So, How’s That Recovery Going?
Posted on June 11th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
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Current Issue
Wanted: One Biden Decoder Ring Refresher Course in Math-Speak
Posted on May 13th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Ten blogger bucks to any math/econ geeks out there who can tell me what the hell this line from the man who’s one heartbeat away from being the most important man in the world is supposed to have meant: I think that what you’re going to see happen here is the velocity of this [stimulus spending] will increase [...]
Fear the Cartoon Libertarian
Posted on May 12th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Responding to this post and recalling an earlier comment of mine from a thread at TAS, Freddie writes: … of course libertarian orthodoxy really does render most libertarians unwitting shills for corporate interests. Although also unintentionally so, the mainstream libertarian agenda is in effect largely a sop to corporate interests. If you could wave a [...]
Filed under: economics, libertarianism, politics
Riding It Out
Posted on April 24th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
This is utterly brilliant: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x9XZKbP-BI&feature=player_embedded] Greg Mankiw, who knows more about math than I do, comments: Stock prices are approximately brownian motion, which means they are everywhere continuous but nowhere differentiable. In plainer English, “continuous” means that stock prices an instant from now, or an instant ago, are close to where they are now. But [...]
Filed under: economics
Freedom’s Underside, Pt. III
Posted on April 16th, 2009 by JL Wall
by JL Wall E.D. Kain, on Iraq: But that should call in to question why we are so dependent on oil to begin with, and beyond that, why we as a culture have shifted so many of our priorities to a belief in unending growth that can and should be enforced by an omnipotent military. [...]
Filed under: civil liberties, economics, government/law, philosophy, war
True Sentence of the Day
Posted on April 13th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
We will never get the money out of politics until we get the politics out of money. That is from Alex Tabarrok, commenting on a study that found a 22,000 percent rate of return on money spent lobbying for tax breaks; the $3-billion-a-year lobbying industry is, of course, likely only to get larger as the [...]
Filed under: economics, government/law, politics
Phase 3: Profit
Posted on March 31st, 2009 by John Schwenkler
David Brooks’s column on GM’s “restructuring” addiction has him at his snarky best: … if you are in the restructuring business, you can’t let these stray thoughts get in the way of your restructuring. After all, restructuring is your life. Restructuring is forever. Restructuring is like what dieting is for many of us: You think [...]
Filed under: economics, government/law, politics, transportation
Leaders Needed
Posted on March 30th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Glenn Greenwald’s widely-cited post from over the weekend on Jim Webb’s courageous push for prison reform is a must-read. I especially liked this bit: Webb’s commitment to this unpopular project demonstrates how false that excuse-making [that says that taking bad but popular positions is necessary if one is to avoid political risk] is – just [...]
Filed under: civil liberties, economics, education, foreign affairs, government/law, politics, torture, war
American Entitlement
Posted on March 30th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
Alex Massie has a splendid post on how American liberals, lately of the “Stop trying to force the Europeans to obey America’s orders” school of thought (and thank goodness for that!) when it came to foreign policy, are … well … less enthused about other countries’ free-mindedness when it comes to the financial crisis: The [...]
Filed under: economics, foreign affairs, government/law, war
More Outsourcing
Posted on March 19th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
This post, from several days ago but which I’ve only just now gotten around to reading, is a perfect example of why Rick Saenz – formerly a dotcommer and now a Kentucky homesteader, homeschooling dad, online bookseller, and old-timey musician – is such an important blogger to be reading in these crazy times. Money quote: [...]
Filed under: economics