Now available

After some delay, my new book, "Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Towards Bankruptcy," is indeed available on-line.

Here are the links to it at Amazon and, with a better price, at Barnes & Noble.

I've just come back from a Tax and Corporate Governance conference in Munich, where I presented a paper on the U.S. disclosure and penalty regime for corporate tax shelters, which I will post shortly on SSRN.

A U.K. commentator of mine, hostile to my pro-government stance in the paper, apparently planned to compare me to the Bush Administration as an exporter of evil U.S. ideas that Europe ought to ignore. Luckily, he subsided on this comparison (at least orally) although his written comments may retain the reference.

It's a funny feeling to be an American abroad these days, if people consider you a representative of U.S. policy. One feels decidedly uneasy in a manner that has no precedent in my own lifetime experience as an American.

I told this commentator that his complaining (in connection with me) about the Bush Administration made me feel like Basily Fawlty, in the episode of Fawlty Towers where someone complains to him about Manuel's standard of service in the dining room, and Basil responds: "Do you think I don't know? You only dine here - I have to live with it!"

I do, however, feel a bit more entitled than Basil to dodge the complaint this way, as his power over Manuel somewhat exceeds my degree of influence over U.S. foreign and security policy.