The Current Discussion: New York State governor Eliot Spitzer admits he hired a prostitute. Should people care, and why?

Eliot Spitzer should resign, immediately. Although a person's sexual behavior should by rights be a private matter, and irrelevant to his fitness for public office, that presumption of privacy must be overruled when the officer concerned has been acting to attack the very thing that he has been doing, namely prostitution. We do not expect our politicians to be saints. But when they are shown to be rank hypocrites, they are finished. Their credibility is gone.

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The Current Discussion:The global economy is quaking. Are we heading toward a global recession? Who's to blame?

The world economy has grown faster in the past four years than at any time since the 1960s. So virtually any slowdown is likely to seem alarming by recent standards. But actually, there's no need to panic.

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