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Blago Pick: Barack Obama Should Study Game Theory

“Defiant” Governor Blagojevich has named Roland W. Burris as the successor to Obama’s senate seat. Plenty of people, including the President-Elect himself, had said that Blagojevich shouldn’t name anybody, for obvious reasons. But these people went further: Obama foolishly declared that anyone named by Blagojevich should not fill the vacancy. Do you see the problem? […]

Ringing in the New Year With People Who Are At Least 55 Years Young

I spent New Year’s Eve at my parents’ relatively new house in a retirement community in Florida, where new residents must be at least 55 years old. (We had come down for Christmas.) I noticed some huge differences between this party and those that I remember from my youthful days: * Everybody left before 2.* […]

New Energy Blog and Why Governments, Not Human Nature, Foster Mass Warfare

Rob Bradley (disclosure: the guy who hired me for IER) has a new energy blog. Some of the big guns who will be posting are still on vacation, but it looks to be great for daily commentary on energy issues. David Henderson had a great Christmas Eve article discussing the outbreak of peace on the […]

Krugman: You Can’t Prove My Plan Is a Bad Idea

As always, I am stunned by Krugman’s latest blog post (HT2MR). Check this out, and note that this is his entire post: Readers have been correcting me for saying “niggling nabobs of negativism” in this post. Yes, I know the original (written by my former colleague William Safire.) But “niggling” is better for the current […]

Those Fighting for Economic Freedom Need a Good Halftime Speech

I recently wrote a piece for Mises.org (should run soon) saying something to the effect that what more could the SEC do, than its handling of the Madoff Ponzi scheme, to prove that it’s doing an awful job and should be abolished? In other words, if one thinks that all this proves is that some […]

Yet Another Reason Paying Interest on Fed Reserves Stinks

I think it’s safe to say that the standard economist take on the Fed paying interest on reserves is that it was a tool to (try to) keep the federal funds rate from sinking. The Fed had flooded the market with tons of new reserves (see my new favorite chart below), and so naturally the […]

Total Costs of Bailouts So Far…

This Slate piece tallies them up. In terms of commitments (not actual money going out the door), the government had promised, as of Nov. 25, $5.6 trillion in new handouts, er, measures to revitalize the economy. (I think it starts with the Term Auction Facility from the end of 2007.) To put it in perspective, […]

Obama Raises Target to 3 Million New Jobs

This job creation stuff is really getting absurd. Now the President-Elect and his partner in crime are saying they will create 3 million jobs, not the 2.5 million they promised earlier, because (according to Biden) the economy is in worse shape than they originally realized. The CNBC article doesn’t say how much more it will […]