The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What New Regulation Can’t Fix: FDIC, OTS, and the WaMu SNAFU

Friday afternoon, I had to drive to Baltimore Washington International Airport to pick up my 17-year-old son Jim, who was flying in from Ohio. I could tell you a long story here about Jim’s desire to see his dog Samson, who appears to be terminally ill, and maybe dog-lovers would hit the tip-jar in sympathy, […]

Liberal Loves Paying Taxes

Rich Benjamin hits all the predictable notes — e.g., the provision of “schools, roads, soldiers, embassies, air traffic control” as justifying high taxation — in a pro-tax screed in USA Today: Looking at federal tax rates over time, or comparing America with its closest competitors, our federal income taxes cannot plausibly be called “too high.” […]

Your Morning Application Of Fertilizer To The Air Circulator

by Smitty (via Zogger on Slashdot) The Market Oracle is bereft of cheer as the inevitability of the VAT draws near: What has surprisingly received little media attention is that the US Government has been steadily reducing the maturity of its treasury portfolio to keep fiscal deficits down. Whether interest rates rise or it becomes […]

Veronique de Rugy Deserves A Medal

by Smitty George Mason University’s Mercatus Center seems beset with difficulties upholding ‘the Narrative’. Veronique de Rugy, in particular, seems mired in un-fluffy questions and hard, cold facts about all of that stimulus spending. Her new update to the Stimulus Facts working paper, after engaging in proper academic dialog on the topic, the way the […]

He’s Got a Ph.D. and a Nobel Prize, But . . .

. . . Paul Krugman is still a moron about economics: Free markets are “efficient” — which, in economics-speak as opposed to plain English, means that nobody can be made better off without making someone else worse off. Voluntary exchange — the free market — is mutually beneficial. The guy at the convenience store has gasoline. I’ve […]

‘All Caveats’

Back in the early ’80s when I was doing rock ‘n’ roll, you’d hand somebody a demo tape and automatically include apologies for the crappy quality — the tape hiss, the fact you didn’t have time to get the vocals just the way you wanted them, etc. A buddy of mine would interrupt this obligatory […]

More Economic Reality

President Obama’s biggest obstacle? Arithmetic: The increase in jobs highlighted in the nation’s most recent unemployment report carried the sound of economic promise, but Obama administration officials said Sunday that the public shouldn’t expect any dramatic improvement in the jobless rate, largely because of the effect of thousands of “discouraged” unemployed people who have resumed […]

Are Big Banks ‘Too Big to Fail,’ Or Are They Just Too Complex to Regulate?

Taking as an example the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Steve Randy Waldman at Interfluidity examines the difficulty of measuring the solvency of major financial institutions that deal in complex instruments. It’s that “Knowledge Problem” that Professor Reynolds warned about.

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