The Most Important Story Of The Month

In the midst of intense but necessarily temporary focus on the mid-term election, I've become convinced that the biggest story of October 2006 is the recently approved widening of the Panama Canal. Cheap transport of goods from one country to another will do more to better the human condition than anything any government will do over the next 8 years. The Panamanian people, 80% of whom just voted to approve a $5 billion bond issue to pay for the canal improvements, just took a point off of annual inflation and added a few points to global GDP growth.

Thanks, Panama.