The Unbroken Window

Well, they might as well.

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“Bush overpaid banks in bailout, watchdog says,” Only a few reminders. First is that Geithner, now Obama’s Treasury secretary, had no small hand in these dealings. Second, it isn’t overpayment” by a mere $78 billion, it’s the whole damn thing. Third, of course it was “Bush” and not “government.” Just get the right guys in [...]

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When the messiah speaks … Every economist, even those who may quibble with the details of the makeup in a package, will agree that if you’ve got a trillion dollars in lost demand this year, and a trillion dollars in lost demand next year, then you’ve got to have a big enough recovery package to [...]

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Many people believe that no one should make more than the President of the United States. In fact, the fine folks on Capital Hill are making limits to executive compensation a major feature of their reform proposals. So, just how much does the President make? His salary is $400,000. But is that really the only [...]

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“People invested thinking you put a dollar in, you got a dollar out,” said Peter Rizzo, an analyst in New York for S&P, which rates 90 investment pools with total assets exceeding $200 billion. “That wasn’t the case.” That’s my brother in a Bloomberg story about a Florida investment pool failing to attract investors.

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Some more evidence: Why wasn’t the Depression followed by a vigorous recovery, like every other cycle? It should have been. The economic fundamentals that drive all expansions were very favorable during the New Deal. Productivity grew very rapidly after 1933, the price level was stable, real interest rates were low, and liquidity was plentiful. We [...]

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“that even three months ago, most economists would not have predicted the economy was “in as bad of a situation as we are in right now. “ – that was the President’s justification for why the stimulus spending bill has now topped $900 billion. That amount, by the way, is an increase in spending equivalent [...]

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Views on what the social responsibility of business is are varied. Some people believe that the most important and only responsibility that publicly traded businesses should have is to earn profits. Those with more statist inclinations tend to believe that businesses have an obligation to serve the “greater good” of society by pursuing other, more [...]

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