Monthly Archives: August 2012

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

The Growth in Per Capita Wealth is Greatly Underestimated

… the average American family in 1875 spent 74 percent of its income on food, clothing, and shelter; compare to a mere 13 percent spent in 1995.  … a three-minute phone call across the United States in 1950 cost ninety

Read More

The Shamelessness of Moral Supremacists

In short, our top pundits, our political elites, our very president all believe that they can blast the unfairness of high capitalism while doing everything in their power to enjoy its dividends — and demand an ethical standard from others

Read More

Statism and Cronyism

from AEI Ideas, Cronyism is just as threatening to free enterprise as big government, by Arthur Brooks and Daniel Rothschild | August 29, 2012 excerpt Statism and cronyism are fundamentally about the same things: Letting political power allocate economic resources

Read More

The Obama/ Romney Handicap

Dateline 8/27/12 The polls show a close race and Intrade shows Obama with a 55.8% chance of victory as of 8:23 AM.  This is down from 59% before the Ryan nomination and down from around 70% during the circular firing

Read More

Jobs vs Income

John Cochrane writes in his excellent blog, The Grumpy Economist, Should the Fed Risk Inflation to Spur Growth, 8/22/12. Excerpt: Tight monetary policy is not the source of our problems. Monetary policy is loose by any measure. Anti-growth policies are

Read More

Capitalism and Virtue

Charles Murray writes in the Review section of the weekend Wall Street Journal, July 28-29/12, Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem. Excerpt: Another factor is the segregation of capitalism from virtue. Historically, the merits of free enterprise and the obligations of

Read More

Reconciling a Strong Stock Market with a Private Capital Strike

The stock market is having a run but the private investment market is experiencing an equity strike: people are reluctant to invest in their own business. The public equity market may be rising because there is just no better place

Read More

The Essential Task of Financial Markets

“He will not go far who knows from the first where he is going.” So spoke Napoleon as he launched his brilliant, tempestuous, and catastrophic career from Versaille via Moscow to St. Helena’s isle.  A heroic spectacle for a man,

Read More

Who Has Really Unchained Wall Street?

From the Daily Caller, Report: Cronyism, political donations likely behind Obama, Holder failure to charge any bankers after 2008 financial meltdown,8/7/12, by Matthew Boyle. Excerpts: In the report, GAI details how the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations both

Read More

Leo Frank

August 17 is the anniversary of the lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta in 1915.   This is a fascinating and tragic piece of history. It was the  OJ Simpson trial of its day and was followed by newspapers all over

Read More

Revisionist Capitalism

Peter Schiff writes Obama Gets Real at the Business Insider, 12/9/11 Excerpt: But according to Obama’s revisionist version of American history, we tried capitalism only briefly during our history. First, during the Robber Barron period of the late 19th Century,

Read More

Free Cheese in Every Mousetrap

Scott Grannis wrote in his blog, Calafia Beach Pundit, ObamaCare: punitive marginal tax rates on the poor, 4/8/2009. Excerpt: According to the CBO, for families earning at the poverty line in 2016 ($24,000), government subsidies for healthcare insurance would be

Read More

Replacing Knowledge with Power

The problem with the financial products division [of AIG] was not that the regulators were absent or inadequately empowered. The problem was that the regulators, like most regulators, lacked relevant information. They were experts on the politics of the situation,

Read More

tips to Legal Insurrection

Read More

Romney’s Intrade Odds Improving

During the circular firing squad that was the GOP primary, Obama’s Intrade Odds were over 70% to win. After the selection of Mitt Romney his odds dropped over time to as low as 53%. More recently Obama’s odds have increased to over

Read More

Political Thoughts 2012 08 11

Ryan is a great choice.  Good VP picks may not have a history of helping candidates, but bad VP picks at this stage could certainly hurt the campaign. Romney has three opportunities to overtake Obama.  The first is the selection

Read More

Rendering Scarcity Obsolete

Economists ill-serve themselves be describing economics as being about the allocation of scarce resources.  It is about the creation of resources.  Oil, for instance, is described as a natural resource.  It isn’t. In and of itself it is simply sticky

Read More

The Case for Capitalism

Charles Murray writes in the Review section of the weekend Wall Street Journal, July 28-29/12, Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem. In this excellent piece Charles Murray gives his ‘best effort’ to write an elegant case for capitalism: The U.S. was

Read More

Becoming Greek

Holman Jenkins nails it in the Wall street Journal in Our Big Fat Greek Habits – If you don’t think we face interest groups and scams that block progress, read on. 8/7/2012 excerpt: We’re not Greece but . . . The

Read More