Monthly Archives: April 2013

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Reading 2013 04 30

The Art of the Impossible What energy efficiency tells us about healthcare  Crony Capitalism at Work  Taylor on Monetary Policy

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“A Statute of Limitations on Intellectual Denial”

From The Wall Street Journal editorial on 4/27/13, The Growth Deficit: We are now in year five of what has been one of the great experiments in Keynesian economic policy. We were told that if Congress would spend $830 billion

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Complex Regulations Decrease Predictability

“Man-made complex systems tend to develop cascades and runaway chains of reactions that decrease, even eliminate, predictability and cause outsized events. So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more

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Good Wealthy and Bad Wealthy

Daniel Greenfield wrote Capitalism: A Hate Story in his blog, The Sultan Knish, 2/27/13. Excerpt: The president of a snack food companies who uses corporate profits to cover a huge salary is an evil pig, but the president of a charity who pulls

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Reading 2013 04 25

Record 8.9 Million People Now On Disability Obamanomics: Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Poorer $2 Trillion Underground Economy May Be Recovery’s Savior  

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Better Stewards of Wealth

“The middle class is no better off taxing the rich and distributing a share of their income to the poor than they are paying the poor’s share themselves. As noted, leaving the dollar with the rich and letting them invest

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Creation of Destructive Demand

In 1993, under Andrew Cuomo (currently governor of New York), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it would “encourage” Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to have half their loan portfolios in affordable-housing (subprime) loans. Freddie and

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Consumption and Investment

In economic terms, spending on housing is consumption, not investment. We live in a house, and therefore we consume the house. Houses are not used to produce other goods. A manufacturing plant that makes computer parts is a production investment.

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The United States Fiscal Policy as an Example to Avoid

Tips to Mark Perry at Carpe Diem for pointing to this speech given by Canadian Parliament member Pierre Poilievre.  We Americans think we get the capitalist thing right but we clearly have something to learn from our neighbor to the

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Why The Rating Agencies Failed

One factor that undoubtedly influenced the rating agencies was the way they were compensated. For years, the agencies had charged the buyers of the bonds for rating the bonds, a system encouraged by S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch and that led

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Reading 2013 04 18

Jeff Goldstein on the difference between leftish and rightish blogs   Roofers’ Union Seeks Repeal/Reform Of Affordable Care Act Gun Rights Consensus  

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Politics on Boards

  “Andrew Redleaf is the CEO of Whitebox Advisors, a highly regarded investment advisory service. Redleaf has had a long career running investment funds. He argues that crony capitalism isn’t just unfair, it is a serious threat to our economic

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Citigroup’s Special Treatment

  When the preliminary results from the stress tests came back in mid-March, they matched what we had expected to see: Citi (even with its $45 billion in government capital) and a few others would be insolvent under the stress

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You Say You Want A Revolution

Glenn Reynolds wrote A revolution in the works? in the 2/4/13 USA Today Excerpts: There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a

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The Other Taxes

While tax rates are often stated as the burden on individuals and businesses there are other “mandated expenses” that are much more insidious.  Federal agencies are often charged with funding themselves with fines and penalties. Much too often these fines

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Blinding Ourselves with Pessimism

David Stockman’s analysis in The New York Times paints a dismal picture of our financial system that is unlikely to be fixed.  While his facts are largely correct, his conclusion is suspect.  For a reference to his article plus a

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Strength in Redundancy

“Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems. We humans have two kidneys (this may even include accountants extra spare parts, and extra capacity in many, many things (say, lungs, neural system, arterial apparatus), while human design

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A Hard Way Out

David Stockman writes Sundown in America: How Crony Capitalism has Left Us State Wrecked in the 4/1/13 New York Times. Excerpts: These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would

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Liberation

from from 20 Photos that Change the Holocaust Narrative

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