Links

The next oil boomtown?

• Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi highlight the sad story of Madagascar, where Washington's decision to rescind free trade benefits in order to punish that country's government have hurt workers while doing nothing to improve the political situation.

• Arnold Kling assigns grades to both parties for their performance at yesterday's health care summit. Neither comes out looking very good.

• The consistently excellent Super Economy blog has a great post on European vs. American workers.

• The Wall Street Journal takes a look at North Dakota's booming oil industry. Expect this to appear on the Carpe Diem blog later today.

• Hope and change: The New York Times reports the Obama Administration is readying changes to federal contracting rules to benefit unions. Update: More thoughts here.