“The thing I hate hearing most when people talk about the crisis is that the bailouts “saved the system” or ended up “making money.” Participating in bailout measures was the most distasteful thing I have ever had to do, and
Read More
There have been two movies recently about terrorist attacks on the Whitehouse; Olympus has Fallen and White House Down. The second one even has a black president played by Jamie Fox. I can’t decide if it is wishful thinking or
Read More
Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review, iPencil, Nobody knows how to make a pencil, or a health-care system Excerpts: The problem of politics is the problem of knowledge. The superiority of market processes to political processes is not in origin moral but technical. The
Read More
Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review, iPencil, Nobody knows how to make a pencil, or a health-care system Excerpts: Politics creates the immortal corporation. Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service are two institutions that would have failed long ago if not
Read More
My interest in this debate is more about its psychology than its substance. One of my guiding observations in finance and other areas is that “when markets go to extremes it pays to be a contrarian”. Much of the language
Read More
Holman Jenkins writes in The Wall Street Journal, The Climate Speech Obama Didn’t Give, 6/28/2013 Excerpts: If we are serious about climate change, we must seriously factor in the accelerating rate of technological change already in our society. I’m personally
Read More
“A couple of years ago, National Journal analyzed the number of family members of sitting senators who were working as lobbyists. Fully thirty-three senators had family members who were registered as lobbyists or who worked for lobbying firms. That’s one-third
Read More
“Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the opportunity to err, to sin, to do the wrong thing: all of these are constitutive of human freedom, and any concentrated attempt to root them out will root out that freedom as well. If
Read More
Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog, Sultan Knish, Savages of Socialism, Excerpts: In Venezuela, savvy shoppers are hunting down scarce supplies of toilet paper with a smartphone app. The smartphones, compact packages of electronics, are several generations more advanced than
Read More
“Likewise, those in corporations or in policy making (like Fragilista Greenspan) who are endowed with a sophisticated data-gathering department and are therefore getting a lot of “timely” statistics are capable of overreacting and mistaking noise for information—Greenspan kept an eye
Read More
The End of Control from Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield Pathological Altruism from Carpe Diem, Mark Perry. A Nation of Kids on Speed in the WSJ by Pieter Cohen and Nicholas Rasmussen. Excerpt: Stimulants can certainly benefit some young children with truly
Read More
It seems that if there is one area that the voters can agree on it would be that those who make the laws should have to obey them. It is a violation of a fundamental American principle that we should
Read More
When there is so much coverage on the NSA and IRS abuses I think it is smarter to wait a while to let the facts settle. What I think I see is a daily outrage from the bloggers on the
Read More
Thomas Hemphill and Mark Perry write The Myth of ‘Cowboy Capitalism’ in The American, 3/3/13. Excerpts: The Code of Federal Regulations (established in 1938) is where all the administrative rules of U.S. federal agencies are compiled; American businesses, employees, and
Read More
“Some argue that redistribution to the poor is social insurance that protects all of us from misfortune. What’s wrong with social insurance where the unfortunate receive payouts? Nothing. The problem, of course, is creating insurance with payouts suitable for a
Read More
Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog Sultan Knish, The Art of Building Things, 6/10/13. Excerpts: Creativity is an individual act. The act of building something, whether with hammers, blueprints, words, boards or plans is individualistic. Collectives can build, but not
Read More
Robert Zubrin writes Green Anti-Humanism in The National Review 2/21/13 Excerpts: The use of fictitious necessity to rationalize human oppression is not new. Whether the justification is a putative lack of food (e.g., Malthus, 1817, “A great part of the [Irish] population
Read More
Daniel Greenfield writes in his excellent blog The Sultan Knish, Government is the New Race, 6/7/13. Excerpts: While you might think that it would be impossible to run an entire cable news network around accusing people of racism, MSNBC has
Read More
Recent Comments