spite of inflation risks; and U.S. manufacturing data revealed that orders were the lowest in five months, and home sales reached a 13-year low. As Nouriel Roubini argues in the cover story of the latest issue of FP, this spells grave news -- not just for the United States, but for the rest of the world.

Roubini argues that the impending U.S. recession will cause global economic mayhem. He lays out five triggers that will form the roots of sharp economic downturn in countries around the world, if not a full-fledged global recession: a drop in trade, a weak dollar, the bursting of housing bubbles around the world, a fall in commodity prices, and a faltering of financial confidence.

From recent reports, Roubini's gloomy outlook looks increasingly prescient. It's too early to tell if trade is decreasing (the latest WTO figures are from 2006), but the factors that Roubini highlights will lead to that outcome are being realized. Output and demand is stagnant or falling, the dollar is sinking, and financial confidence is shaky. Housing markets in various countries continue to look precarious. Commodity prices are still rising, but this seems to be the effects of a weak dollar combined with a possible lag in demand signals.

Martin Wolf, the FT's chief economics commentator, recently urged readers to take Roubini's warnings seriously. He draws a more hopeful conclusion about the Fed's ability to come up with solutions than Roubini, but nonetheless, even the most optimistic analysts refuse to assert that the current financial crisis will not cause a great deal of pain. It will -- and has. The question is: How bad will it get? And will the United States' troubles infect the rest of the world?