Bryan Caplan wonders why Brad Delong cannot comprehend those who doubt the effectiveness of the stimulus bill. Assume that creating value is easy, any brainless fool can do it, even the brainless fools at Washington Mutual. It is then immediately obvious that the government can make everything lovely by printing money and giving it to the morally worthy. Are car production lines shut down while unemployed workers idle? Just print …
Warren Buffet explains how to lose a trillion
Warren Buffet explained how to lose a few trillion, here and there. Well managed companies, like Warren Buffet’s, don’t get government guarantees. Badly managed companies with good political connections get government guarantees. So naturally all the capital floods to companies with a track record of losing it.This is capitalism in reverse. For capitalism to work, the people who are good at managing stuff have to wind up in charge of …
The degeneration of Britain
Three facts that have recently been in the news: The reversal of the Flynn effect. The British youth of today really are dumber. Violence, drunkenness, laddie, and home invasion burglaries, where drunken lads smash into someone’s house and terrify the inhabitants. The British crime rate is about double the US crime rate, and threatens everyone, whereas the US crime rate is very low outside areas with large numbers of protected …
The run begins on Europe
Moody’ issued a warning on European banks, which implies that the smart money is moving out of the worst affected banks: Eastern European banks, and Western European banks with a lot of exposure to Eastern Europe.This, in turn, is putting pressure on European government bonds, as speculators doubt that European governments will be able to bail out their banks, or will go broke attempting to do so – the most …
Chinese becoming wealthy, Americans ceasing to be
Captain Capitalism explains why Chinese are becoming wealthy, and Americans ceasing to be.
Headless body in Gutless press
Mark Steyn ridicules the mainstream press’s fear of Islam: the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response. When poor Mrs. Hassan’s husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches, as far afield as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, the Voice of America, and the Canadian Press. The …
The lesson of Japan’s failure
Ten years ago, Japan had a banking crisis very like the one we just had. It was discovered that financiers and big businessmen had blown staggering sums of money, whereupon the government massively intervened to keep those that had screwed up from losing their jobs. The Japanese economy has been stagnant ever since, even though, or perhaps because, the government has poured huge amounts of “stimulus†over the economy, so …
Smoot Hawley again
One of the several government actions that so greatly prolonged the great depression was Smoot Hawley. The Becker Posner blog reports that the democrats want do do FDR all over again – meaning do the great depression all over again.
The cause of the crisis
In numerous posts, I have argued that CRA affirmative action caused the economic crisis that is happening now. Vdare provides a far better post than any of mine, giving us case histories and numerous horror stories of bank?s proudly pissing away stupendous amounts of money, and boasting of their wonderful CRA compliance in so doing. The bank?s boasts of trillions of dollars gives the lie to the much repeated claim …
Israel did not win
After the recent war in the Gaza strip, Hamas declared victory, and Israel declared victory. What do they teach small boys in school today? When I was in school, the first thing I learned is that the fight is not over till the winner can make loser cry “uncleâ€. Hamas has not been destroyed, nor coerced. They continue to rocket Israel. Since they are religious fanatics, nothing short of Roman …