I first became interested in economics through reading John Kenneth Galbraith, one of whose great insights was that the strongest advocates of state aid in hard times were the big corporations who, in good times, were the strongest opponents of ‘big government’. Well, here we go again.

A leading General Motors executive has called for government loans of up to $50bn to help American car markers build more fuel-efficient cars.

Bob Lutz, GM’s vice-chairman, warned that major US car manufacturers need the money to re-tool their factories and are unlikely to be able to raise enough capital alone due to tight credit markets.

Mr Lutz’s comments come against background of ongoing talks between leading US car makers and politicians in recent weeks over enhanced government backing to enable a shift to greener production.

The three major US car manufacturers, GM, Ford and Chrysler, are working with the United Automobile Workers union to lobby Congress for a further $3.75bn on top of the $25bn in loans authorised for the industry last year…

This is the crowd who’ve been gleefully making and marketing SUVs — and investing accordingly — instead of paying attention to the looming crisis in oil costs and global warming.

Judy Estrin has a new book coming out. She gave an interview to the New York Times…

Ms. Estrin said that the United States is stifling innovation by failing to take risks in sectors from academia to government to venture capital. “I’m not generally an alarmist, but I am really, really concerned about this country,” she said.

In her book, Ms. Estrin discusses everything from problems in elementary education to drug development, but her expertise is in information technology. Beginning in 1981, she co-founded three tech companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices and Precept Software. In 1998, Cisco acquired Precept and appointed her chief technology officer. She left in 2000 and co-founded Packet Design. She is now chief executive of JLABS.

Ms. Estrin traces Silicon Valley’s troubles to the tech boom. She said that’s when entrepreneurs and venture capitalists started focusing more on starting companies to turn around and sell them and less on building successful companies for the long term.

“Starting in 1998, there was such a shift in Silicon Valley toward chasing money and short-term returns,” she said.

Part of the reason, she said, was that Cisco and other fast-growing big companies started acquiring start-ups with innovative technologies instead of developing new ideas internally. Entrepreneurs began founding companies with the goal of selling to a big tech company, and venture investors encouraged that.

I’ve heard Clinton speak before (and was impressed by him) but this was a truly masterful effort. It reminded me of Aristotle’s identification of the three elements of rhetoric: what is said; who is saying it; and the occasion on which it is being said. Clinton’s speech worked on all three levels.

Or, as Dave Winer (who was there) put it:

No doubt Bill Clinton knows how to get people to work for him, he was good enough to get elected President twice, and over the years his skill has matured. But I didn’t expect the tour de force I saw last night. It was the best political speech I’ve ever seen, he hit all the points, his gestures, his timing, his facial expressions were artfully perfect. There was something for everyone, and despite what the Republicans are saying, he charmed everyone in the hall, and probably most of the people watching on TV. If you didn’t see the speech, you owe it to yourself to seek it out on the Democrats website. In the realm of politics this was a Sistine Chapel, a Mona Lisa, a Statue of Liberty.

There were so many good lines, but the one that made me laugh the loudest was when the crowd quieted down afterr chanting Yes We Can, Yes We Can, Clinton paused and began his next paragraph as if it all had been scripted (maybe it was) Yes He Can, and then talked about Obama and what a great President he will be. Everyone was happy to hear him praise the younger Future President, such graciousness begets much love in return, the way he did it, it sort of chokes you up. (Makes you wonder what the convention would have been like if Hillary had won.)

For me, the best line was when he said (with an elegance of phrase that reminded me of JFK), “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”

Dave Winer concluded:

So Bill Clinton now occupies a position that no one else has occupied in the age of television and the Internet, the powerfully charming super-statesman, two-term ex-president, still young, unlike Reagan, with many years to go before retiring. A far cry from the lout who campaigned so aggressively and unfairly, and reminded us that lurking inside that statesman’s body is a child who, when he loses control, can be very dangerous to himself and the rest of us.

Right on.

What’s been amazing about this presidential election is the amount of raw energy it reveals in the American system. I cannot imagine a single British politican capable of engaging at this level with ideas and passion. And it makes one depressed to think of what lies in store for us over here as the political conference season approaches.

… in 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It was a great speech, but one rarely heard nowadays in full. TV usually shows only the “I have a dream” clip. So here’s the full version.

Nice coincidence too that last night a black man was unanimously endorsed as the Democratic candidate for President.

August, the Irish novelist Edna O’Brien once wrote, is a wicked month. For me, it’s always a difficult one. Six years ago today my beloved Sue died, and these days around her anniversary are freighted with memories and an aching sense of loss. This is one of my favourite photographs of her. It was taken in an hotel in Paris in March 1990, on our first trip away together. She said later, before she died, that this had been one of the happiest moments of her life.

One gets over the death of a loved one in the sense that people ‘get over’ the loss of a limb. But, as C.S. Lewis memorably observed in A Grief Observed, “you’ll never be a biped again”.

Stephen Heppell was showing me some iPhone Apps this morning and happened to have a Clinometer on his phone. According to Wikipedia, this is “an instrument for measuring angles of slope (or tilt), elevation or inclination of an object with respect to gravity.” So we decided to check the alignment of the support columns in the Berrill Cafe, with this result. Worrying? Or maybe it just needed calibrating.

Great photograph by Adam Ranshaw, brought to us via The Register.