Palmer vs. Woods: Entangling Alliances At Fault Yet Again
I mean this with sincerity, I am not linking to this because I want any Free Advice regulars to jump in. But I know that I derive entertainment when I see other people throwing down over ridiculous things, so I thought you might too.
Steve Horwitz offers a pretty good summary of the fight so far, and I got sucked into the hostilities in the comments. Personally I would like to see this argument distract all of us libertarians until the passage of both socialized medicine and cap & trade, but I’m not sure it has the legs.
Halloween Outlook on the Economy
This actually had nothing to do with Halloween; Anthony Gregory asked me for a general economic outlook piece a while ago, and I just got around to doing it. I realized it had run because all of a sudden my inbox was filling up with requests for radio interviews. Surely my blog post on talking with God was not the cause…
Except for a chart of the composition of the Fed’s balance sheet, there’s not much new in the piece for Free Advice readers, but it’s kinda depressing when you see all the different points put into one spot. If you want to scare your in-laws, consider sending the above. Here’s the closing which is either clever or cheesy, I still can’t decide:
The federal government and Federal Reserve have thrown all caution and discretion to the winds during the financial crisis. It is entirely possible — some would say even likely — that the US dollar will not be the reserve currency of the world within five years. Ben Bernanke and other officials have painted themselves into a corner, and unfortunately they will end up knocking out a few walls to make their escape. Those of us forced to use Federal Reserve notes, and pay federal income taxes, can only hope that they don’t take down the entire house with them.
I’m Neither Smart Nor Devious Enough to Work for Goldman Sachs
What the heck does this even mean?
Goldman Sachs Group is in talks to buy millions of dollars of tax credits from Fannie Mae, but the U.S. Treasury could block the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Goldman hopes to win approval this week, but the administration is wary about approving a deal that would help the bank reduce its tax bill, the Journal reported on its website.
“Treasury is reviewing and will not let it proceed unless it is clearly in the taxpayers’ interest,” Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said, without providing further comment or details.
Somebody please explain this to me. E.g. can I sell Goldman Sachs my child tax credit? But I would insist on getting at least $1001 for it, and presumably they would only buy it for less than $1000.
So the only thing I can figure is that this either has to do with present value accounting and a dumb tax regulation, OR Fannie is going to sell something for less than it’s worth, and then Goldman will return the favor (diluted) to the people who signed off on the dumb sale.
Faux Economic Profundities
There are a lot of faux economic profundities floating around. I don’t remember who said this one–I’m thinking I read it in a Landsburg book in Barnes & Noble, but I could be wrong–but I have in mind assertions like this:
Wow, that’s heavy Ogre.
Is it too cute if I just say, “Prove it”? What if I make some comparable assertions instead? Will that give my complaint more oomph?
* If you never get audited, you’re reporting too much income.
* If you never get hit by a bus, you’re waiting too long to enter crosswalks.
* If you never experience an unwanted pregnancy, you’re spending too much on condoms.
Shall I continue, or do you get the idea? Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole economist pop book genre. It’s the first thing I check out when I’m browsing in a book store. But a lot of the deep thoughts you get there, consist in taking a neoclassical model, assuming away the real-world considerations that motivate actual people, and then declaring that the optimizing agent in the model outperforms the morons reading the book.
Potpourri
* Mario Rizzo deconstructs the “contributions” to the 3Q GDP figures: “[A]t least 2.5 percentage points of the 3.5 percent increase are suspect on their own terms. And then there are the future costs to bear.”
* Not only did Paul Krugman (or his lackey) approve my comment on this post, but it was the first one! That actually concerns me that I managed to get in the first comment on a Krugman blog post. Surely that means I check his blog far more than the optimal frequency.
