What Mattered This Week?

Ah, plenty to discuss this week. Start with economic policy news: the Fed's decisions mattered, while I'm not at all convinced that Barack Obama's new long-term budget plans make any difference at all. There's also the threat of a government shutdown; I think it probably tells us something about the House and John Boehner (although not really anything we didn't know), but I don't really think it's very likely that we'l get an extended shutdown over these issues right now. Up to a 72-hour shutdown, possibly, but hard to believe we'll get more than that over the issues in play. November, however, is another story.

I've talked about the GOP debate a lot already...it's not very likely that it mattered much. Sooner or later Rick Perry will need to have a better debate performance, but I don't see why he wouldn't be able to.

Lots of other news...Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Palestinians and Israel, Yemen...what else? I'm inclined to think that what's happening in Pakistan is fairly important. And, getting back to the first item, the European economic problems are a major continuing story, with some new developments this week.

OK, that's what I have. What am I missing? What did I get wrong? What do you think mattered this week?

What Mattered This Week?

You know what we're going to remember 50 years from now?  Roy Halladay, playoff no-hitter.  Does it "matter"?  Well, a whole lot of people put a whole lot of emotional energy (not to mention their hard-earned dollars) into baseball...just saying.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that once again my nomination for what mattered this week would be what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  It's always risky to think that something is at a critical stage, but I do think that the various events going on there (military actions, negotiations, political upheaval, you name it) are pretty important.  What else?  I think it's possible that the Nobel Prize may matter some for China.  And I've read that the stuff about the bees is really important, although I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to know whether that's true or not, and I suppose it's not politics, at least not directly.  I'm a lot less convinced that the switch in National Security Adviser, or anything new in the electoral landscape, or even the health care court decision, were big deals.

So that's what I thought mattered.  What do you think?