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Tyler Cowen, a Sensible Central Planner

I know, I know, I’m just beating up on the guy all the time because I have impossibly high standards for my libertarian economists. I suppose the following is actually a responsible plea to limit Big Government: Here is my guest post on bank nationalization. I could have stressed further that bank nationalization works best […]

Remind Me Not to Move to South Korea

Jeff Tucker passed along this story: South Korean prosecutors indicted a blogger on Thursday who had warned of financial doom for the country with critics saying he was targeted because his gloomy forecasts upset the government battling an economic downturn. The blogger, writing under the pseudonym Minerva, became a household name for his predictions of […]

Patriotism, the Last Refuge of an Unprofitable Banker

Here is the story to which Glenn Beck was alluding on his awesome (radio) show the other night: Hours after the bank received a new government bailout to cover heavy losses at its Merrill Lynch subsidiary, [Bank of America CEO] Mr. Lewis came under fire Friday from investors wanting to know why the bank did […]

Liquidation vs. Stimulus: Lionel Robbins From 1934

Another sneak peek from my forthcoming book… Check out this awesome quote from Lionel Robbins’ The Great Depression: Nobody wishes for bankruptcies. Nobody likes liquidation as such. If bankruptcy and liquidation can be avoided by sound financing nobody would be against such measures. All that is contended is that when the extent of mal-investment and […]

Glenn Beck Is the Man

I know he dissed Ron Paul back when it mattered, but I don’t care: Glenn Beck is on fire. Unlike other “right wing” hosts who whine about liberal hypocrisy yadda yadda yadda, Beck every night keeps hammering home the fact that the government is taking over the financial sector. Tonight he gave two very specific […]

Euro vs. the Dollar

I am one of the contributors to a new financial newsletter out of Ireland. My topic this month was to predict the relative fortunes of the dollar vs. euro. I said I thought that by 3Q the dollar would fall at least to $1.50 / euro and probably more. I’m going to ask the editor […]

"Well do you have a better idea??"

I just answered some questions for a Slovakian business weekly. (I’ll post it here if/when it’s online.) One of the questions was what I would recommend to the governments of the world, since (as would be clear in my earlier answers) I didn’t think “stimulus” spending programs were a good idea. My answer: Governments should […]

President Obama’s First Speech

Just heard it while getting lunch. I had to turn to the NPR feed because Rush kept making comments and it was annoying me. Obama certainly is a wonderful speaker, and if you are going to be stuck listening to somebody for 4 years, it could be worse. I loved his themes on foreign relations, […]