Economist Arnold Kling reports:
Greg Mankiw reports that the yield curve is steep, meaning that long-term interest rates have risen. In my view, this is perfectly rational, and it shows that the short-run effect of the fiscal stimulus is negative, as Jeff Sachs predicted.
This is all based on a Keynesian type of macro analysis. As we […]
Archive for May, 2009
May29th2009
More On The Problems With The Stimulus
Published by in Economics, Fiscal Stimulus and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsMay28th2009
Future Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor is getting alot of criticism for this comment she made at the Cultural Diversity Lecture at the UC Berkeley School of Law:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a […]
May27th2009
Though obviously not my first choice, given that Obama won the presidency, Democrats control both houses of congress with large majorities, and the fact that Sotomayor is replacing an already liberal justice, I think she is far more than those of us on the right could have asked for. The WSJ is even reporting that […]
May26th2009
The Cultural Argument Against Gay Marriage
Published by in Gay Marriage, General and Personal. 12 CommentsOf all the arguments against gay marriage, the religious liberties argument, the reductio absurdum argument, the better safe than sorry argument, and others, the one people have the most difficulty understanding, atleast from my experience in discussing it, is the cultural argument against gay marriage, yet it is one of the ones I find most […]
May26th2009
” When you make lending to high-risk people less attractive, the result is not worse terms for low-risk people who have been profitable all along. The result is that high-risk people get less credit. They used to be able to get credit despite their credit-unworthiness by paying extra; if the law forbids this, why lend […]
May23rd2009
Me and my now five month old baby boy:
Picture was taken in front of the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California.
More pictures here.
May22nd2009
The Invisible Hand vs Charity
Published by in Capitalism, Chicanoism, Economics, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Personal and Poverty. 3 CommentsOne of the major problems I have with Chicano Studies is its overemphasis on altruistic ventures as opposed to “personal gain”. Becoming a community organizer, for example, is more encouraged than becoming an engineer. This was particularly important to me last year when my sister, being in her junior year of high school, was applying […]
May21st2009
“Today’s decision by the S&P rating agency to place the United Kingdom government’s AAA rating on negative watch should be a wake up call to the Obama administration about the dangers of fiscal profligacy. So too should the Chinese government’s repeated comments about its reluctance to keep adding to its already extraordinarily large U.S. Treasury […]
May21st2009
“Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush […]
May20th2009
The New York Times art section ran an article on differing views of the great depression: its causes and the affects public policy had on it.
Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, made this interesting observation:
Mr. Vedder playfully offered another analogy: the recession of 1920. Why was that slump, over and done with by […]
May19th2009
“Any cost savings you want to wring out of Medicare can be wrung out of Medicare right now: the program is large and powerful enough, and costly enough, that they are worth doing without adding a single new person to the mix. Conversely, if there is some political or institutional barrier which is preventing you […]
May18th2009
“The Obama administration’s behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors — entitled to first priority payment under the “absolute priority rule” — have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, […]
May16th2009
“To me, Pelosi’s denial (and accusation against the CIA) lays bare a deeper truth about the Democrats. Without Obama they’d be nearly as big a mess as the Republicans. Most of them are complicit in the Bush torture program and the wars. The party is almost headless without Obama - led by the fickle and […]
May15th2009
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Reason explains what this rally was about:
On May 6, 2009, concerned parents, students, and others gathered in Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza. They came to voice support for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school-voucher program authorized by Congress in 2004 (as the seat of […]
May14th2009
“The Detroit Free Press should come with a warning label. In today’s edition I was jolted by the shocking discovery that suburban public schools compete with each other for students. Apparently when parents are able to choose schools, the schools are aware of this and respond by seeking to get their business. All because – are […]
May13th2009
National Public Radio reports:
As states have legalized same-sex partnerships, the rights of gay couples have consistently trumped the rights of religious groups. Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, says that does not mean that a pastor can be sued for preaching against same-sex marriage. But, he says, that may be just about […]
