Finance and Free Markets

A very interesting piece in the New Yorker explores the way that finance has begun to swallow up capitalism, sucking money, talent, and bailouts into its orbit, while doing a mediocre job at its most socially beneficial function:  raising capital for productive enterprises.  Increasingly, big banks engage in trading for clients and themselves through the [...]

Read Full Post »

Not Getting It

Thomas Friedman has gone from being a cheerleader for globalism to a cheerleader for un-American, command-and-control industrial policy of the type enjoyed recently by China and, less successfully, the Japan, Mexico, and Brazil of yesteryear.  What he does not understand and is completely dishonest about is the widespread American rejection of the measures undertaken by [...]

Read Full Post »

QE 2.0

Quantitative Easting 2.0 that is.  I really found Jeremy Grantham’s letter this month particularly insightful in exploring the ways that cheap money does little to advance the economy, while creating asset bubbles all over the places that must eventually be deflated.  He also makes the good point that a housing bubble is much more damaging and [...]

Read Full Post »

Web Round Up

Sorry kids, it’s been a busy week (out in the non-blogging world), but I found a few interesting things to share. Lying Eyes had a nice piece on the limits of markets. Jonah Goldberg notes that the taboos on criticizing Obama (and his manifest arrogance) are becoming the stuff of ordinary observation.  This breaking of [...]

Read Full Post »

Immigrants Are Taking American Jobs: The Numbers

Most people recognize that there are disparities of unemployment by region or education.  Florida and the other “sand states” are particularly hard hit. But VDare did an interesting review of unemployment differences between native-born and immigrant workers, and this revealed a serious disparity in unemployment that tilted in favor of the newcomers. Why might this [...]

Read Full Post »

Shadow Stats Sees the Apocalypse

The economic journalist and consultant behind Shadow Stats has an absolutely off the wall interview in a mainstream business publication that begins reasonably enough, but ends sounding like a cross between Ludwig von Mises and the Road Warrior. It’s worrisome when guys in pinstripes who went to Ivy League schools begin to make the kooks [...]

Read Full Post »

Obama Care and Cost Control

The oft-stated conservative fear of Obamacare is that it will lead to painful rationing through various government mandated standards of care, “death panels,” rationing, and the like–our state-of-the-art healthcare system would decline in quality.  But this does not seem the pattern of American entitlements.  Section 8 hasn’t led to lower quality housing for the poor, [...]

Read Full Post »

Castles Made of Sand

Probably the scariest revelation I’ve had in recent years is coming to undesrtand how little the experts at the top know what they’re doing, even as greater and greater trust is placed in them.  As I’ve gotten older, friends have become CEOs, high level government officials, partners in law firms, and the like.  While most are [...]

Read Full Post »

Bailouts: The Anti-Capitalist Virus

I wrote this in March and it’s more true than ever: Bailouts are bad for many reasons. But the two worst are that they cost a ton of money, and, second, they get government in bed with business. As a result, we’re becoming increasingly numb as a people to the idea that a $1T here [...]

Read Full Post »

Internet Roundup

A roundup of a few interesting things from the internet this week. Great pieces by establishment conservatives George Will and Charles Krauthammer pointing out the increasingly wide gap between Obama’s rhetoric of post-partisanship and his narrowly partisan agenda. A scathing editorial by Robert Samuelson on Obama’s phony economics agenda. A nice tribute to one of [...]

Read Full Post »