* Speaking of that Krugman post, Scott Sumner does a great job blowing up Krugman with his own petard (or something). Namely, Krugman is complaining about the slow recovery (and the need for more stimulus), by comparing our present recovery with previous episodes in which the economy bounced back quickly with much smaller deficit spending. This is the flip-side of the point I always make: When people say, “The government hasn’t done this since the Great Depression…” why is that supposed to inspire confidence?!
* Tom Palmer vs. Tom Woods.
* An interesting idea from one of the blogs you readers suggested in the other thread: Mencius Moldbug says:
Here at UR [Unqualified Reservations], we deal with the sacred-oath thing by shifting our words slightly. Instead of USG, we use the slightly more neutral name Washcorp. This reminds us that USG is no more than a corporation in the strict sense of the word, ie, an organization with a virtual identity. In a slightly more outré move, we translate the old Viking word for USG’s continent as Plainland, its subjects thus being Plainlanders. Thus rather than trying to free the US from the evil clutches of USG – an almost oxymoronic task – we are trying to free Plainland from Washcorp.
Perhaps you remember how confused you were in high school when you read Hamlet, and found Claudius being called “Denmark”? Did a little lightbulb go off in your head when you realized how nice it is for a monarchy, if its subjects use the same word for both king and country? And when you saluted the flag that morning, which were you feeling? Warm ties of love and loyalty to Plainland, or warm ties of love and loyalty to Washcorp? It’s these little Jedi mind tricks that hold the whole thing together. They’re small, but they add up.
Isn’t a Christian Better Off Dead?
In the comments of a recent blog post–and I’m sorry but I can’t seem to find it–a reader said something like: “You can’t possibly believe this religious stuff, right? I mean, my five-year-old showed how silly it was the other day when he said, ‘If you believe in heaven, why not just kill yourself and get there right away?'”
Putting aside issues of sin–you could also ask, “Why not become a mass murderer of Christians and bring euphoria to as many of them as possible before the idiot police put a stop to your altruism?”–I think I have a more profound answer.
Once I was taking a walk and something really “deep” occurred to me. I can’t remember now what it was, but really, it was a really cool idea and I was very pleased with myself. In fact, I was so impressed with the awesome idea that I had just come up with, that I actually reflected on my narcissism and realized it was unseemly. I don’t remember the exact words, but I think I acknowledged this pridefulness to God along the lines of, “Yeah I know we’re just punks, but c’mon, that was a pretty good idea I just had.”
In that moment, “out of nowhere”–and this had absolutely nothing to do with whatever trivial thing I was thinking about–it suddenly occurred to me that when one accepts that God is real and you give Him your consent to spend eternity with Him in paradise, then BOOM you are saved and that’s that. You have just done all you need to do to get into heaven.
However, He asks you to spend some more time on this (comparative) hell-hole earth, with all its suffering and injustice, in order to rescue as many of your non-believing brothers and sisters as possible. He has done all He can. There are still plenty of people who literally don’t even think He exists. So to convince them, it will take fellow humans to try to explain it.
(For those who are continually astounded by how such an ostensibly rational guy like me can spout all this ridiculous Jesus talk, it’s because of experiences like the above. If a God did exist, isn’t that just the kind of thing He would do? Isn’t that hilarious? He didn’t have a bird poop on my head in order to punish me for thinking I was hot stuff. No, He injected perhaps the most beautiful explanation of the meaning of life I have ever processed into my puny mind, such that I can’t even remember now what it was I was so excited about five seconds earlier.)
Blog Bask
OK I’m getting bugged clicking on the same old list. I need to find a new place where the kids are hip.
Regular Free Advice readers have a good sense of my tastes, sense of humor, and so forth. If you could name just one blog that you think I should be checking daily, what is it?
Now I Know How Cliff Clavin Felt
I’m so conservative I probably wouldn’t have risked it all on the Daily Double… Duh.
(Every econoblogger is featuring this, but I think I saw it first from Boettke. And this is the reference in my post title. UPDATE: I just noticed a mistake at around 4:22 in the Cheers clip. Amateurs.)
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