Climate change is a complex matter, not easily tackled in the short sound-byte format of modern campaigns and inch-deep political reporters. It is possible both to acknowledge the potential seriousness of the issue while going on the attack at the same time against the badly flawed conventional wisdom. Herewith a primer on the short answers candidates should give, along with supplemental commentary and additional facts.

I don’t know what to do about this. More disclosure just means more blindness. The best thing to do would be to stamp on every page, in big red letters, “Just because the bank is willing to lend you this money, does not mean that borrowing it is a good idea!” But I’m not sure borrowers would read that either.

How a company with so many strategic assets would manage to piss their seemingly insurmountable advantage away in a decade should be a business school case study. Hopefully Stanford Business School would award Ballmer his long unfinished MBA for showing us how it’s done.

To the extent that a large scale becomes necessary to absorb the regulatory cost associated with reform, Dodd–Frank could intensify the tendency toward bank consolidation, resulting in a more concentrated industry, with the largest institutions predominating even more than in the past. Such an outcome would appear to me contrary to the stated spirit and goal of the act.

The irony is that as Humala claims he’s going to make Peru like Brazil, he forgets that Peru’s economy actually has outperformed Brazil’s. His promise, which sounds so attractive, amounts to replacing Peru’s star economy with Brazil’s inferior state-directed economy. And that’s the best-case scenario. With a long history of imitating Chavez, it could get much worse. Markets clearly know this. It’s tragic that Peruvians do not.

It seems not to have occurred to the banking industry that relying people to be fools on an ongoing, large scale basis is not a viable business model.

I have a question for anyone who believes that a single-payer health-care system (where the single payer is government) will reduce the quality-adjusted cost of health-care: will a single-payer pet-food system (where the single-payer for pet food is government) reduce the quality-adjusted cost of pet food? That is, under a single-payer pet-food system (with government as the single payer) will consumers be better supplied, at a lower cost, with pet food than consumers are supplied today with a free market, myriad-payer system for the provision of pet food? If not, why would a single-payer system for health-care reduce the quality-adjusted cost of health-care? But if so, why not socialize the entire American economy given that a single-payer system (with government as the single payer) would clearly deserve the presumption of being a superior method of economic organization than myriad-payer free markets?

If there is a chance that serious discussions about Medicare reform will place one’s reelection in jeopardy, there will be strong disincentives to engaging serious entitlement reform before the results of 2012 are tabulated. The incentive to kick the can down the road may be overwhelming, even if the road appears to be coming to an abrupt end.

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you , I’m doing community service this week.’ The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door. Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you , I’m doing community service this week.’ The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door. Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, ‘I can not accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The Congressman was very happy and left the shop. The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.