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The Best Five-Minute-And-Seven-Second Argument Against Giving the Fed More Power

This is hilarious. (HT2LRC) The internet is awesome. I’m impressed that someone took the time to make this video without putting in an ad or something at the end. That’s just how much people can’t stand Bernanke; his public repudiation is its own reward.

Potpourri

* This guy emailed me to say that my Mish article went awry at the crucial point: When the creditor lends out money so that borrowers can spend more, the creditor is content to carry lower cash balances, because he’s now holding a claim on future income. I had considered this at the time I […]

"Honey, Scott Sumner’s Coming Over; Hide the China!"

Yesterday I sent Scott Sumner a goofy email, to the effect that he needed to blog more because he didn’t realize how much angst it caused me when he skipped a day. He warned me that I wouldn’t like his latest post. This is true: I used to think that people deserved what they earned, […]

My Solution to the Mind-Body Problem, and the Reconciliation of God’s Sovereignty With Free Will

Say what you will about Free Advice, but we tackle deep issues on this blog. No chatter about Joe the Plumber here (except when it’s important). In a previous post, I listed some of the major problems with materialism, which is the view that the only “real” things are atoms and energy, and everything else […]

Is "Identity Theft" Really Theft?

I am 95% persuaded by Stephan Kinsella’s classic article “Against Intellectual Property” [.pdf]. However, I think if we take Kinsella’s views seriously, it means that “identity theft” isn’t really theft. Let’s say someone fills out a credit card application claiming to be Robert Murphy, and has my date of birth, my address, my (anti)Social (in)Security […]

Ezra Klein Apparently Doesn’t Think Immigrants Are Part of the Universe

I don’t know what the timelines are, so maybe he didn’t have access to this information when he wrote his short post. But here Ezra Klein points to how encouraging the fate of Massachusetts is for health care reform (HT2MR). Nowhere does Klein mention this: As lawmakers on Capitol Hill battle to create a nationwide […]

They Tried Easy Money Back in the 1930s

Bill R. sent me a link to this amazing site where they excerpt the news from WSJ from the corresponding day in 1930. For July 18, 1930: Editorial: Constantly increasing taxation is a burden on “every form of enterprise”. It diverts money from productive uses to government functions which “though mostly indispensable, do not always […]

Potpourri

* Here’s Bryan Caplan’s reply to Krugman and Drum. * An interesting analysis of a paper (on boundary layer clouds and the effect on global warming) that clearly went into the IPCC summary, and yet had key words changed to match with the spirit of the IPCC report. (HT2 Rob Bradley) * I have gotten […]