2011 February

Archive for February, 2011

EPA Will Destroy Jobs, Not Create Them

I know my environmental writings upset some of you, but I must press on… In this post I take on a new study from the Political Economy Research Institute. An excerpt: Glancing through Appendix B of the PERI report, in which they explain the method by which they come up with such counterintuitive conclusions, shows […]

Murphy Twin Spin on TSA and Subjective Value

This month I have the EconLib article. It is on privatizing airport security. You have seen some of this discussion in other venues but here I take it further, for example: By taking such critical decisions out of the hands of a government agency—which is not bound by rational cost-benefit calculations and yet, in a […]

Network Lock-In Bask

OK kids, I recently took the plunge and got a MacBook–refurbished because I’m cheap. I am still waiting for disaster to strike, as I leave the tender bosom of Bill Gates. (My compromise was that I installed MS Office on this intriguing, lightweight, elegant, and very white machine.) So here’s a dumb question: What is […]

Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?

Last week’s post turned into a typical argument over whether Intelligent Design (ID) is a “scientific” theory. Let me say upfront that part of this argument is pure posturing (on both sides); the people who are pro-ID want to be able to say it’s scientific, while its opponents want to be able to say it […]

Paging Bill Woolsey on the Fed’s Accounting Skullduggery

Like the Spaniard in The Princess Bride knew he needed the Man in Black, when I try to parse the Fed’s notorious January 6 accounting change, I know I need the economist who wrote this article (“Who Owns the Fed?”). So here’s the Fed’s announcement, with my placeholders and bolding added: The Board’s H.4.1 statistical […]

Suggestion for Cool YouTube on Federal Debt

Darren C. sent me this neat website where you can graph the US federal debt going way back to 1791. I was playing with it and came up with (what I think would be) a really cool 3-minute YouTube. But to see my vision, you have to do the following on the site: * First […]

Bask on MBS

(Note for newcomers: “Bask” is short for “Blog ask.” There is no begging at Free Advice.) I was looking at the NY Fed’s page on its SOMA holdings and noticed that in a footnote on the $965 billion in mortgage-backed securities it says: Guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. Current face value […]

“If the Fed Started Monetizing the Debt, We’d Be in Trouble.”

So say the people who think people like me are worry warts. It’s always useful to show things like this (HT here, but they in turn got the image from ZeroHedge):