In today's FT Niall Ferguson takes a victory lap, savoring his defeat of Paul Krugman in the April 30 New York Review symposium on the economy. - see the June 11 NYR.

At the symposium

Ferguson:  "the federal debt will rise over the next.....ten years to 100% of the GDP" or maybe 150%. This projected relationship in 2019 will cause a spike in interest rates interfering with the recovery.

Krugmann:  ' There's a global savings glut" ..."There is no excess demand ...to drive up interest rates"

'We've been as high as 100% (debt to GDP) .It's an issue but not a show stopper'

Ferguson: "I'm depressed"  '..."We're going to regulate...Where were you in the 1970s  ...I don't remember that going too smoothly"

Today in the FT

Ferguson: 'Interest rates have gone up in the last 3 weeks.That shows I was right and Krugman was wrong'

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Flavius: Hmn: 2017's projected debt to GDP which didn't spook the debt market 3 weeks ago is now wreaking havoc. So Krugman was wrong  that that dire  projection won't affect interest rates right now. Is it maybe possible that the equity rally is causing that? When stocks go up, interest rates go up for reasons perhaps not  obvious to the Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Stay tuned. Watch the FT for Krugman's reply. Should be fun.

. .

The New York Review dated June 11 continues a debate about Israel and the Rules of War between  on one side Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer and on the other  Asa Kasher an Israeli  Philosophy professor and General Amos Yadlin .

The gist of the debate is this : Kasher and Yadlin argue that the IDF  behaves justly because he does not intend to harm civilians; Margalit and Walzer argue that's not enough,  it should intend not to harm them. 

Is this a worthwhile discussion? Of course. They should care, It's good that the Chief of the IDF's Intelligence feels deeply about getting this right. But useless.

Wars to reprise a saying of the 60s are "unsafe for human beings and all other forms of life" Whatever the justice of the cause (as if we aren't capable of convincing ourselves that what we want to do , we should do) and whatever the committment to fighting  Just War, all wars end with Abu Ghraibs and Andersonvilles , with  missiles fired aimlessly at Siderots and a television commentator trying to direct his country's forces to save the life of a young woman whose father regularly saves lives in the attacker's hospital.

What do I recommend instead? Don't ask? There's no way of making it better. But lose the condemnation of the warriors. On all sides. They're doing what they always do sooner or later once a War begins..