R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. has some history:

In 1980 similar polls showed Jimmy Carter leading the Old Cowboy almost to the very end. Carter was ahead of Governor Ronald Reagan by 4 points in late September, by 8 points in October, and the Gallup polls had him ahead of Reagan by 6 points in last days of the election. Reagan won by 9 points, sweeping 44 states.

The founder and co-chief investment officer of the large, successful Bridgewater Associates hedge fund, Ray Dalio, spoke yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations. From the transcript:

QUESTIONER: Andrew Gunlach (sp) -- (inaudible). You suggest, in a way, that this -- these crises are a little bit different because we're in an all fiat currency world. But isn't a constraint on the Fed, to Maria's (sp) question, the price of gold in the sense that it's a shadow currency? It doesn't vote, doesn't enforce things, but it certainly is a signal of something. I'm just curious at what your thoughts are.

DALIO: Yes. So I do -- gold is very much -- gold is a currency. Throughout the history -- I won't go on in length -- but money was like a check in the checkbook and what you would do is you would get your gold. And gold was a medium. And so gold is one of the currencies. So we have dollars, we have euros, we have yen and we have gold.

Foreign policy is a bit beyond the usual FutureOfCapitalism ambit, but the events of the past few days have been exceptional enough to warrant an exception. From Ben Stein, writing at the American Spectator, is the speech Mitt Romney should have given.

My column this week, trying to explain the paradox of Obama leading in the polls despite being a failed president, generated more than the usual number of comments from FutureOfCapitalism community member-participant-watchdog-content co-creators. Some highlights:

From Rich Hand:

You are falling into the media's trap of making people feel the election is in the bag for Obama. The polls are a joke and very few are buying the line. Fred has been dissecting the polls and the most recent PPPL poll actually was Romney 53 O 44 when proper voter weight was applied.

I know this will sound funny but this country is too smart to be dumb enough to vote for this president again. I know voters have made mistakes before but this time around Americans are feeling duped. They can't wait to fix it.

Romney is not a great candidate but he will be an acceptable alternative to the current failure...

From Rich Jefferson:

The Treasury department is boasting that after this week's sale of AIG shares owned by the Treasury Department, "Treasury and the Federal Reserve have already realized a combined $15.1 billion positive return." And the government still has more shares to sell — 234.2 million of them, or 16% of the company, to be precise, with a market value for the government's shares of about $7.6 billion.

Supposing the government eventually sells the rest for about what it is now worth. It will have made a return of roughly $23 billion by investing about $183 billion over a period of a little more than four years. On an annualized basis, this is something less than a spectacular return, but it isn't terrible, either, depending on what your benchmark is.

From a discussion of marginal tax rates over at University of Chicago professor John Cochrane's "Grumpy Economist" site:

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest column takes a look at President Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: "though he praises the free enterprise system in the abstract, he believes that it always lets us down in the real world by forcing senior citizens to live at the mercy of insurance companies and Wall Street."

Call it the "Obama Paradox": he's been a failure as president, but he looks headed for re-election, anyway. My column this week is about three possible reasons why. Please check it out at Newsmax (here), Reason (here), and the New York Sun (here).

The city of Boston's public schools are now providing school breakfasts to all students (not just low-income ones) free of charge, the Boston Herald reports. "The federal government covers the costs of the meals," the article says.

Included in the metropolitan section of the Sunday New York Times is a left-of-center opinion column. There's no right-of-center column to balance it out. This week's was by a writer who seems to have given money to Greenpeace and then felt bad because the money wasn't helping the poor. Under the headline "Bulk of Charitable Giving Not Earmarked for Poor," the columnist complains:

Nationally, 32 percent of the $298 billion given away last year went to religious organizations, 13 percent to cultural organizations and 12 percent to social services...if giving were conducted with the greatest consideration paid to the most urgent needs of the society, then Yale, a private institution with a $19.2 billion endowment, would arguably never receive another 50 cents.

The column goes on to mention a large gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Some points worth mentioning in response:

The great Walter Olson, in linking to my post the other day about Mitt Romney's commercials that promise specific numbers of jobs in each state, observed that it sounded a little like Jennifer Granholm's speech at the Democratic National Convention. From that speech:

In Colorado, the auto rescue saved more than 9,800 jobs! In Virginia, more than 19,000 jobs! In North Carolina, more than 25,000! Wisconsin: more than 28,000 jobs! Pennsylvania: more than 34,000! Florida: more than 35,000! Ohio: more than 150,000! And in the great state of Michigan? President Obama helped save 211,000 good American jobs.

A major electric power company is turning to an unusual tactic in fighting an increase in the tax on dividends — asking its shareholders for help.

Dividend checks dated September 6 for shareholders of Southern Company were accompanied by a letter from the Atlanta-based utility's chairman and CEO, Thomas Fanning, asking the shareholders to write or call their congressmen. "We face an uphill congressional battle, and we urgently need your help," the letter says.

It explains that "Current dividend tax rates, which now are capped at 15 percent, are set to expire on Dec. 31, 2012. Unless Congress and the President act quickly to stop this impending tax hike, today's dividend tax rates could soar to nearly triple the current rate, creating adverse consequences for millions of Americans and for capital-intensive, dividend-paying companies like Southern Company."

The letter refers shareholders to the Web site DefendMyDividend.org.

"Fiscal discipline and economic growth." Maybe it's just a generational thing, but in terms of communicating a message, there aren't many other politicians out there I know of who are operating at this high of a level. Here is Senator Rubio in action in a five-minute YouTube video:

Mitt Romney has released a new wave of campaign commercials breaking down his job-creation promises on a state-by-state basis. A commercial to air in Iowa, for example, says Mr. Romney will "create over 130,000 new jobs for Iowa." Other commercials, airing in other states, say that Mr. Romney will generate "59,000 new jobs for New Hampshire," "create over 200,000 new jobs for Colorado," "create over 700,000 new jobs for Florida," "create over 100,000 new jobs for Nevada," and "create over 340,000 new jobs for Virginia."

Highlights, or lowlights, from the final night of the Democratic National Convention:

President Obama said that he and Mitt Romney offered "two fundamentally different visions for the future."

Then he promised to "cut our oil imports in half by 2020." In Mr. Romney's Republican Convention speech, Mr. Romney had promised that "by 2020 North America will be energy independent." These visions don't seem fundamentally different to me. In fact they seem pretty similar.

Mr. Obama offered a grab-bag of other numerical goals: "a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years," "100,000 math and science teachers within the next ten years," "cut in half the growth of tuition costs with the next ten years." Even if he wins he only has four years left in office, so setting ten-year goals seems somewhat ambitious.