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We’ll Get Through This Depression, Too

Lately I’ve realized how much it bums people out when I calmly explain to them that Bush, Ben, and ‘Bama are doing a great job…if their goal is to re-create the Great Depression. So in the present post, let me explain why I’m not devastated. First, I have my religious faith. I won’t delve into […]

Potpourri

* I take on my buddy Brad DeLong at Mises.org. DeLong had tried to use Wicksell to defend Greenspan, and I cracked that Knut. (OK that was awful, sorry.) * Jeffrey Rogers Hummel says that the U.S. government will default on its debt. * David Friedman has a very interesting post on responding to climate […]

The Power Brokers Want a Government Monopoly on Health Care

Check out this interesting succession of clips (HT2EPJ): I’m not sure if he uses it in the above video, but anyway now whenever Obama says, “Let me be clear,” I interpret that as meaning, “The following is false.”

Economists vs. Ron Paul

Here is an article (HT2 Tyler Cowen) about six economists who oppose Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed. (Interesting tidbit: The last economist, Mike Feroli, was in my class at NYU. In fact we were the only two Americans, and used to joke that there would be ethnic cleansing after the preliminary exams. Ah […]

Arnold Kling Thinks Like Me

On those life expectancy puzzles: Does anyone know how, if at all, unnatural deaths affect these data? Consider four possibilities–young in the U.S., young in the Netherlands, old in the U.S., old in the Netherlands. I would bet that of these four groups, the rate of unnatural death (murder, car accidents, and so on) is […]

The Owners of Private Health Plans Politely Disagree With the President

Brad DeLong links to this interesting analysis of health insurer share prices, compared to Intrade’s odds of a government health insurance plan passing this year. The author, Arindrajit Dube (you spell it just like it sounds),concludes: It appears that after the group of 6 announcement on July 28, the share price of the Intrade contract, […]

Krugman Missteps in Health Care Debate

David R. Henderson has a problem with this short Krugman clip (from September 2008): I get what David is saying, but I actually thought Krugman’s reaction was pretty funny. If Krugman had started pooh poohing the statistical significance of a sample of size 7, people would and should have begun throwing Molotov cocktails at him.

Is It Joan Rivers or Maybelline?

Is this for real? I was flipping through the TV channels before crashing in the hotel, and saw this on some celebrity gossip show. I kept waiting for it to be an ad for her new movie or something.