We are seeing favorable trends in a variety of figures of importance from Iraq:USAID puts out weekly progress reports on Iraq.  If you click on the most recent report and scroll down several pages to Section 4 - Electricity Overview - you see something very interesting.  Which is that electricity is finally on an upward trend and is now at a record post-war level.  The trend is modest and the level is still much too low -- note the 7.1 hours of electricity from the grid in Baghdad, for instance -- but the year to year numbers are now positive.  It appears that this may be a dividend from the harmony that we are starting to see in the Sunni provinces around Baghdad.If you scroll on further to Section 5 - Crude Oil Production - you see that production at about 2.3 million barrels per day is modestly above the goal of 2.1 million barrels.  I.e., the insurgency is not able to shut off oil production, even if oil growth is modest.If you clock on the website...(Read Full Post)